Brazil: Maua Shipyard Delivers New Tanker Vessel Celso Furtado

Last Friday, Nov. 25, President Dilma Rousseff attended  the delivery ceremony for the Celso Furtado. With overall length of 183 meters and capacity of 56 million liters, the Celso Furtado is the first of four vessels ordered by Transpetro from the Mauá Shipyard.

The vessel is one of 49 new vessels to be ordered under the Transpetro Fleet Modernization and Expansion Program (Promef). It will be used for inter-state transport of oil derivatives in Brazil. On its maiden voyage, the ship will carry fuels produced in São Paulo refineries to Northern and Northeastern Brazil.

“Today, we are proving that Brazilians know how to build ships,” said President Dilma Rousseff in her address. “In Brazil, we are not going to allow jobs to be transferred abroad. Our commitment is to the greatness of this nation.” The Celso Furtado has a domestic content index of 74%, which means that almost three-fourths of the resource used to build it were sourced in Brazil.”

Transpetro CEO, Sergio Machado, highlighted the importance of the ceremony. “This is a historic moment for the nation’s shipbuilding industry and Merchant Marine. The delivery of this vessel really shows what the Brazilian people can achieve.” Mr. Machado made a point of beginning his address by paying tribute to Mauá Shipyard’s metal workers, with the words, “You are the true heroes of this story.”

President Dilma Rousseff handed over the Brazilian flag to be flown by the Celso Furtado to the ship’s Captain, Claudio Lisboa Nunes. Chief engineer Carlos Alberto do Nascimento received the logbook from Governor Sergio Cabral. The ship set sail on its maiden voyage at 2:15 pm.

The delivery of the Celso Furtado is further evidence of the power of the Promef program, which has revitalized Brazilian shipbuilding after decades of stagnation. The last vessel delivered by a Brazilian shipyard to Petrobras was the Livramento in 1997. Brazil currently holds the world’s fourth largest oil tanker portfolio and ranks fifth in terms of order book figures

With an order for 49 oil tankers, the Promef program provided investments of the scale required to modernize the national fleet and set up three new shipyards in Brazil: the Atlântico Sul and STX-Promar shipyards in the state of Pernambuco and the Rio Tietê Shipyard in São Paulo. These new installations will build waterway convoys to transport ethanol. At the turn of the century, Brazilian shipbuilders employed only 2,000 workers. It now has a workforce some 60,000 strong.

Three other Promef vessels have already been launched to sea and are currently at the completion stage: the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Rômulo Almeida at Mauá, and the João Cândido at Atlântico Sul. Of the 49 vessels planned for the first two stages of the program, 41 have already been ordered, with investments amounting to some R$9.6 billion. The remaining eight vessels are currently in the final bidding phase.

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Shipbuilding Tribune Staff, November 29, 2011; Image: petrobras