Telespazio Brasil: contract with petrobras to detect oil spills using Cosmo-Skymed satellites

Rio de Janeiro  01 April 2019

Telespazio Brasil signed a contract with Petrobras to monitor the oil company's activities in the Campos basin, north of Rio de Janeiro, utilising the COSMO-SkyMed satellites constellation. The agreement, which continues a multi-year collaboration between Telespazio and Petrobras, aims to detect any oil spills from the exploration and production activities carried out by the Brazilian company in the region.

The 14 months contract includes the supply to Petrobras of an average of 150 radar images per month of the Campos basin, as well as specialised technical services available 24 hours a day.

More than 50 oil platforms operating in the Campos basin will be monitored daily by the four COSMO-SkyMed satellites, the only ones capable of providing night and day information in any weather condition. The Italian radar satellites also respond to the requirement to monitor the affected region with a high frequency of review, ensuring coverage of the entire area and of additional 40 critical locations every 48 hours.

Petrobras is the largest Brazilian company in the energy sector. In particular, it is active in the exploration, production, refining and transport of oil & gas products. The company is one of the world leaders in the development of technologies for oil exploration in deep and ultra-deep waters.

In Brazil, Telespazio has been present for more than twenty years in the space sector through its subsidiary Telespazio Brasil.

Telespazio Brasil has been present in the country since 1997, when the Company began supplying mobile satellite communication services through South America, and has accompanied the growth and development of the overall Brazilian space sector. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and with offices in São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Cuiabá, Telespazio Brasil is one of the leading Brazilian providers of satellite services and offers a wide range of cutting-edge solutions to the corporate and institutional market in the communications, multimedia, and Earth observation sectors. It also dedicates engineering services, operations management, and maintenance of earth-based systems that control satellites in orbit.

Telespazio Brasil supplies, in particular, services and applications based on data from the COSMO-SkyMed constellation, with four satellites capable of guaranteeing 24-hour monitoring services, night and day and in all weather conditions. The COSMO-SkyMed data is successfully used in Brazil for monitoring deforestation in the Amazon, for safety - oil spills, landslide control –, to support agriculture and for Defense applications.

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