Oil & Gas

Purification stage

Processing unit goes online at the Cabiúnas Terminal in Macaé, Rio de Janeiro State

written by: Edilson Lima
photo by: Carlos Júnior

The name is big, and so are its benefits: the Natural Gas Condensate III Processing Unit (UPCGN III) at the Cabiúnas Terminal (Tecaba) in Macaé, RJ, went into operation on September 1st, with a maximum processing capacity of 1,500 cu.m/day of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). LNG arrives together with the natural gas pumped from the platform and is processed to remove light hydrocarbons (waste gas, or ethane and methane), an essential stage of gas production.

UPCGN III is part of Plangás (the Early Natural Gas Production Plan), which aims to increase domestic production of natural gas by 2010, going from the current 23 million cu.m/day to 55 million cu.m/day. This is the first Plangás unit completed through the Petrobras Supply (ABAST) program to go online to increase the supply of natural gas flowing from the Campos Basin and Espírito Santo to the South and Southeast of Brazil.

Consórcio Odebei Plangás (a joint venture of Odebrecht Óleo e Gás - OOG, Empresa Brasileira de Engenharia S.A. – EBE and Iesa Óleo e Gás S.A.) began building the plant in April 2007. The highlights of the project included the workplace safety rates achieved. The rate of lost-time accidents was zero.

Odebrecht Quality, Safety, Environment and Health Manager Luiz Aguiar also underscores another significant point: “Seventy-percent of the 1,000 people who worked on the project were local hires. And the joint venture offered professional education and training courses to every single one of them.”

In addition to the construction of UPCGN III, Petrobras’s USD 452 million investment included the installation of storage and offloading systems for LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), LPG treatment, water cooling and compressed air, the construction of a power substation, the installation of all the infrastructure and interconnections with UPCGN III, the systems of the new Liquid Recovery Unit III (URL III) and several other Tecab units.

Petrobras subsidiary Transpetro is responsible for operating UPCGN III. “Throughout this project, we were consistently rated ‘excellent’ by Petrobras’s Performance Evaluation Bulletin, which demonstrates the high degree of client satisfaction with our services,” says Odebrecht Project Director José Henrique Enes.