Receive the news that Petrobras is receiving the first of the 4 ships that will operate in Brazilian waters from a Korean shipyard made everyone understand a little of the recent statement by the president of Petrobras, Roberto Castello Branco, that “Brazil has advantages in natural resources and the Chinese have the industrial potential”.

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The new tankers will integrate the company's current fleet of 20 vessels, and will operate in offloading operations. The other vessels will be delivered in July, August and October and at the beginning of the year, Petrobras contracted three more tankers, with delivery scheduled for 2022.

Even though the orders for the ships have been made in korea and Petrobras platforms are being built in China, the statement given during a FGV webinar it fell like a bomb among representatives of shipbuilding, both on the side of entrepreneurs and on the side of workers in this industry.

At the peak of the price of a barrel of oil, we also reached the peak, in December 2014, of 82 thousand direct jobs in the naval sector. An industry that generates 4 indirect jobs for 1 direct one, generated approximately 320 thousand indirect jobs. Currently, the industry “breathes” (with the help of devices) with around 15 jobs.

It has already been said that the shipbuilding industry is for the state of Rio de Janeiro what the automobile industry is for São Paulo and it is sad to see that in this state alone the number of vacancies dropped from 30 in 2014 to 3 since the entire supply chain is being affected by the crisis.

Long way ahead

Our industry has been moving slowly since 2015, which means that we have lost not only the qualification of the workforce, but also the technology itself, after all, nowadays we have, mainly in the area of ​​welding and equipment, a technology that is renewed every year.
According to specialists in the sector, this means that we have a much longer learning curve when we go back to building vessels. You cannot demand Asian productivity if, after creating demand, we still have this whole process to go through.

Not to mention that Brazil urgently needs to create a favorable environment for investments, implementing the tax reforms that are urgent to reduce the “Brazil cost”, only then will we stop being highly dependent on Petrobras and go back to a time when shipyards had Vale, Frota Oceânica and other foreign shipowners building ships here.

Another important fact of the recent boom that livedshipbuilding According to SINAVAL (Union of Shipbuilding Industries), there were 42 shipyards operating in Brazil and today we only have 15 units open, many surviving on repairs, serving as port terminals or receiving lay-up vessels due to the Covid-19 crisis.

If we take into account that among them there are three to four shipyards in judicial recovery, the current situation of our naval industrial park is worrying and that if the demand does not arrive in time, the situation could get even worse.

By Renato Oliveira via CLICK OIL AND GAS.

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