Made in China! World's Largest Floating Offshore Oil and Gas Processing Facility Delivered to Brazil

(hereinafter referred to as CNOOC) news, by China's independent integration of the world's largest tonnage-class FPSO (offshore floating production, storage and offloading unit) P70, recently successfully delivered to the Brazilian owners, creating a new speed of delivery of the international ultra-large FPSO.

This is another world-class FPSO successfully delivered by CNOOC after P67 last year.

The delivered P70 has an overall length of more than 300 meters, an overall breadth of about 74 meters, and a deck area equivalent to three standard soccer fields. With a design life of 25 years, an operating depth of 2,200 meters, an annual output of 1/4 Daqing oil field, an oil storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels, a natural gas processing capacity of 6 million standard cubic meters per day, and a maximum displacement of 350,000 tons, the vessel is considered to be a “giant” at sea.

General purpose offshore FPSO. Photo courtesy of our data room

FPSO is an acronym for Floating Production Storage & Offloading, which translates to “Floating Production Storage & Offloading” in Chinese.

It integrates production and treatment, storage and export, and domestic and power supply.

It is also characterized by high investment, high risk and high return in marine engineering.

FPSO is just like an “offshore oil and gas processing plant”, which can process oil, gas, water and other mixtures from oil wells into qualified crude oil or natural gas, and the finished product is stored in the cargo tanks, and then transported to the shuttle tanker through the external transportation system when it reaches a certain storage capacity.

As an offshore oil and gas production facility, FPSO system mainly consists of mooring system, carrier system, production process system and external transportation system, covering dozens of sub-systems.

FPSO has the advantages of strong wind and wave resistance, wide range of adaptable water depth, large oil storage/unloading capacity, and transferable and reusable, etc. It is widely suitable for the development of deep-sea, shallow-sea and marginal oilfields far away from the coast.

In May 2015, CNOOC's subsidiary, Offshore Oil Engineering Corporation (hereinafter referred to as OOCL), undertook the detailed design, procurement, construction of some modules, transportation, as well as the integration, commissioning, towing, and delivery of the entire vessel of the two FPSOs, P67 and P70, under CNOOC.

As the “sister ship” of P67, the delivered P70 is highly similar to its “sister” in terms of appearance, size and capability, and the two are comparable to “twins” in the FPSO industry.

High degree of integration, large engineering workload, tight project cycle and complex engineering interfaces are the main difficulties of this “super offshore project”.

On the deck of the P70, densely packed with 17 functional modules, the largest weighing more than 2,600 tons, 7-story high, these modules are responsible for the submarine oil and gas processing, is a highly integrated “offshore oil and gas processing plant”.

The global floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO) market is expected to witness a major renaissance in 2020 with 24 FPSO projects globally, thanks in large part to Brazil, according to forecasts.

More international E&P companies are now flocking to Brazil.In 2020, Brazil is expected to harvest seven more FPSO projects, bringing the total number of projects awarded to the country in 2019 and 2020 to more than a third of the global total.

The total capacity of the seven projects confirmed for this year is 700,000 barrels of oil and about 60 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.

The development of CNOOC's FPSO floating body business not only enhances its overall strength in the field of high-end offshore engineering, but also strongly drives the internationalization of a number of traditional national industries in China, such as electromechanics and metallurgy.

P70, for example, its domestic procurement amounted to about 380 million yuan, the proportion of localization reached 80%, radiation driven more than 100 domestic equipment manufacturers to achieve the “go out”.

It is reported that only one item of cable procurement, after the introduction of domestic suppliers, the direct budget savings amounted to 15 million yuan. In the highly competitive South American floating body market, CNOOC has played a loud brand of Chinese offshore manufacturing, which has laid a good foundation for the company to continue to develop high-end offshore engineering construction and explore the international offshore market.

In the future, CNOOC will continue to strengthen the construction of FPSO core capacity, enhance technological innovation and management innovation, contribute to the promotion of cooperation in the energy field between China and the countries along the “Belt and Road”, and help China's offshore equipment manufacturing industry to actively “go global”.

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