Gavea Sensors

Brazilian petroleum technology to go to Colombia

Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum, Agencia Sebrae

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Rio de Janeiro – Fibre optic sensors capable of detecting variations in pressure and temperature at the bottom of an oil well. The equipment's ingenuousness prevents land units for problem correction from becoming paralized. The technology, owned by Rio de Janeiro-based company Gavea Sensors, can now be implemented in Colombia.

"The first step is to develop a pilot project. That is necessary because each oil field has its peculiarities, and that calls for adapting the monitoring solutions," explains the Marketing and Business Development director at the company, Eduardo Costa.

This business opportunity is one of the results of the Business Mission, planned by the National Organization of the Petroleum Industry (Onip) and by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) in Rio de Janeiro, with support from the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brazil), which took place from September 17th to 19th. Twenty Brazilian businessmen participated in that first market prospecting in Bogota, the capital of Colombia.

The organisations arranged the mission with support from the Mobilization Programme for the National Oil and Natural Gas Industry (Promimp), created by the federal government to increase the participation of Brazilian suppliers of goods and services. Within this framework, a partnership agreement between Petrobras and the Sebrae was signed in 2004 to enable Brazilian companies to invest in new technologies.

The history of Gavea Sensors attests to the efficiency of that strategy. The technology was developed in the laboratory of the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC), to cater to a specific demand by Petrobras, which paid for the research. The excellence of the result gave birth to the company. Gavea Sensors is currently manufacturing around one hundred sensors per month.