Petrobras gains floating regas vessel for first LNG terminal

March 16, 2009
Petrobras In January took delivery of the world’s first floating storage and regasification vessel, the Golar Spirit, following commissioning tests on the vessel’s regasification trains.

Petrobras In January took delivery of the world’s first floating storage and regasification vessel, the Golar Spirit, following commissioning tests on the vessel’s regasification trains. The contract was completed by Golar LNG Ltd. following award in April 2007.

In January, Golar LNG delivered the Golar Spirit to Petrobras for its first offshore LNG terminal off Pecem. (Photograph from Golar LNG; copyright Petrobras)
Click here to enlarge image

Called an “FSRU,” the vessel is going into service at Petrobras’s LNG terminal, at Pecem, Ceará state. Each of its three regas units can send out up to 130 MMcfd, with two units normally working while the third remains on standby, according to Blake Blackwell, vice-president of business development for Golar LNG.

Conversion

The 127,000-cu m Golar Spirit was converted from a traditional LNG carrier in about 6 months at the Keppel Shipyard, Singapore. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. originally built the vessel at its Sakaide, Japan, yard. Commissioned in 1981, it was the first LNG carrier built in Japan.

Its conversion in 2007 involved addition of the three vaporizers, designed by Moss Maritime; three booster pumps, five in-line pumps, and more turbo generation capacity, all manufactured by Shinko Industries Ltd., Hiroshima; and automation, manufactured by Kongsberg. The 289-m vessel contains five Moss Rosenberg spherical aluminum storage tanks.

“FSRUs are site and project specific,” Blackwell told OGJ. In this case, Petrobras has elected to place the LNG unloading arms and high-pressure gas arms (yellow in the photograph’s foreground) on the pier.

An LNG carrier berths on the side away from the FSRU (lower part of photograph) and unloads its cargo with the unloading arms onto the FSRU, which then regasifies the LNG and moves the natural gas ashore via the HP gas arms, said Blackwell. By locating the HP arms and LNG loading arms on the pier, Petrobras can move an FSRU among demand centers.

Later this year, Petrobras will use the Golar Spirit to commission a second offshore LNG terminal, in Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. In the meantime, Blackwell said a second LNG carrier, the Golar Winter, is undergoing conversion at the Keppel yard.