Por Onde Anda? UP Coral

The name UP Coral resurfaced in Brazil’s offshore market this week, but the vessel itself has been operating under another name for more than two years.

Today, IMO 9667239 is Parcel das Feiticeiras, an 87-metre RSV in OceanPact’s subsea fleet. The former PSV remains active in Brazil and continues to work in a market very different from the one for which it was originally built.

The timing makes its story particularly relevant.

On September 9, OceanPact provided a new update on the legal proceedings still carrying the UP Coral name. The company said the deadline for Petrobras to file additional appeals had expired without any new filing being identified in the Superior Court of Justice’s electronic system. Formal certification by the court remains part of the process.

That dispute belongs to an earlier chapter of the vessel’s career.

Built in 2013 by Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding in China, UP Coral entered the market as a platform supply vessel based on the MMC 887 design.

Only two years later, its role changed substantially.

In 2015, UP Coral underwent a major conversion at Remontowa Shiprepair Yard in Gdańsk, Poland. The vessel was adapted for ROV support and subsea construction work, receiving ROV handling equipment and an active heave compensated knuckle-boom crane rated at 25 tonnes, with approximately 35 metres of outreach and capability for operations in water depths of up to 3,000 metres.

The conversion moved the vessel away from conventional supply work and into Brazil’s subsea market.

On August 5, 2015, UP Coral began a Petrobras contract originally announced as a six-year commitment.

That contract later became the subject of the proceedings now known as the UP Coral case. OceanPact’s financial disclosures state that the charter was terminated under the allegation that the vessel’s Certificate of Authorization for Chartering, or CAA, had not been renewed. UP challenged the termination through the courts.

The legal process continued. The vessel’s commercial life did too.

In June 2021, OceanPact completed the acquisition of companies and assets from the UP Group, adding eight vessels to its fleet. UP Coral was one of two RSVs included in the transaction.

At the time, OceanPact also disclosed that Coral and sister vessel UP Pearl had won new three-year Petrobras contracts involving RSV and ROV services.

The same vessel was therefore back in a Petrobras operating cycle under a new ownership structure, while proceedings related to its earlier charter continued separately.

By July 2024, UP Coral had been renamed Parcel das Feiticeiras and was operating under the Brazilian flag, retaining IMO 9667239.

Its function, however, remained closely linked to the conversion carried out almost a decade earlier.

OceanPact currently lists Parcel das Feiticeiras as an RSV in its subsea fleet, measuring 87 metres in length and 18.1 metres in beam. During the first quarter of 2026, the company reported that the vessel had started another Petrobras contract, with an indicated dayrate of approximately US$45,000.

More recent reporting from the company also refers to the mobilization of Parcel das Feiticeiras for Petrobras.

And the vessel remains physically connected to Brazil’s offshore activity.

The latest public AIS position reviewed by One Energy News, received on August 9, placed Parcel das Feiticeiras underway off the Brazilian coast between Porto do Açu and Macaé.

That is where the history of UP Coral becomes more interesting than the legal case that still carries its former name.

The vessel was delivered as a PSV in 2013 and converted into an RSV only two years later. More than a decade after that conversion, it remains employed in the Brazilian subsea market.

During that period, the market around it changed considerably.

Brazil moved through the offshore downturn, a new cycle of deepwater development and, more recently, growing demand for subsea intervention and decommissioning services. OceanPact itself has been expanding its exposure to those activities as mature offshore infrastructure creates a different type of vessel demand alongside new field development.

UP Coral changed with that market.

Today, the name belongs mostly to the history of the vessel and to a court case that is approaching its final procedural stages.

The ship itself is Parcel das Feiticeiras, still in Brazil and still working offshore.

For a vessel that entered service as a PSV just 13 years ago, that transformation probably tells the more relevant story.

Stay tuned.