The Ichthys Venturer floating production, storage, and offloading vessel has left Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering’s shipyard in South Korea and is stationed about 30 km southeast undergoing final preparations for sailing to Western Australia.
Construction of the vessel is complete and it is running through some commissioning activities and final checks before it begins the 6,000-km tow south to its final Browse basin location in Ichthys field off northwest Western Australia.
The FPSO will be permanently moored 3½ km from the Ichthys project’s central processing facility, Ichthys Explorer, which is already anchored on station.
The Venturer, with a capacity to hold 1 million bbl, will receive the condensate sent from the Explorer and load it onto tankers for direct export.
Final hook-up and commissioning of the production and delivery system will take place once the FPSO arrives.
The offshore component of the Ichthys LNG project comprises the CPF and FPSO moored close to the field 220 km off the Kimberley coast of Western Australia plus an 890-km subsea pipeline that will take gas to the 8.9 million-tonnes/year onshore LNG plant in Darwin.
The Ichthys project is expected to come on stream at the end of the first quarter next year.
