Petrobras concludes auction for first platform green recycling

Petrobras concluded this Friday (7) the auction that will allow the company to break another frontier in the oil exploration industry. Gerdau SA – which operates in areas such as mining, steel production and metal recycling – in partnership with the Ecovix shipyard, purchased the P-32 exploration platform, so that it can be submitted to the decommissioning process – a way of recycling the structure , mitigating environmental impacts.

It is the first time that an out-of-use platform of the company will undergo the “green recycling” process. The state-owned company did not inform the value of the winning bid, but emphasized that the process – which was intended exclusively for the national market – will allow the generation of jobs and business.

“The units need to be decommissioned and we need to dispose of waste responsibly. As Brazil is an importer of this type of metallic material, we identified it as a good opportunity for the market, at the same time that we were able to promote a green destination for deactivated platforms and generate direct and indirect jobs”, said the Director of Engineering, Technology and Innovation from Petrobras, Carlos Travassos.

Criteria

The sales process imposed technical criteria on interested companies to ensure respect for the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) practices of the world industry during recycling and final disposal of metallic waste, with a focus on value generation, sustainability, safety and respect to people and the environment.

The state-owned company explained that after settlement of the winning bid, Gerdau will present a recycling plan that will be monitored by Petrobras, in order to guarantee compliance with ESG practices.

Responsible for the Rio Grande Shipyard, in the city of Rio Grande (RS), Ecovix has an operating license for the activity of dismantling platforms.

For Petrobras, inaugurating the practice of “green recycling” of platforms in Brazil is a way of aligning with the most advanced practices in the global oil industry. “Ensuring the proper disposal of materials from decommissioning also reveals our concern with the sustainability of the business”, said the director of Logistics, Commercialization and Markets, Claudio Schlosser.

Replacement

The company plans to recycle 26 exploration units over the next five years, becoming a global reference in this activity.

The first Petrobras platform to undergo “green recycling”, the P-32 platform is one of the ten units that produced in the Marlim and Voador fields, in the Campos Basin, and are being replaced by the new Anna Nery and Anita Garibaldi platforms, that make up the project to revitalize the exploration fields. The two have the capacity to produce, together, up to 150,000 barrels per day.