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Recipients will be honored prior to each OTC Brasil daily plenary session

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (August 30 2023) – The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) and the Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo e Gás (IBP) are pleased to announce the Brazilian recipients of the OTC 2023 Distinguished Achievement Awards. This year, the conference recognizes Jacques Braile Saliés, PhD, for Individual Achievement; Petrobras’ Tethered BOP and the Real Time Riser Analysis for Subsea Wells Construction field for Company Achievement; and Cezar Augusto Silva Paulo, with the Heritage Award.

These accomplishments are truly significant contributions to the oil and gas industry in Brazil.

Recipients will be honored prior to each OTC Brasil daily plenary session at the Expo Mag in Rio de Janeiro.

OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for Individuals

Jacques Braile Saliés, PhD is honored with the Distinguished Achievement Award for Individuals for his important contribution to the development and implementation of deepwater technologies in Brazil. He is one of the most important names in drilling engineering in the country.

For the last 42 years, Saliés has been consistently contributing to the progress of the deepwater industry on its operational, research, and development aspects. In the research and development area, his research for his PhD dissertation (TU – 1994) was presented at several international conferences and became the foundation for many other investigations on buckling. Also, his research on buckling was fundamental to understanding buckling behavior and lock-up conditions of pipes while drilling extended-reach, high-inclined wells, which are so commonly used in offshore/offshore field developments.

Related to the development of the offshore industry in Brazil, Saliés was the coordinator (2003–2005) of the historic Petrobras PROCAP program, which developed several breakthrough deepwater applications that led Petrobras to win the OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for Companies, Organizations, and Institutions three times. Saliés is the inventor of a patent (USA, Norway, Brazil) related to a methodology for drilling and completion for oil wells with small intermediate diameters. Such methodology has been used for Petrobras S.A. to drill more than 100 offshore wells in Brazil’s Campos Basin.

Retired from Petrobras (2011), Saliés manages the deepwater drilling and completions operations of Enauta, an independent oil and gas operator in Brazil.

OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for Companies, Organizations, and Institutions

Petrobras is presented with the OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for companies in recognition of jointly applying the Moored BOP and the Real Time Riser Analysis for Subsea Wells Construction field. To make viable Dynamic Positioning operations on shallow waters the challenges were: the applied bending moment and the conservativeness of the Riser Analysis study. To overcome this challenge the Petrobras technical team proposed a combination of two existing different technologies: Moored BOP and Real Time Riser Analysis.

Petrobras Naval and Riser Analysis team successfully deployed this innovative solution and made viable wells intervention using Dynamic Positioned Drilling Rigs in Shallow waters. The company achieved viable DP operations in shallow waters up to 150 m depth, increased safety and performance due to the use of newer rigs (in comparison with the older Moored Units) and system monitoring, reduced massively the footprint impact on seabed – Moored BOP vs Conventional Moored unit 99 reduction -, and also made viable operations on congested seabed area, including marine corals and marine fauna area.

Petrobras has shared its innovative solution with other operators publishing the Technical Specification on its website “Canal do Fornecedor.”

OTC Heritage Award

The OTC Heritage Award is presented to Cezar Paulo for his outstanding leadership, mentorship, and his pioneering efforts in the development of new technologies for deepwater production in Brazil.

Paulo has more than 35 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. His work history has been related to underwater technology activities, contributing to pioneering deepwater projects, such as the first generation of subsea manifolds in Campos Basin; also, strategic subsea systems like multiphase pumping, gas-liquid subsea separation and subsea raw water injection systems. He took part in the free-standing hybrid riser study that set the technical basis for the oil export riser for P-52 platform.

Paulo contributed to organizing specialization courses in Subsea Engineering in Petrobras, in conjunction with Petrobras University, Operational Units and R&D Center, with more than 350 engineers trained. He also took part in the conceptual designs for the first production systems for Santos Basin Pre-Salt.

“Cezar has dedicated most of his career in the subsea area and I have had the opportunity to testimony some of the efforts developed by him. The first one was in 90s when we faced the challenge to design a subsea Christmas tree with a standard interface, in order to allow the flexibility to explore the offshore fields in 1,000 meter of water depths, a pioneering scenario at that time” remembers Orlando Ribeiro, former Executive Manager of Petrobras R&D Center.

For more information about the recipients and the awards ceremony, visit www.otcbrasil.org.

About the OTC Distinguished Achievement Awards

The Offshore Technology Conference and its regional events recognize major technological, humanitarian, safety, environmental, and leadership contributions to the industry each year. In recognition of peer-nominated truly outstanding accomplishments or achievements, the OTC Board honors an individual and an organization as recipients of the prestigious OTC Distinguished Achievement Award. In some editions, OTC also awards a Special Citation or Heritage Award to recognize other notable activities or developments that benefit the offshore energy industry.

About Offshore Technology Conference (OTC)

The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) is where energy professionals meet to exchange ideas and opinions to advance scientific and technical knowledge for offshore resources and environmental matters. Founded in 1969, OTC’s flagship conference is held annually in Houston. OTC has expanded technically and globally with OTC Brasil and OTC Asia. For more information, visit www.otcnet.org.

About IBP

Founded in 1957, IBP is a private, non-profit organization focused on promoting the development of Brazilian oil and gas industry in a competitive, sustainable, ethical and socially responsible environment. Today, IBP gathers around 200 member companies, and it is recognized as an important industry representative for its technical knowledge and for fostering the related to its biggest issues. Organizer of the main oil & gas events in Brazil, such as Rio Oil & Gas and OTC Brasil, IBP also develops technical courses and it is also responsible for standardization, certification of inspection services and technical publications. Learn more at www.ibp.org.br.