Bright outlook for Brazil’s offshore support market

The prospects for Brazil’s offshore support market for 2023 are very bright, considering the plans of state-run oil company Petrobras’ and private players, Lilian Schaefer, executive vice-president of the maritime support companies association Abeam, told BNamerica. 

"As for the types of vessels, these will be in line with the demand of the concessionaires and, with regard to charter rates, we have considered current Brazilian demand and the movements of the international market. The expectation is still conservative," she said. 

Private operators with a local offshore exploration and production project pipeline include Shell, TotalEnergies, Equinor, 3R Petroleum, Trident Energy, Perenco, PetroRio, Karoon, BW Energy, BP Energy and Petronas. 

According to Ricardo Chagas, director at Edison Chouest Offshore, the strongest demand in the market is for platform supply vessels (PSV), mostly multipurpose vessels, with up to five different product segregations. 

He pointed out that producing a PSV of this kind requires making a series of modifications costing US$4.5mn-US$5mn per vessel to meet the technical specifications requested by Petrobras. 

“The daily rate for a vessel like this can be as much as US$40,000 for a four-year contract, so we can pay off the previous investment,” he told BNamericas. 

Chagas believes Petrobras may need to launch a new construction program for local offshore support vessels in order to meet its future demand. 

“Petrobras now requires an additional 44 PSVs and it can't find all of them in the market. At the beginning of next year, it will require others that are also seeing shortages,” he said. 

In the last decade, the federal oil giant carried out a renewal program for its offshore support fleet, dubbed Prorefam, which called for the construction of over 100 vessels in local shipyards.   

"In turn, independent oil companies require vessels such as PSVs and anchor handlers (AHTS) and, since there's a lack of local content, some vessels will have to come from abroad,” Chagas added. 

According to the latest data from Abeam, the maritime support fleet in Brazilian waters totaled 410 vessels at the end of September, of which 374 were Brazilian-flagged and 36 were foreign-flagged.

Brazilian legislation states that locally-built vessels (Brazilian-flagged) have preference in contracting processes over foreign-flagged units, since they comply with the technical specifications required by the client. 

PSVs and oil spill recovery vessels (OSRV) represented almost half of the fleet in that month.

Source: Abeam

Bram Offshore, of the Edison Chouest group, is the main shipping company, with 60 vessels in Brazil.

Source: Abeam

Petrobras’ current contracted fleet comprises around 100 vessels, including units specialized in subsea activities like pipelaying (PLSVs), ROV (RSV), shallow diving (SDSV) and equipment (SESV) support vessels.

Source: Petrobras

The state-run firm recently held a tender to contract up to 20 PSVs, where Starnav, Astro Navegação (Astromarítima), Companhia Brasileira de Offshore (CBO), Baru Navegação, Bram Offshore, Wilson Sons Offshore and Brasbunker submitted commercial proposals. 

Other contracting processes are underway on the company’s procurement website Petronect, involving PSV/ OSRV (ID number 7003977139) and AHTS (7003957481).