Petrobras qualifies Sembcorp Marine’s FPSO offer

Brazil’s federal oil firm Petrobras has qualified the commercial proposal presented by Sembcorp Marine for the construction of the P-82 Búzios field FPSO, a source close to the subject told BNamericas.

The Singaporean company originally offered US$3.66bn and US$3.73bn in lots A and B in the tender for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the P-80 and the P-82 units.

Both bids were beaten by the US$2.9bn proposals Keppel Shipyard submitted for each platform. It has closed the contract for the P-80 and has expressed interest in building the P-83 production unit.

But the tender rules establish that each platform (P-80 and P-82) must be provided by a different supplier, so Sembcorp moved forward to the negotiation phase with Petrobras regarding the P-82. 

Keppel then filed an appeal against the qualification of its competitor, but Petrobras denied the request.  

During the negotiations, Petrobras managed to reduce Sembcorp’s P-82 offer to US$3.04bn and is now close to signing the production platform contract with the company. 

Meanwhile, Keppel is expected to close the contract for the P-83 unit. 

The new Búzios FPSOs will be capable of producing 225,000b/d of oil and processing 12 million cubic meters per day of natural gas.