Sembcorp Marine Inc.’s Jurong shipyard delivered the Raroa floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel to Tanker Pacific Offshore Terminals Pte. Ltd. in early April 2008.
Tanker Pacific is leasing the Raroa FPSO to OMV New Zealand Ltd. for installation in Maari field, off New Zealand’s South Taranaki coast (OGJ, Apr. 28, 2008, p. 30).
The shipyard converted the 92,802 dwt tanker MT Andaman Sea into the Raroa FPSO. The conversion included:
- Installing an internal turret.
- Installing three boilers on deck to generate 24 Mw of power.
- Renewing the entire piping and electrical systems.
- Installing process facilities for crude separation, water injection, and chemical injection.
The FPSO has a designed capacity to process 40,000 bo/d and to store 646,548 bbl of oil. Maari field, discovered in 1983, is in 100 m of water about 80 km from the South Taranaki coast.
OMV estimated that cost of developing the field would be about $360 million and that the field would recover about 50 million bbl of oil during its life of more than 10 years.
The FPSO will receive production from wells completed from a not-normally manned wellhead platform.
On the fixed platform, OMV plans to have initially five producing wells and three water injection wells. The platform also has slots for future additional wells.
The company expects the field to produce at 35,000 bo/d.
OMV is the operator and holds a 69% interest in the field. Its partners include Todd Petroleum Mining Co. Ltd. 16%, Horizon Oil International Ltd. 10%, and Cue Taranaki Pty. Ltd. 5%.
