Brazil

Petrobras is a Brazilian company dedicated to oil exploration and exploitation. Its activity, within the scope of this project, was structured through two main companies:

• Transpetro: responsible for the fleet of vessels operating with fuels, mainly gas and derivative tankers.
• Sete Brasil: in charge of drilling rigs—that is, vessels equipped with drills for well extraction, mainly in the Pre-salt layer in the Atlantic, off the coasts of Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo.

In 2014, as a result of Operation Lava Jato, a money laundering investigation carried out in Brazil, Sete Brasil ceased its activity, which led to the automatic cancellation of all its vessels. At that time, the South Atlantic Shipyard was working on the construction of seven drilling rigs.

Faced with this situation, the shipyard considered reusing the parts already manufactured for other projects or selling them as scrap or second-hand material.

Main functions and responsibilities of Movilex

It is in this context that Movilex decided to join the project, acquiring:

• 21,000 tons of naval steel blocks
• 30,000 tons of plates
• Cables
• Stainless steel
• Carbon steel

The various materials were cut into dimensions of 1.5 m x 1 m x 0.5 m, in accordance with the specifications required by clients in Spain. To this end, Movilex hired several specialized companies to perform the cuts according to these measurements.

The second-hand material that was not processed by Movilex was sent to various international destinations:

• The plates, approximately 30,000 tons, were exported to Egypt by sea.
• The stainless steel was sent to India in containers.
• The cables were moved to a Movilex plant, where they are currently being processed by removing the plastic and coating for cable recovery.