Woods Hole Group in Brazil

The contracts have allowed Woods Hole Group to become acquainted with doing business in Brasil and to establish many contacts in the oil & gas and coastal engineering markets.

The deep-water oceanography project was Woods Hole’s first contract and the company is currently in the third of three years on this contract and will continue to work through C&C Technologies on this contract and on the upcoming three-year renewal. Woods Hole Group designed the deep water moorings and configured the instrumentation to meet the client’s needs. C&C Technologies procured all of the equipment and imported the equipment to Brasil. C&C Technologies operates the R/V Miss Emma McCall, which is the contract support vessel and provides all the logistical support and additional technical and administrative support on this contract.

This project gathers ocean current measurements and CTD information as directed by Petrobras and consists of the design and servicing of deep-water, taut wire moorings. Over the course of the last 2.5 years, the configuration and locations of the moorings have changed multiple times. The water depths have ranged from 150m to 2250m. The data recovery rates have been high (90%+). Woods Hole Group takes the technical lead on the onboard work and has processed the data from all of the moorings for the last 2.5 years. We also take the lead on technical discussions with the client, Petrobras, who uses the data for planning offshore oil and gas exploration and production activities.

The second contract was just recently awarded to WHG/C&C Technologies for the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of 26 offshore oil production platforms. All the platforms have some combination of meteorological, conductivity/temperature, wave, and current instrumentation. Petrobras operates a data backbone that collects the data on each platform and then transmits the data off the platform in near real time to the operations center in Macaé (north and east of Rio de Janeiro). Woods Hole Group/C&C are responsible for O&M of all the equipment and the data transmission to Macaé.

This contract is similar to the O&M support contracts that Woods Hole Group currently have for NOAA PORTS.

These programs will be run by local staff members. The office in Recreio (suburb West of Rio de Janeiro) will be headed up by André Vitta (image). André has a MS in Physical Oceanography and is fluent in English. André has been our lead person on the oceanographic mooring contract for the last two years. André will continue to be the Project Manager on these two contracts as well as the General Manager for the Brasilian operations. The O&M contract will require immediate staff expansion.

Dr. Ivan Soares (Ph.D. University of Miami) is also part of the organisation. Ivan’s background is in Coastal Engineering and Modelling. Ivan has strong ties to port and harbour developments (of which there are many ongoing and pending) and also to the Environmental Licensing issues in Brasil. Ivan will form the basis of the Business Development team in Brasil supported by André and others here in Falmouth. Expected is to diversify our local service offerings and client base with Ivan's leadership.

Oil is not the only game in town as the mining industry is huge in Brasil and there are major port expansions planned for a new class of export vessels that need harbour deepening to 25m. The legislative branch of the Government is pro-Green and environmental laws are stringent. EIS preparation is another area that Woods Hole Group can support.