Petrobras cancels tenders

Brazil’s federal energy company Petrobras will restart a tender to build the P-55 semi-submersible platform. According to a company spokesperson, prices offered in bidding were too high.

Brazilian-Singapore shipyard Keppel-Fels offered the lowest price at $1.65bn according to unconfirmed press reports. The only other bidder was the Atlantico Sul consortium led by Brazilian engineering company Camargo Corr?a. This will become the second tender for offshore producing units that Petrobras has cancelled in recent weeks.

Earlier this month Petrobras said it would restart bidding for the 180,000b/d-capacity P-57 FPSO due to high bids. Petrobras rejected price proposals for the initial tender for the vessel?s construction saying that “The prices offered were considered too high so Petrobras will start anew.”

The P-57 will be used in the second stage development of the deepwater Jubarte field in the Campos basin. The vessel was due to start producing oil and gas in 2010. Petrobras did not say when the new tender would start and whether the Jubarte development project would be affected.

The Atlantico Sul consortium, made up of Brazilian companies Andrade Gutierrez, Queiroz Galvao, Camargo Correa, Norwegian company Aker Promar and Korea’s Samsung offered to build the P-57 for 2.4 billion reals ($1.12 billion). Singapore-Brazilian shipyard Maua-Jurong offered 1.8 billion reals, according to an unconfirmed report.