FSO vessel to head to UK North Sea Culzean gas field in June

May 11, 2018
The Ailsa, a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel, is scheduled to be moved during June to Culzean gas field in the UK North Sea, said Sembcorp Marine in an announcement about the vessel’s completion. Production is expected to start in 2019.

The Ailsa, a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel, is scheduled to be moved during June to Culzean gas field in the UK North Sea, said Sembcorp Marine in an announcement about the vessel’s completion. Production is expected to start in 2019 (OGJ Online, July 21, 2017).

The vessel, which can store 430,000 bbl of condensate, will enter service with a hull designed to have twice the average hull fatigue lifespan of other newbuild FSOs as verified by marine assurance company DNV GL.

A longer hull-life enables ships to withstand harsher and more extreme environmental conditions, such as rogue waves, corrosion, large ambient temperature variation, and thunderstorms.

The FSO Ailsa was designed to operate 25 years continuously without drydocking. Sembcorp was commissioned by MODEC Inc., which signed a contract with Maersk Oil North Sea UK Ltd. to supply a FSO.

The Maersk Oil-operated high pressure, high temperature Culzean field lies 145 miles east of Aberdeen and at plateau will produce 60,000-90,000 boe/d for at least 13 years, Maersk Oil says.

Maersk Oil, a wholly owned subsidiary of AP Moller-Maersk AS of Copenhagen, started drilling the field’s first production well in 2016 (OGJ Online, Sept. 29, 2016).