FPSO - The future of Oil & Gas- FPSO fundamentals & advantages
Let us talk about FPSOs and why they are the future for the offshore Oil and Gas industry.
In this short video I will explain what FPSO actually means and outline what advantages there are compared to an offshore platform.
The letters FPSO stand for Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading vessel. Sometimes they are newly built and sometimes a converted ship, mostly an oil tanker.
It is a floating unit with crude oil and natural gas won from the sea bottom.
On deck of the ship a first form of oil refinery takes place, after having separated oil, water and gas.
The storage takes place in the vessel´s double hull before offloading to other transportation ships so named shuttle tankers or through subsea pipelines.
An FPSO is anchored to the sea bottom to fix it on its chosen location. In order to be resistant to weather and wind, sea currents and heavy conditions one can choose to apply a single mooring, through which technique the FPSO can rotate freely.
So exactly when do we use an FPSO?
An FPSO is highly suitable for deepwater and ultra-deepwater fields. An FSPO is most of the time connected to several subsea oil production wells and obtains the oil through in-field pipelines. Via these pipelines the oil is transferred to the storage compartment on the vessel.
Now you understand what FPSO means and how it all functions.
So let us move on the next step where I will now explain why FPSOs are the future of Oil & Gas by naming you several advantages.
A floating production, storage and offloading vessel is a type of floating tank system designed to take all of the crude oil or gas produced from nearby platforms, process it and store it until the attained resources can be offloaded onto a tanker. The FPSO´s great advantage is that it can be moved freely and is therefore a more economical solution for more marginal fields, in that the vessel can be moved to another development and redeployed once the original field has been depleted.
Additionally because FPSOs can be disconnected from their moorings, these offshore production vessels are perfect for areas that experience adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes.
Also FPSOs are a great choice for development when there are no existing pipelines or infrastructure to transfer production to shore. Can you imagine? The average semi-submersible oil rig takes 3-4 years to kit out and build, and a jack-up rig 2-3 years. Meanwhile an FPSO could be rolled out in only a few months to a year.
Furthermore FPSOs eliminate the need for costly and expansive underwater infrastructure.
In a situation where laying pipelines is not a cost-effective solution, the FPSO is particularly well-adapted.
FPSOs are ideal for deep water drilling
Operators have to drill deeper than ever before to hit the black gold, and deep and ultra-deep waters are becoming the preferred choice for an oil-thirsty world. In such areas, where subsurface pipelines would be logistically challenging and export by shuttle tankers is increasingly expensive, an FPSO provides the best of both worlds as a tailored upstream and midstream unit rolled into just one.
FPSOs do not have to be custom built
Not like a fixed platform, an FPSO does not actually have to start its life as an FPSO. The first ever floating production, storage and offloading unit was an oil tanker in it´s former life, and many of its descendants are also vessels that have been converted from transporters to harvesters of Oil and natural Gas and this again has a great cost-saving benefit.
And eventually a Floating, Production, Storage and offloading vessel is more y friendly compared to a fix offshore platform. While many rigs have been in operation for several years and have a permanent ecological footprint, an FPSO can be designed and redesigned for more environmentally friendly field operations.
These are all significant advantages and reasons why an FPSO is nowadays the preferred choice for deep water drilling and the future of producing oil and natural gas.
Since the 1970s FPSOs have been utilized in the North Sea, offshore Brazil, Asia Pacific, the Mediterranean Sea and West Africa.
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