UK major BP announced April 12 it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to explore areas of co-operation with Brazilian state-owned Petrobras.

"Through this strategic alliance, Petrobras and BP have committed to exploring potential joint commercial agreements in areas of mutual interest in upstream, downstream, trading and across low carbon initiatives, inside and outside Brazil. The alliance is also expected to include the transfer of technology, as well as joint training and research," BP said.

Petrobras said the partnership began with joining forces in the last bidding rounds and "now we are working to expand the partnership further, beyond upstream.” BP said the two would deepen their partnership and explore even more opportunities. The two companies had signed a letter of intent in October 2017 to cooperate more closely.

BP has been present in Brazil for over 60 years, supplying fuels and lubricants, exploring for oil and gas, and developing biofuels. BP and Petrobras are partners in 16 exploration blocks in Brazil. The two are also members of the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative.

Petrobras in the past two years has signed strategic partnership agreements with ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, Portugal's Galp, Norway's Statoil and Chinese state CNPC.

Update 2.45pm April 12:  Siemens said April 12 its subsidiary Dresser-Rand has received an order for four gas turbine power generation packages and two CO₂ compressor packages from Japanese shipbuilder Modec, for use on the production ship FPSO Carioca MV30 that will be deployed at the Sepia field operated by Petrobras some 250km offshore Rio de Janeiro. The equipment is scheduled for delivery late 2018. Once operating in 2021, the FPSO is expected to process 180,000 b/d oil and have a storage capacity of 1.4mn barrels.