[ad_1]
290 km directly from the beach of Barra da Tijuca in Rio, hundreds of people work on gigantic metal structures in the middle of the ocean to extract oil up to 7,000 meters deep in the so-called pre-salt layer. In an hour of helicopter ride from the beach, you can see the flames of the first platform. Going a little further, in a few minutes, five more appear, aligned one after the other, drawing the field of Lula, the first in the pre-salt, and the one that currently produces the most oil in the country.
Petrobras has never won so much. money producing oil and gas like now, with pre-salt. The company's exploration and production yielded 35.7 billion rubles in the first nine months of last year, according to its latest published statement. During the same period in 2008, while pre-salt still did not have a commercial scale, the company's exploration and production profit was lower, reaching R $ 31.7 billion, while oil was worth almost double its current value. .
The state company manages to earn more, in a less favorable scenario, because of the low cost of pre-salt tanks, where are extracted large quantities of quality oil. The barrel produced in the region costs $ 7 a barrel, while the average of its fields is $ 11.
+ READ ALSO : The pre-salt of Megaleilão provokes the battle for already roasted money
"There is always someone who asks me if this pre-salt trade really is .. It's like going to the moon, there are people who do not believe it," jokes Rafael Leone, 36, including 12 in Petrobrás, who, from the company's downtown office, are responding to the planning of operations in the region. He accompanied the team of rapporteurs during a visit to the P-66 platform, the flagship product of Pre-Salt, one of the world's largest wagers in the industry. oil.
Petrobras and private companies extract 1.5 million barrels of oil daily. and 58 million cubic meters of pre-salt natural gas, accounting for 55% of national production. By the end of last year, more than half of the national oil was already leaving what is the deepest national territory already reached by technology.
More than 2 km of water body, plus 1 km of rock and 2 km of salt layer to reach the pre-salt, with an average thickness of 2 km, was in fact almost as "The great challenge was to develop a technology to pbad the salt, which is not a common stone, "said the director of P-66, Luciano Mares, 49, including 17 Petrobrás.
Behind the Scenes
This whole process of great complexity requires a lot of electrical energy, the same volume consumed, for example, in the city of Vitória (ES). Therefore, in addition to equipment related to oil production, there are still large capacity thermal power plants in a salt pre-treatment platform.
In an industrial unit of these dimensions, there is a tangle of tubes and large metal structures surrounded by water on all sides. At the end of the boat, through a huge tower, a flame arrives. This is the flair used to burn waste gas.
+ READ MORE : Bolsonaro promises to privatize public companies. It's harder than it looks
Facing the traditional orange jumpsuit, helmet, thick rubber boots, earplugs, gloves and glbades, the visitor's first challenge is to survive the heat. The second is to watch all the videos and go through the security alert phase.
In the corridors of the production area of the largest pre-salt platform, no one transits or handles the equipment. Nobody can shoot the oil 9 km deep. Sometimes a tanker pbades, which does not change the feeling of oppression in the middle of these gigantic machines. On the P-66, you also do not see a drop of oil. All production is piped, and even shipped to the ship for transport to the surface, huge, well-sealed orange hoses are used to prevent leakage.
Platform operators, half a dozen people, control room, from which, sitting in the air conditioning, they monitor, through large screens and computers, the operation of the ship and production units. Thus, like the 150 professionals who make up the crew, this team relays between morning and evening. As a result, there are an average of 75 active people on the platform daily, most of them involved in maintenance, navigation and administration activities.
"The P-66 platform has a high degree of automation in terms of technological advances and equipment, but it is not autonomous. It needs a human operation, "said Clélio Vinícius de Sousa, chief operating officer of the P-66. "Our work here will serve as leverage to develop other processes," says the engineer, with a tone of pride almost as repetitive on the platform as the safety warnings. The information comes from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo .
[ad_2]
Source link
