Special WSB: Por onde anda? Vega Chaser

Some vessels carry more than an IMO number. They carry the memory of a market being built.

Vega Chaser is one of them. Back in 2013, through the former Westshore, we were directly involved in the successful delivery of a series of vessels contracted by Petrobras under the newly created Vega Offshore platform in Brazil. It was a formative moment for the Brazilian offshore support market: Petrobras was driving demand, OSRV opportunities were unfolding, and Vega Offshore was being structured to serve that new cycle.

Our dear Camila Lopes worked alongside Patricia Barbula in that venture, helping turn a commercial opportunity into a real operating company in Brazil. Vega Chaser herself tells part of that story. Originally planned with an AHTS profile, she was ultimately adapted to the OSRV market as Brazil’s demand evolved around Petrobras’ requirements. Built at Fujian Southeast Shipyard, in China, she entered the market with the scale, class and versatility expected from that generation of offshore support vessels.

Years later, Westshore would also promote the sale of Vega Chaser, together with Vega Challenger, to Oceana, supporting the opening of its EBN structure in Brazil. That move proved successful and eventually led the vessels into CBO, where they remained for a period as part of one of the country’s most respected offshore fleets.

Vega Chaser would then move again, this time to Bravante, where she continued her career as an OSRV. Today, she is nearing completion of another drydocking cycle and preparing to mobilize once more for Petrobras under a new contract.

That is what makes her story worth telling. Owners changed, structures changed, strategies changed and the market itself changed. But the vessel stayed relevant.

As Mr. Møller liked to say: “The show is at sea.”

And Vega Chaser is still part of the show.