Present in Brazil for over 90 years, GE is preparing to invest $500 million in Brazil along the next 3 years and maintain its investments in local training and research. GE O&G may be one of the main recipients of this local investment as it is a market with great growth potential and where GE already has a very strong presence.
Very recently Petrobras and General Electric (GE) signed an agreement for future technology cooperation in R&D projects for monitoring and controlling oil and gas production systems.
The development of subsea and compact systems for O&G production, and remote monitoring of equipment are among the purposes of this agreement, which highlights the importance GE has had in the development of Brazil´s oil industry. The signing of the agreement is one of the stages in GE's construction of a technology center in Brazil.
Due to the strong prospects for growth in O&G activities in Brazil, Petrobras has been encouraging its main suppliers to install R&D centers here with the purpose of making long-term partnerships in technology. This a fact, as there already are center that are operational or being built in Brazil by other important service providers such as SLB, FMC Technologies, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, CGG Veritas among others. This trend is aligned with the expansion of the Petrobras Research Center (CENPES) and increased experimental capability in O&G related research by Brazilian universities, is turning Brazil into one of the most important O&G, Seismic and Subsea technology hubs in the world.
One GE Oil&Gas brand that has been very active in the subsea drilling and production equipment market is VetcoGray, which has been awarded many subsea equipment contracts by local operators such as Petrobras and also subsea wellhead systems and running tool rentals to OGX Petroleo e Gas and many of the foreign companies operating in Brazil´s offshore plays
Adding to this, GE has also informed that it plans to invest $500 million to expand all of its operations in Brazil and to accelerate technology partnerships with leading Brazilian companies and universities spanning multiple industries.
GE can be considered one of the most important foreign companies ever to operate in Brazil and has contributed immensely to the countries technological development by introducing and transferring state of the art technology, building manufacturing plants in Brazil and training Brazilian in a wide variety of challenging technical and business areas.