Petrobras 36

Petrobras 36 (abbreviation P-36 ) was a Brazilian drilling platform operated by the semi-state oil company Petrobras . It sank off Brazil in 2001.

history

The platform was built in 1995 at a Fincantieri shipyard in Genoa as a derrick for Petrobras and later converted into an oil drilling platform in Canada . In the summer of 2000, it was installed in the Roncador oil field about 125 kilometers off the coast of Brazil. The construction costs amounted to 350 million US dollars . At the time of its construction, P-36 was the largest free-floating platform in the world. It produced 84,000 barrels of oil and 1,300,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day . The 36,000-ton construction was 113 meters long, 96 meters wide and, with 40 floors above water, 120 meters high.

The plan was to gradually increase the oil production: to 90,000 barrels per day in December 2001 and to 180,000 barrels per day in 2004.

Downfall

In the early hours of the morning of March 15, 2001, a Thursday, two explosions occurred on the starboard aft pillars for reasons that are not clear. Immediately thereafter heeled P-36 came to initially 16 and later 25 degrees, so that large areas of the platform under the water and could penetrate this. Of the 175 crew members at the time, eleven died. There were 1,500 tons of crude oil on board, and due to fears of an oil spill , the authorities coordinated a major emergency response. Due to its size, however, it was not possible to have the platform erected by ships. At the weekend, a team of technicians led 4,100 tons of nitrogen (200 liters per hour) and compressed air into the flooded tanks to displace 15 percent of the 7,000 tons of water that had penetrated and to generate new buoyancy. However, this did not succeed because the action had to be canceled due to bad weather. A team of specialists from the Netherlands came to pump oil from the tanks, but came too late.

Petrobras 36 sank to a depth of 1,300 meters on the morning of March 20. The large oil slick that formed drifted out to sea.