MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Major oil congress in Brazil to address challenge of pre-salt deposits development

The challenge of exploring and extracting Brazil’s massive pre-salt offshore hydrocarbons deposits will be addressed at the congress to be held in Rio do Janeiro next June with the participation of 250 delegates from international corporations, Petrobras and other Brazilian government institutions.

“Brazil’s oil and gas industry faces the challenge of competition and expertise”, said Bruno Araújo, general manager of the “Pre-Salt Brazil Congress” event.

Developing the pre-salt deposits means drilling almost seven kilometres in the earth’s crust and extracting oil and gas at very high temperatures.

“We are bringing together oil and gas experts with their Brazilian counterparts to address the pre-salt challenge which will enable us to advance and develop the resources” added Araújo.

The organizer of the event pointed out Brazil needs to sort out the logistics chain, the role of foreign investment and financing.

“Some of the exploration main technical challenges include the difficult access to those pre-salt deposits, lack of sufficient know-how and qualified labour, plus all the other issues involving supporting operations in the high seas drilling at such depths”.

Petrobras and its pre-salt partners need to capitalize and develop exploration technology in this new field, and ensure the supply of equipments added Araújo.

“The positive side is that the world’s leading oil and gas corporations are desperate for new proven reserves and are willing to pay whatever is needed to have access to those fields”, said Araújo adding that the pre-salt congress will be dealing with 80% of Brazil’s total oil reserves.

“It’s unbelievable seeing how companies are restructuring their business to face the new challenges and new scenario. The industry is desperate for information, experts, training and basically to be part of this great period of Brazil’s oil and gas development history”.

At the same time we realize that the operators are fearful of losing their experts and staff to competitors because certain skills are becoming more and more valuable.

Among the attendants to the congress are BP Energy do Brasil, Statoil, Chevron, Petrobras, TOTVS, Aveva, Petra Executive Search, Grupo Zorovich, Villares Metals, Wilson Sons, Technip, Swift and Horton do Brasil.