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There are several platforms in these conditions, and many oil workers are concerned about the ghost of unemployment that haunted the oil market in the first wave of coronavirus, in 2020 and 2021
Unfortunately, the news is not very good for workers working in the offshore oil market at the beginning of 2022. Several outbreaks of coronavirus are being reported and recorded in oil units in the Campos and Santos Basins, in the exploration provinces of Rio de Janeiro .
Among the various reports that are coming directly to the CPG Portal, there are videos and audios of oil tankers being forced to leave their cabins and sleep outside the unit after tests with positive results for covid-19. The information that reached our team is that this action was aimed at sanitizing the cabins. Soon after the procedures they returned to their rooms. Check out the video below:
Video of the moment when oil tankers are forced to isolate themselves outside an offshore unit, in the whaling area, while their cabins were being sanitized
Unemployment and layoffs worry oil workers
As the majority of the population is already aware, the 2017 labor reform made it possible for companies to hire under the intermittent contract. Many outsourced companies, service providers for large oil companies, mainly for Petrobras, opted for this contracting regime because it is easier to pay for labor only when there is a contract in force, without the obligation to keep employees in idle companies when there are no operations, such as “maintenance stops” for example.
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What was no longer to the liking of many workers in the offshore oil sector in a normal situation without a pandemic, job instability as a result of a new outbreak of covid-19 is even more worrying.
In the 2020 and 2021 lockdown, many units had their operations paralyzed and/or with reduced staff, with only essential services functioning. The oil activities in Rio de Janeiro stopped producing and hiring labor, precisely in a period of frank recovery of the productive chain in Brazil.
Emotional Health and exhausting quarantines
Although many enjoy offshore life, mainly because it is an activity that provides for their families, the emotional state of these oil workers has been greatly affected by the excessive time spent on the high seas, far from relatives and friends.
around excessive quarantines in hotels and increased scale of work are also important factors. At the height of social distancing, the essential oil and gas activities that remained made companies take drastic measures, such as quarantining workers for up to 10 days in hotels and staying up to 28 days in the units, where the normal scale would be 15 days of work for 15 days off.
