Three Injured Drillship Workers Pass Away at Hospital

On Sunday, offshore operator Odebrecht confirmed that three of the four workers who were injured in an explosion on a drillship last Friday have died of their wounds.

Technician Ericson Nascimento de Freitas, 29; technician Jorge Luiz Damiao, 44; and second engineer Eduardo Aragao de Lima, 33, were performing maintenance on a boiler aboard the drillship Norbe VIII (NS-32). An explosion of unspecified origin left them badly burned, and they were evacuated by helicopter for treatment. All expired at the hospital. Welder Fernando Garcia was also injured, and was treated briefly and discharged. 

Odebrecht said in a statement that the vessel appears to have endured the blast without structural damage. Petrobras has launched a formal investigation into the cause of the incident. 

Fire breaks out on FPSO

Separately, Petrobras’ workers union said that a fire broke out on Sunday night on the FPSO P-35, briefly interrupting production. “There is a high probability that the case was caused by a high-temperature leakage of glycol. Production was interrupted,” union Sindipetro-NF said in a statement. Petrobras confirmed the union’s account in a statement, adding that the fire was put out within four minutes. "There were no injuries and no material damage, and production was resumed shortly after the incident," Petrobras said in a statement. 

FPSO P-35 was converted from the 1974-built VLCC Jose Bonifacio at Hyundai Heavy Industries, and it came online in May 1999. It is also located in the Campos Basin’s Marlim field, and it produces about 24,000 bpd of oil, according to Brazilian government figures.

The Marlim field is a supergiant deepwater play in the northeastern part of the Campos Basin, and it is among Brazil's biggest proven offshore reservoirs. It began producing in 1991 and now has twelve active FPSOs.