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Dozens of Petrobras platforms reach the end of their useful life at the same time, but Brazil has no certified shipyard, approved law, or tax regime to decommission them domestically. The market goes to Bangladesh, India, and Turkey.
On the morning of April 21, 2025, the Cherne 1 platform caught fire in the Campos Basin, about 130 kilometers off the coast of Macaé. The unit had not produced oil since 2020, five years idle, with no defined destination, with 176 workers still on board awaiting a decision that never came. The fire injured 14 people.
The accident was not an unforeseen tragedy. It was the result of an equation that Brazil stubbornly ignores: a country with dozens of platforms aging simultaneously, a billion-dollar market to dismantle them safely, and none of the necessary conditions to capture this business domestically.
76 platforms already operate for over 25 years, and Petrobras wants to expedite their decommissioning for safety reasons
In March 2026, Carlos Castilho, General Manager of Decommissioning Projects at Petrobras, said at an FGV Energia event in Rio de Janeiro a phrase that defines the current stage of the sector: “The destination will be for those with the best structure.”
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The statement carries weight because the clock is already ticking. The National Petroleum Agency estimates that 35 production units will be decommissioned between 2025 and 2030, and another 12 by 2035, at a cost of US$ 1 billion per year. In 2024, nearly 76 platforms were already operating for over 25 years — an entire generation of equipment reaching its limit simultaneously.
Petrobras announced the anticipation of the decommissioning of the FPSO Cidade de Santos, originally scheduled for 2027, to still in 2026. After 2031, the state company plans the departure of 50 platforms, 43 of which are fixed. The 2026–2030 Business Plan allocated US$ 9.7 billion for the sustainable disposal of equipment and the abandonment of more than 500 wells.
The pressure is no longer future, it is present, and it grows with each platform that crosses the 25-year mark of operation.
Brazil ranks third in the global industry ranking but lacks the structure to benefit from this position
Brazil is not a small market in this segment. The consultancy Wood Mackenzie places the country third in the global offshore decommissioning ranking, behind only the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. By 2029, the planned operations in the country amount to US$ 16 billion. Over a 30-year horizon, the Aurum Tank study projects R$ 306 billion in movement, considering the 240 platforms installed, including those that will still be built and come into operation in the coming years.
To get a sense of the scale: Petrobras alone plans to invest US$ 11 billion in decommissioning over the next five years, an amount that exceeds the entire GDP of Monaco.
The problem is that being the third largest market does not mean having the smallest share of return if the work goes elsewhere. Today, Brazil does not have any certified shipyards to recycle large vessels and offshore platforms according to international standards. The legal framework that would define the rules has been in Congress for five years without a final vote. And the applicable tax regime has not been regulated.
Brazil owns the market on paper and exports the business in practice, not by strategic choice, but due to lack of conditions.
PL 1584/2021 has gone through four committees in five years and still hasn’t reached the plenary — and the world won’t wait
In April 2021, Congressman Coronel Armando (PL-SC) presented Bill 1584/2021 to regulate the dismantling and recycling of vessels and offshore installations in national territory. The text defines responsibilities, establishes procedures for hazardous materials, and creates guidelines for the operation of recycling shipyards.
In five years, the project went through four committees: Environment (November 2021), Foreign Relations and National Defense (2022), Roads and Transport (June 2025, one day after the Hong Kong Convention came into force internationally) and now awaits an opinion in the Constitution and Justice and Citizenship Committee, the last step before the Senate. There is no scheduled date.
In January 2026, the federal government created the Offshore Platform and Ship Decommissioning and Recycling Working Group, coordinated by the Ministry of Development, bringing together Petrobras, Gerdau, and the main national shipyards. The group mapped bottlenecks and presented recommendations to the ministry in April 2026. What differentiates this WG from the previous ones is what happens afterward: the necessary changes depend on Congress, the Federal Revenue, and Ibama, instances beyond the group’s reach.
The WG can map, recommend, and pressure, but it does not decide, and Congress has no date to vote.
REPETRO does not recognize scrap: the tax regime created for oil hinders the recycling of platforms
REPETRO is the special tax regime created to enable oil exploration and production activities in Brazil — and it was fundamental for the development of the pre-salt. The problem is that it was not designed for the end of the platforms’ life cycle.
The Federal Revenue has already indicated that scrap, generated in the dismantling process, does not fit within REPETRO. However, the regulation that would standardize this understanding and create legal certainty for the sector has not yet been published. There are also no rules for the importation of foreign platforms intended for dismantling on Brazilian soil.
The result is a paralyzing combination for any investor: without law, without tax framework, and without international certification, no one builds infrastructure for a market whose rules do not exist. Brazil ends up exporting the work along with the structure and loses the entire value chain that would be retained here.
A regime created to discover oil ended up, by omission, preventing Brazil from making money when it runs out.
The Hong Kong Convention came into force in June 2025 and Brazil was left out, European and Japanese shipowners cannot hire Brazilian shipyards even if they want to
The International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, approved in 2009 by the International Maritime Organization, came into force on June 26, 2025, after 16 years of negotiations and meeting the conditions of accession by at least 15 countries.
The convention establishes mandatory standards: inventory of hazardous materials on board each vessel, specific recycling plan for each ship, shipyards certified by the competent authorities, and prohibition of the beaching method, the stranding of the ship on the beach for manual dismantling, still dominant in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan.
With the convention in force, European, Japanese, and American shipowners who need to demonstrate environmental compliance when disposing of their fleets cannot hire Brazilian shipyards. Brazil has not ratified the treaty and has no shipyard meeting the required standard. India: 110 certified shipyards. Turkey: 11. Bangladesh: 10. Brazil: 0.
The paradox is that Brazil could enter this market competing not on price, where Bangladesh and India win by a wide margin — but on environmental standards, which is exactly what the world’s largest shipowners need. This window exists. It has a deadline.
While the current global leaders rush to get certified, Brazil watches without the minimum infrastructure to participate in the race.
A decommissioned platform is not just scrap, it is steel, copper, aluminum, equipment, and an entire chain that today goes away
When a platform ceases operation, what remains is more than rusted metal. Between 70% and 90% of a vessel’s weight is high-quality steel, direct raw material for steel mills. This is what Gerdau already practices: the company, the largest recycler of metallic scrap in Latin America, transforms more than 11 million tons of scrap into steel per year, and 71% of all the steel it produces comes from recycling.
Besides steel, the platforms carry pipelines with copper, aluminum, nickel, and chromium; engines, generators, compressors, and cranes with remaining useful life for resale; drilling equipment and submarine cables that require specialized treatment. On the other side are the hazardous inputs: residual oils, paints with heavy metals, asbestos, and, in some units, naturally occurring radioactive waste, which separates certified recycling from simple dismantling.
Doing this work internally means retaining this entire chain within the country. It also means that Brazil can account for the environmental gains of each operation, something that sending to shipyards abroad makes unfeasible from the perspective of Petrobras’s ESG goals.
The steel that today represents risk can, with appropriate public policy, become raw material, jobs, and international positioning.
Ecovix and Gerdau have already paved the way, the P-32 and P-33 showed that it is possible, and also where the bottlenecks appear
In July 2023, Gerdau and Ecovix won Petrobras’s first auction for platform decommissioning in Brazil. The P-32, used in the Campos Basin, was acquired to be dismantled at the Rio Grande Shipyard in Rio Grande do Sul, the largest dry dock in Latin America. In December 2023, the platform arrived at the shipyard. The dismantling work generated about 250 direct jobs for 12 months.
In November of the same year, Gerdau won the second auction, this time for the P-33, from the Marlim Field, with about 45 thousand tons and 337 meters in length. The model is the same: Ecovix dismantles in the dry dock of Rio Grande, Gerdau uses the metal scrap as raw material for low-carbon steel in the plants of Rio Grande do Sul.
But in April 2024, the operation of the P-32 revealed the fragility of the system without regulation: Petrobras delayed the cleaning of the platform, Ecovix gave a seven-day deadline under the threat of dismissing the hired workers, and the crisis remained without immediate resolution. Without law, without a clear protocol of responsibilities, each step becomes a negotiation, and negotiation delays employment and investment.
Two successful decommissionings do not build an industry. For that, a legal framework, tax regime, and certified shipyards are needed, the three elements that Brazil still does not have.
The global peak is arriving in 2033 and European shipyards are already at capacity limit
The global ship recycling market is on its way to its highest historical volume. By 2032, about 15,000 vessels are expected to be recycled worldwide, equivalent to 25% of the current merchant fleet. The peak is forecasted for 2033, when approximately 2,800 ships per year are expected to be sent for recycling. European shipyards are already operating at capacity limit.
The growing demand creates pressure that traditional markets, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, and Pakistan, will not be able to fully absorb with the standards that the new convention requires. It is precisely in this gap that Brazil could insert itself with real competitive advantage: existing infrastructure, expertise in offshore operations, specialized labor already present in cities like Rio Grande, Niterói, and Macaé, and a Petrobras with $11 billion committed to the process.
The argument of the MDIC GT, presented in April 2026, is precisely this: the country can compete on standards, not on price. Building a certified industry from the start, while current leaders are still rushing to comply with new rules.
The window exists, but a window has a deadline to close, and Congress, the Federal Revenue, and Ibama have not yet opened the door.
And you, did you know that Brazil is the third largest global market for offshore platform decommissioning — and does not have any certified shipyard to do this work? Did you find it absurd that a bill capable of opening this market has been stalled for five years in Congress? Leave your comment, tell us what you think prevents Brazil from capturing these R$ 306 billion, and share with those who work in the oil, gas, and naval industry sectors.
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