After Years of Abandonment, Brazil’s Giant Itaboraí Project Rises Again Under Petrobras

A long-stalled industrial dream outside Rio de Janeiro is stirring back to life. Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company, has signed a R$1.3 billion ($245 million) contract with Azevedo & Travassos, one of the country’s oldest engineering firms.

The Itaboraí Complex—formerly COMPERJ, now the Boaventura Energy Complex—is Petrobras’s large industrial hub near Rio de Janeiro designed to process pre-salt natural gas and produce cleaner fuels, lubricants, and petrochemical inputs.

The deal will restart major utility works in Itaboraí, a project that once symbolized Brazil’s grand ambitions and painful setbacks.

The job, handled through Azevedo & Travassos’s oil-and-gas arm Heftos, will take 40 months to complete and includes building systems for power, steam, cooling water, gas, and chemical storage—core infrastructure for a vast energy complex once known as COMPERJ.

That site, rebranded as the Complexo de Energias Boaventura, was launched in the 2000s as a centerpiece of Brazil’s industrial rise but fell victim to corruption scandals, budget overruns, and political upheaval.

Petrobras Revives Itaboraí Industrial Sector

For years, Itaboraí stood as a monument to unfinished promises: empty structures, idle cranes, and lost jobs in a city that had prepared for prosperity.

Now, Petrobras’s renewed investment marks a cautious return to large-scale industrial building, signaling both confidence and a measure of redemption for Brazil’s engineering sector.

Azevedo & Travassos, founded in 1922, nearly vanished during the country’s recession and the fallout of the “Operation Car Wash” corruption probes that decimated domestic contractors.

Today, with new management and healthier finances—a R$61 million profit in the last quarter—it is regaining ground by winning complex energy contracts once reserved for global giants.

The revival in Itaboraí carries broader meaning. It suggests Petrobras is shifting from years of retrenchment toward rebuilding domestic capacity, trusting Brazilian firms again, and anchoring industrial activity at home.

For the country, it is a test of whether old infrastructure ambitions can be reborn under new governance and fiscal discipline.

If the project stays on track, it could breathe life into a region long defined by disappointment—and show that Brazil, scarred but seasoned, can still build big.

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