Brazil is building a $127 billion offshore city
BRAZIL (BDCi) — Brazil’s state owned oil company Petrobras is in process of building the most expensive floating “offshore city” in history.
The need to built a $127 billion floating city came with the attempt to extract 30 billion barrels of oil from receives that are loved in deepwater sub-salt filed at least 60 miles off the coast and up to five miles underwater.
The product of that venture is already taking shape: a veritable floating “offshore city” has sprung up over 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the coast of Brazil, and it will lead the effort to drill into the deep sea sub-salt.
According to engineer, Willem Van Beek’s interview to GE’s Txchnologist the project is huge – “It is really impressive what is out here, 100 km off the shore, It’s like a complete offshore city. You see thousands and thousands of lights.”
Although people are enthusiastic about the project, it is also raising some concerns among environmental specialists. They say these cities float about a mile above the sea floor, and they’re far enough from the coast that it’s out of range of any helicopter in case an emergency happens. The oil lies another 1-4 miles below the sea floor, and extracting the stuff from sub-salt formations is an extremely difficult, largely unprecedented process.
A sub-salt expert, Norma Gall, shared his concern in an interview to Brazil’s Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper that “The salt beds are unstable and can engulf the drill and collapse the casing that enclosed the drill pipe.”
There is no information as in when the “offshore city” will be concluded yet.
By: Janete Weinstein Source: Treehugger Business & Politics Photo courtesy of Strocchia via Flickr August 26, 2011
1:55 p.m. PDT