Sembawang Shipyard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Marine, Singapore, will convert two very large crude carriers into floating production, storage, and offloading vessels for the deepwater Kaombo oil project offshore Angola.
Sembawang will do the work under a $480 million contract from Saipem SA.
In the Kaombo project, Total E&P Angola is developing 6 of 12 discoveries in 1,400-1,900 m of water on Block 32, 260 km off Luanda (OGJ Online, Apr. 14, 2014). The operator estimates reserves at 650 million bbl and production capacity at 230,000 b/d of oil.
Sembawang’s FPSO work includes refurbishment of the VLCCs; construction engineering; fabrication of flare, helideck, upper turret, and access structure; integration of topsides modules, to be fabricated at Saipem’s Indonesian yard, and lower turret components; and precommissioning.
Each FPSO will have oil-treating capacity of 115,000 b/d, water-injection capacity of 200,000 b/d, gas-compression capacity of 100 MMscfd, and storage capacity of 1.7 million bbl of oil.
The 316,182-dwt Olympia VLCC is expected to enter the Sembawang Shipyard in the third quarter of 2014. The 315,981-dwt Antarctica VLCC is to enter the shipyard in the first quarter of 2015. The conversions are to be complete in 32 months.
