Petrobras 36 Oil Platform
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The Petrobras 36 Oil Platform (P36) was the largest floating production platform in the world prior to its sinking in March, 2001. The platform was owned by Petrobras and the sinking is widely rumored to be caused by a complete failure in quality assurance (QA), even though the evidence for this is hard to verify.
The following quote is often cited as being from a Petrobras executive, speaking on the benefits of cutting QA and inspection costs. However, despite its wide circulation, it cannot currently be verified:
- Petrobras has established new global benchmarks for the generation of exceptional shareholder wealth through an aggressive and innovative program of cost cutting on its P36 production facility. Conventional constraints have been successfully challenged and replaced with new paradigms appropriate to the globalized corporate market place. Through an integrated network of facilitated workshops, the project successfully rejected the established constricting and negative influences of prescriptive engineering, onerous quality requirements, and outdated concepts of inspection and client control. Elimination of these unnecessary straitjackets has empowered the project's suppliers and contractors to propose highly economical solutions, with the win-win bonus of enhanced profitability margins for themselves. The P36 platform shows the shape of things to come in unregulated global market economy of the 21st Century.[1]
It was built at Fincantieri's Genoa yard in 1995 as a semi-submersible drilling rig. The 33,000 metric tonne (36,300 short ton) rig was converted in Canada to the world's largest oil production platform.
'P36' was operating for Petrobras on the Roncador Field, 130 km (80 miles) off the Brazilian coast, producing about 84,000 barrels of crude per day.
In the early hours of March 15, 2001 there were two unexplained explosions in the aft starboard column. At this time there were 175 people on the rig and 11 were killed. Following the explosions, the rig developed a 16° list, sufficient to allow down-flooding from the submerged fairlead boxes. The platform sank on March 20, in 1200 meters (3,900 feet) of water with an estimated 1,500 metric tonnes (1,650 short tons) of crude oil remaining on board.
