Petrobras has awarded GE Oil & Gas a four-year service agreement to deliver repairs, maintenance and retrofits on Petrobras' fleet of subsea equipment installed in the Campos Basin offshore Brazil. The scope of the agreement, valued at approximately $120M, includes service and repairs on over 300 exploration and 250 production tools, as well as retrofitting six subsea production trees each year with GE advanced technology.

GE will conduct the service program from its Macaé Service Center, located in Rio de Janeiro state, which is currently undergoing a $30M investment refurbishment and expansion. The 91,000 sq. meter facility, which employs over 200 highly skilled employees, will be capable of state-of-the-art inspection, maintenance, repair, spares parts, rental tools and field services for capital drilling, subsea wellhead systems, and subsea production and controls equipment.

Fernando Martins, vice president—Latin America, GE Oil & Gas said, "GE will apply its latest high-tech subsea equipment service and repair technologies across much of Petrobras' Campos Basin installed fleet to help minimize downtime and optimize production output. We will deliver this important assignment from our Macaé Service Center which is currently under expansion and delivers critical offshore production servicing projects for customers including Petrobras, Transocean, OGX and Brasdrill and all the IOC's currently operating in Brazil."

The frame service agreement builds on the announcement this week that Petrobras has awarded GE's Wellstream business a long-term, $200M-plus flexible pipe and subsea equipment logistics services contract to be supported from a dedicated new 55,000 sq. meter, $90M investment Logistics Base that GE will build adjacent to Wellstream's existing manufacturing site in Niterói, 14 kms outside Rio de Janeiro.

In February GE Oil & Gas received $50M in contracts to supply subsea wellhead and installation tooling systems to Petrobras for deployment in Campos and Santos basin projects, bringing to over 1,400 GE's tally of mission-critical subsea wellhead systems installed in Brazilian waters.

GE Oil & Gas has an established presence in Brazil and serves its deepwater segment with integrated drilling & production subsea equipment and services, as well as high-tech unit and modular gas turbines and compressors solutions for fixed & FPSO applications.

GE will open a new $100M investment Global Research Center in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

Tags: GE Oil & Gas, Petrobras