Giant FPSOs and climate change: The challenges on Radix's energy agenda

Brazil's Radix is working with local companies to solve new issues in the oil and gas and electricity sectors.  

With federal oil company Petrobras and FPSO charterers, one priority is to enable the construction of increasingly larger platforms. 

About 10 years ago, the offshore production units commissioned by Petrobras had the capacity to produce 150,000b/d of oil but today some can produce up to 225,000b/d. 

“One challenge is the weight component of the units, due to the number of processes added. For this reason, much of the work consists of optimizing naval and construction systems in order to maintain the viability of the investments,” Natália Klafke, energy head at Radix, told BNamericas. 

The company recently won a Petrobras tender to develop basic engineering for new FPSOs, including the P-86, which will be installed in Marlim Sul/Leste. 

Another point of concern is reducing the environmental impact of FPSOs. Contracted in May, the P-84 and P-85, for example, will be of the all-electric type in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“There’s an effort to control emissions by optimizing energy generation and the use and treatment of gas on the FPSO,” said Klafke.

Radix is also supporting engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms in their pricing strategy for FPSOs in Petrobras tenders. Some processes have been delayed due to financing difficulties.

In refining, the company is keeping an eye on Petrobras resuming work at the Abreu e Lima (RNEST) facility in Pernambuco and Gaslub in Rio de Janeiro. 

“One of the challenges is to find out what can be used from the installed units, projects that have already been carried out, the risks of transferring knowledge and investments that have already been made,” said the executive. 

ELECTRIC POWER

In the electric power sector, Radix is studying solutions to help transmission and distribution companies deal with extreme weather events. 

“Companies have been facing recurring and more intense events. So we’re evaluating how we can support them both in the regulatory sense and on the prevention side, optimizing processes,” said Klafke.

She added that infrastructure investments, for grounding power cables for example, are an efficient strategy for reducing the damage caused by heavy rains and winds, but they come up against Brazil's contractual models (concessions). 

“The question is how to finance this in an environment as complex as Brazil's, where much of the energy is diverted with gatos [illegal connections]. There is a large pool of non-payers,” she said.  

Radix also provides support to transmission companies in the auctions promoted by electric power watchdog Aneel. 

“We advise them on how to use artificial intelligence to price their bids,” said Klafke.