As the oil and gas industry picks up its activity from auctions held annually since 2017, the Brazilian Institute of Oil, Gas and Biofuels (IBP), in partnership with the SPE Section Brazil, brought together experts from all over the world. the industry chain to discuss the challenges and possible solutions that ensure or optimize the competitiveness of the offshore segment in the current conjuncture of the country. Topics such as standardization and digitization were featured in the 2nd edition of the Offshore Projects Competitiveness Seminar in Brazil, which took place last Tuesday (08/20) in Rio de Janeiro.

"Today, Brazil is emerging as one of the most promising countries in the world energy sector, with a special vocation for the development of offshore projects in pre-salt reserves. Given the global discussions about the low carbon economy, it is essential that we look at our industry from a new perspective. Competitiveness is the key word in this process, "said Milton Costa Filho (photo), IBP secretary general. "Competitiveness translates into many things, such as stability and simplification of rules, a simpler tax regime, a fixed schedule of rounds, improving the environmental licensing process, developing technologies and innovation and much more." .

In the opening lecture, Petrobras president Roberto Castello Branco stressed the importance of offshore exploration and production for the state company. "Petrobras is becoming an offshore company. We are selling our assets on land and in shallow water, which is helping to create a new oil industry in Brazil, a vibrant industry for small and medium producers," he said. Castello Branco also defended changes in pre-salt legislation to increase project efficiency. "We have to get Brazil on the path to prosperity. And it will not be with local content or sharing arrangements that we will be able to do that. It belongs to the past, which was not favorable to us, and we have to break it." stressed.

André Araújo, president of Shell Brasil, pointed out that in order to talk about competitiveness in deep water, it is also necessary to talk about energy transition. "We must not forget that deepwater projects are not isolated from the energy system in the world. Today, one of the challenges of the deepwater segment is to remain competitive to maintain the leading role in this journey. At Shell, we talk a lot about energy transition. , but we know that deep water is a key path for our future look, "he said.

The complexity and representativeness of the offshore segment are translated into numbers, as presented by Francisco Francilmar, PetroRio's chief operating officer. According to the executive, currently in Brazil, 40% of the production units are located in Campos Basin, 18% in Potiguar Basin and 16% in Sergipe-Alagoas. With regard to platforms in operation in the country, 56% are fixed, 30% FPSOs and 10% semi-submersible, with 44% of all units under 15 years old, 15% aged 15-20 and 41% older. 25 years old.

For José Frey, Equinor's Vice President of Exploration, the opportunities for creating a competitive and predictable structure are also expressed in numbers. According to the executive, in Equinor's view, 23% of the global increase in oil supply in 2030 will come from Brazil and about $ 200 billion will be invested in the upstream sector in the country. "We also estimate that 20 FPSOs will be hired by 2024, and seven of them will be hired by IOCs, which is really remarkable as it shows that openness and competitiveness are really attractive in Brazil," he said.

With regard to investments, Anderson Dutra, KPMG's Oil & Gas lead partner in Brazil, believes that in Brazil, the energy and oil and gas sector will reach US $ 490 billion by 2027, US $ 470 billion being invested directly in O&G. According to Dutra, other Central and South American countries are also aware of the relevance of this industry. "Ecuador plans to invest $ 1 billion in exploration and production in the Eastern Basin. In Trinidad and Tobago, oil and gas companies invest $ 10 billion in E&P," he said.

Standardization 

Standardization was one of the main themes addressed during the Offshore Project Competitiveness Seminar in Brazil 2019 and was identified as a decisive factor for project efficiency. According to Neeraj Nandurdikar, Director of E&P at Independent Project Analysis (IPA), standardization is significantly positive behavior for achieving competitiveness.

"In Brazil, 55% of projects use some kind of standardization. In the rest of the industry, without Brazil, this percentage is limited to 15%. If you want to be competitive, standardization is one way to do it and Brazil has shown that is possible, "he explained. "Now, let's be honest. When we talked about Brazil, until recently, we were referring to basically one company. So much of that is driven by one company and the other IOCs now entering Brazil should really adopt standardization." , finished.

For Rudimar Lorenzatto, executive director of Production & Technology Development at Petrobras, the pursuit of competitiveness and productivity also involves standardization. "At Petrobras, we had a lot of results with subsea and well standardization. Today, there is a lot of talk about standardization of FPSOs. It's an opportunity that we have to work together in the industry, otherwise each operator or each charterer will have a model, and it will be that Is this a better business model? "he asked.

Along the same lines, Eduardo Chamusca, director of Abespetro, believes that standardization is the next step in FPSO projects, reducing the standard construction schedule by six to 12 months. "Brazil has mega-fields with similar characteristics, and the fields and, consequently, FPSO projects are getting more complex. In addition, we already have a previous history of replicated units. The benefits of standardization are countless," he explained.

Digitalization

The impact of technology on business was another major topic presented by experts, underlining the importance of digitization in the oil and gas industry. According to Carlos Tunes, IBM executive for Watson IoT for Latin America, the Internet of Things (IoT) was the field that attracted the most investment last year, being pointed out by 95% of executives surveyed by the IBV 2018 C-suite study. Mobility (92%), cloud (83), artificial intelligence and learning machine (57%) and robotic process automation (39%) complete the top five areas of technology investment.

"To get an idea of how the potential impact of technology on business value is growing, 30 billion connected things will exist in the world by 2020. In addition, 75% of the world's cars will be connected, 95% of electronics will have technology. IoT and 50% of all assets will diagnose their own problems. By 2025, connected devices will generate exponentially more data than all traditional mobile and computing platforms combined, "he said.

For Marcelo Xavier, Vice President of Subsea 7, talking about competitiveness and not about digitization means missing an opportunity to discuss potential value. Xavier presented data from the annual report issued by the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Accenture, which indicates that the oil and gas industry has the potential to unlock value at $ 1 trillion. "It's important to note that 90% of this amount is related to asset cycle monitoring and management. And for digital asset management to actually happen, let's talk a lot in the coming years of automation, robotization, analytics-based decisions and everything related to wearable and cloud technologies for managing production systems, "he added.

Environmental licensing 

Ibama's director of licensing, Jonathan Trindade, said that environmental licensing is a place of opportunity and that there is much room for improvement and simplification of procedures and processes. "If the market changes, the environmental licensing process has to adapt and improve in the face of this new scenario," he explained. Trindade cited as an example the Federal Environmental Licensing Regulation (ReLAF) - where publication is expected by the end of the year - which brings news that incorporates consolidated technical understandings over the years, resulting in greater legal certainty and an easy language understanding.

In addition to IBAMA's licensing director, the event featured lectures by Claudio Makarovsky, Abespetro's CEO, Pedro Medeiros, director of energy research at Citibank Research and Thiago Baraldi Ferreira, from Petrobras.

The Offshore Projects Competitiveness Seminar in Brazil 2019 was sponsored by Petrobras, Shell and Halliburton, and partnered by ISA Rio de Janeiro.