On February 1, Petrobras will receive bids from pre-qualified companies to bid for the construction of the P-78 and P-79 platforms that will operate in the Búzios field in the Santos Basin pre-salt. The bidding process followed Law 13,303 / 2016 and began in July 2020, with the participation of 10 national and international companies, all with recognized experience.

At this stage, companies will present their prices, in addition to the technical proposal. All bidders were previously qualified for the bid, when the financial, technical and operational requirements of these companies were analyzed. The decision-making process for contracting Petrobras' goods and services considers three criteria: quality, competitiveness and supply time.

By 2025, Petrobras will put into production 13 systems for operation in Brazil. This new generation of platforms incorporates improvements and lessons learned accumulated by Petrobras with the experience of the past 10 years in the pre-salt and other offshore projects. The current contracting and construction strategies aim to avoid delays in the delivery of the systems and accelerate the beginning of the development of the production areas.

Delays in the implementation of the projects result in losses of billions of reais of revenue for the federal, state and municipal governments, in addition to the reduction of the useful and productive life of the fields of the sharing regime, which have limited time for production. At Petrobras, for example, there were delays of more than three years in the delivery of ten platforms contracted in 2010, causing the federal, state and municipal governments to stop collecting R $ 33 billion.

In addition to the impact on government revenue, delays in the construction of platforms affect the entire national specialized industry. The platforms themselves have numerous equipment of national origin and comply with the legal requirements of local content, regardless of the place where they are assembled. In addition, about 2/3 of the costs of an offshore exploration and production project are spent on the other stages of construction of wells and subsea systems, among others, where most of the goods and services are provided by suppliers in Brazil, which in turn instead they have a dense local supply chain.

Seeking to avoid delays, increase transparency and face the challenges that pre-salt projects and the offshore oil and gas industry demand, Petrobras has revised its contracting system in recent years. For example, it started to publish in the Supplier Channel, throughout 2020, several documents of platform projects, such as technical specifications and arrangements, contractual terms and conditions. Through this channel, Petrobras was also able to obtain suggestions from the market to improve specifications and increase competitiveness, in addition to allowing early engagement of national and foreign suppliers in contracting the new platforms. The company also maintains a permanent relationship agenda with the various associations of local suppliers, in forums in which it interacts with the market, listening to suggestions and improving the management practices of its supply chain in a collaborative way.

In this way, Petrobras contributes to the creation of a mature and competitive supplier market and to the consolidation of an attractive business environment for new investments in oil and gas in Brazil. The company remains a major contractor in the country, so much so that, in 2020, it spent R $ 58 billion on contracting goods and services, 62% of which with domestic suppliers.