RINA & Petrobras €11M Contract for Subsea Engineering & Decommissioning
[By: RINA]
RINA, the global inspection, certification and consulting engineering multinational group, has signed a three-year €11 million contract with Petrobras to support initiatives related to the integrity and decommissioning of subsea systems. The project will involve engineering analyses and technical assessments designed to support decision-making on the management and planning of interventions in offshore infrastructure.
The scope includes studies and analyses focused on the integrity, reliability and maintenance of subsea systems, supporting the evaluation of different operational scenarios throughout the lifecycle of these assets. Key activities include integrity assessments of pipelines and risers, reliability studies (such as FMEA/FMECA and RAM), asset life extension evaluations, and the development of technical studies for subsea decommissioning projects.
The project is aligned with Petrobras’ initiatives aimed at ensuring the safe and efficient lifecycle management of its offshore assets. The objective is to support both the safe continuation of operations in active units and the responsible planning of interventions and decommissioning activities for structures that have reached the end of their operational lifecycle.
“Projects related to the integrity and decommissioning of subsea systems require robust technical analysis and deep offshore engineering expertise. In this partnership with Petrobras, our role is to provide specialized assessments that support safe and well-informed decisions throughout the lifecycle of these assets,” said Marcell Chiarelli, LATAM Executive Commercial Management Director at RINA.
The initiative further strengthens collaboration between RINA and Petrobras in strategic offshore engineering areas. By supporting studies and analyses related to the lifecycle management of subsea infrastructure, the project also aligns with RINA’s strategy to expand its involvement in complex engineering initiatives in Brazil’s oil and gas sector.
The contract provides for the mobilization of up to 83 professionals, including engineers and specialized technicians, approximately 45 of whom are highly qualified specialists already part of RINA’s team. The workforce may be expanded over the course of the contract as project requirements evolve.
The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.
Submarine Cables, Digital Trade And
Connectivity To Enhance Cross Border Trade
At The Regional And Global Levels – Analysis
November 9, 2026
By Dr. Faizal Yahya
Key Takeaways:
Singapore’s 7–8 major cable landing stations, linking roughly 26–28 subsea systems, underpin its role as a regional digital hub, with geographic diversity (Changi, Tuas, Tanah Merah) and the Digital Connectivity Blueprint designed to double landing capacity and reduce single-point risks.
Direct connections to hyperscale data-centre clusters and cross-border corridors in Johor and Batam (SIJORI) have driven rapid capacity growth, such as Johor’s contracted capacity rising from 400 MW to over 2.3 GW.
These links support ASEAN digital trade and integration while underscoring the need for stronger resilience of critical underwater infrastructure.
Unseen but critical for the global economy are the critical underwater infrastructure (CUI) consisting of subsea telecommunications cables, power grids, oil and gas pipelines. In particular, the digital economy is dependent on submarine telecommunication cables. With Singapore assuming the ASEAN Chairmanship from the Philippines in 2027, digital trade and regional economic integration will be key issues Singapore is likely pushing for in 2027.
Beyond its physical location as a transhipment hub, Singapore is also an information hub seen in the form of submarine cable landing stations in the city-state. These are hardened coastal facilities where underwater fibre-optic cables come ashore and connect to the city-state’s terrestrial telecommunications and data centre networks (DC connect website).
Singapore has around 7 to 8 major cable landing stations and connects to roughly 26 to 28 active subsea cable systems. This paper aims to highlight the key role of submarine cables as a driver of regional and global trade and their importance to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia to enhance subregional trade and development in the digital economy. It also highlights the need to enhance resilience of these submarine cables.
The submarine cables landing stations (CLS) in Singapore serve several functions: First, it is an economic lifeline for Singapore’s international telecommunications traffic (including internet data, financial transactions, and cloud services) travels via submarine cables. Second, these submarine cables, support its massive ecosystem of regional data centres and multinational businesses. Third, Singapore acts as a global digital hub providing primary connectivity as a bridge linking East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Australia, and the United States as shown in table 1 below:
Table 1: Singapore Submarine Cables & Regional Connections
| Direction / Target Region | Submarine Cable Systems | Key Landing / Connection Points |
| Northeastwards to Asia (East Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Korea) | APCN-2, APG (Asia Pacific Gateway), SJC, SJC2, ADC (Asia Direct Cable), ALC, SEA-H2X, APRICOT, EAC-C2C, i2i, MIST, Tata Indicom Cable (TIC), SEAX-1, TIS, TGN-IA, VTS | Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, mainland China, Republic of Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines |
| Westwards to South/West Asia, Europe & Africa (Middle East, Mediterranean, Europe) | SMW3, SMW4, SMW5, SMW6, PEACE, AAE-1 (via Malaysia terrestrial extension), BBG (via Malaysia terrestrial extension), I-AM Cable | India, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France, various European and African hubs |
| Southwards to Australia | INDIGO-West, Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC) | Perth / Sydney, Australia |
| Eastwards / Trans-Pacific to the United States | AAG (Asia-America Gateway), Bifrost, Echo, Hawaiki Nui, SEA-US (extended via IGG) | Guam, Hawaii, West Coast of the United States |
| Regional & Indonesia Interconnects | IGG (Indonesia Global Gateway), INSICA, Batam Singapore Cable System (BSCS), Matrix Cable System (MCS), Nongsa-Changi | Jakarta, Batam, and other Indonesian data/landing nodes |
The strategic blueprint reinforcing this digital infrastructure includes First, distributing cable landing sites across multiple locations such as Changi in the east facing the South China Sea, Tuas in the west facing the Strait of Malacca, and Tanah Merah. This wide physical spread prevents single-point-of-failure vulnerabilities, ensuring that if one corridor faces a localized maritime accident or disruption, traffic can be seamlessly rerouted.
Second, driven by the Digital Connectivity Blueprint (DCB) launched by the IMDA, Singapore aims to double its international subsea cable landing capacity. This expansion is specifically designed to manage the heavy bandwidth required for data-intensive operations, green data centres, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.
Third, any entity intending to deploy networks or activate capacity must secure a Facilities-Based Operations (FBO) licence from IMDA. Operators are subject to stringent guidelines, including a mandate to report cable faults within one hour of detection and execute fast repair protocols.
Fourth, Singapore aligns its operations with global security standards, having endorsed the New York Joint Statement on the Security and Resilience of Undersea Cables (“New York Principles”). This framework emphasizes international cooperation, route redundancy, supply chain integrity, and the selection of reliable, trusted cable component providers.
In addition, Singapore’s submarine cable landing stations (CLS) are tethered directly to the nation’s key data centre clusters. Rather than relying on long, multi-hop terrestrial networks, Singapore’s networks are designed around an interconnection core and hyperscale edge campus strategy to achieve ultra-low regional latencies.
A shift is occurring where new data centres are moving to a “direct-to-facility” landing model, bypassing traditional standalone beach landing buildings entirely and bringing submarine fibre directly into the data centre colocation meet-me rooms (Techdirectory website, 18 July 2026).
The primary data centre clusters in Singapore link to specific subsea cable landing stations through three main geographical corridors: First, the Tuas CLS anchors the Western corridor, facing the Strait of Malacca and connecting toward South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This station feeds massive hyperscale data centres in the Tuas Industrial Estate and the Jurong Innovation District.
Singtel’s Nxera DC Tuas serves as the prime example of modern infrastructure convergence. Opened as an AI-ready facility, it is one of Singapore’s only multi-tenanted data centres fully integrated with a subsea cable landing station, giving tenants direct, millisecond-level access to international subsea pipes without terrestrial bottlenecks. This western cluster also directly manages systems like Bifrost, which integrates straight into the data centre campuses in the west rather than using a legacy beach landing station (Nxera website 9Feb 2026).
Second, the Changi North and Tanah Merah landing sites anchor the Eastern side of Singapore, facing the South China Sea and routing massive traffic toward East Asia and the United States. These landing sites plug directly into the heavy hyperscale hubs of Loyang and Changi Business Park. Data centres in this zone focus on massive throughput.
For example, Digital Realty’s SIN12 campus in Loyang links directly with short-haul systems like the Nongsa–Changi cable. This design places Indonesian and regional workloads just a single, ultra-low-latency fibre hop away from Singapore’s main network. Major Campuses: Other critical wholesale data centres, such as the sprawling AirTrunk Loyang campus, rely heavily on this eastern subsea corridor to feed massive cloud architectures.
Third, located further inland, Tai Seng and Ayer Rajah serve as the dense “Interconnection Cores” of Singapore. High-capacity, redundant terrestrial fibre rings connect the coastal Tuas and Changi landing stations directly back to these central facilities. While Tuas and Changi function as the coastal gateways, Singapore’s central and city-fringe industrial estates function as the country’s central nervous system, where all the cables meet. This cluster hosts carrier-dense meet-me rooms operated by companies like Equinix (SG1/SG3), Global Switch, and Keppel Data Centres.
While the coastal edges manage massive, raw cloud data storage, the Tai Seng cluster serves as the control plane. It is where major cloud providers (like AWS and Google), global financial networks, internet exchanges, and telecommunication carriers interconnect their traffic. Table 2 below shows the key elements of the interconnection cores.
Table 2: Key Elements of the Interconnection Cores.
| Feature | Coastal Gateways (Tuas / Changi) | Interconnection Cores (Tai Seng / Ayer Rajah) |
| Primary Role | Direct submarine cable landings & raw cloud storage | Central network routing, peering, and control plane traffic |
| Infrastructure | Beach manholes, landing stations, hyperscale storage | Meet-me rooms, dense multi-tenant colocation facilities |
| Key Stakeholders | International consortiums, hyperscale cloud hosts | Telcos, cloud providers (AWS/Google), financial networks |
The Northern Axis corridor in Johor, Malaysia has also experienced a massive boomtown cycle, transitioning into Southeast Asia’s primary engine for massive hyperscale and AI facility rollouts. The total contracted capacity in Johor skyrocketed from 400MW in late 2023 to over 2.3GW, with pipeline projections climbing even higher.
Major campuses are key interconnections and are clustered around the Sedenak Tech Park (hosting K2 Data Centres), Cyberjaya, and Gelang Patah (hosting EDC Data Centre). Global operators like Equinix (JH1) and Princeton Digital Group also leverage massive land parcels here to build high-density compute spaces. To link with Singapore, the corridor relies on high-capacity terrestrial dark fibre bundles crossing the Causeway and the Second Link. Specialized networks, like Open DC’s Causeway Connect, route traffic directly into Singapore’s interconnection core at Paya Lebar and Tai Seng with negligible latency.
In addition, the Maritime Axis in Batam, Indonesia acts as a natural extension of Singapore’s eastern cloud hub, transforming the Riau Islands into a sovereign digital free zone. Driven by the Johor–Batam–Singapore data centre triangle, Batam has roughly 70MW of live capacity but has cleared massive grid commitments.
Major projects, including partnerships with tech giants like Nvidia, have driven committed and planned capacities toward 1.47GW. The epicentre of this growth is Nongsa Digital Park (NDP), which acts as a digital ferry bridge to Singapore. Major global joint ventures, such as the BW Digital NDP1 facility and massive AI factories, are built here. Rather than relying on legacy infrastructure, this axis uses direct data-centre-to-data-centre subsea links.
A prominent example is the 50km subsea fibre pipe landing directly into Digital Realty’s SIN12 facility in Loyang/Changi, meaning workloads in Batam are only one subsea cable hop away from Singapore’s core network exchanges as shown below in table 3.
Table 3: Comparing Cross-Border Ecosystems
| Feature | Johor Corridor (Malaysia) | Batam Corridor (Indonesia) |
| Primary Vibe | Massive AI factories & hyperscale campuses | Coastal sovereign cloud extensions |
| Transit Medium | Terrestrial cross-border dark fibre | Short-haul subsea cables (e.g., Nongsa-Changi) |
| Typical Latency | ~2 to 4 milliseconds to Singapore | ~1 to 3 milliseconds to Singapore |
| Scale Stage | Gigawatt-scale operational capacity | Emergent, massive multi-megawatt pipelines |
| Emerging Pressure | Water allocation stress, grid constraints | Environmental pushes over local utility limits |
In conclusion, as Singapore enhances its connectivity and submarine cables resilience, the benefits has accrued beyond its borders via the SIJORI Growth Triangle of Batam, Johor, and Singapore. It has enabled all three neighbours to develop and expand digital infrastructure for mutual economic benefit. This helps propel ASEAN’s economic integration drive and preparedness to ensure the region’s competitiveness in the digital economy.
About Dr. Faizal Yahya
Dr. Faizal Yahya is a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is in the Governance and Economy Department. His current research interests includes, business transformation, human capital development, state led development, industrial policy, connectivity, foreign trade and economic regionalisation among other themes. Prior to entering academia, he was working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment.
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