Accommodating growth

We have previously reported on Petrobras; the company is engaged in exploiting one of the largest pre-salt oil reserves in the world, the Santos Basin located offshore Brazil. The company can be proud  of many achievements, but it continues to face numerous challenges while  striving  to keep up with its ambitious growth plans.

Petrobras is busy accommodating their significant growth; in 2013 the identified reserves grew by a remarkable 43% compared to 2012. The company drilled 42 new wells during 2013 in the pre-salt layer and all indicated the presence of hydrocarbons.

In addition to the reserve increase, Petrobras’ pre-salt oil production also reached a new high of more than 400,000 bpd by April of this year with a current average production per well of around 25,000 bpd. On top of that, three more declarations of commercial viability for future Santos developments have been issued concerning the Lapa (Carioca), Búzios (Franco) and Sul de Lula (Sul de Tupi) fields.

This year, Petrobras is busy as the company plans to connect 17 new wells to platforms which are already installed in the pre-salt Santos basin hub.  There are plans to launch two new FPSOs as well;  ‘Cidade de Ilhabela’ in the Sapinhoá Norte field and ‘Cidade de Mangaratiba’ in the Iracema Sul field. These are expected to increase the pre-salt oil production capacity in the basin to 300,000 bpd.

Challenged by aging offshore fields and shipyard production delays in Brazil, Petrobras decided to commission work for four new FPSOs from Chinese shipyards; as to not  threaten the oil giant’s ambitious output expansion plans.

An estimated amount of US $2 billion is currently being invested to convert oil tankers into the P-67, P-75, P-76 and P-77 floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) units in China and Indonesia.

The conversions will be completed in Brazil, and the FPSOs can then commence operations in the pre-salt Santos Basin. Although a minor (but important) component of the conversions, all FPSOs will be fitted with large accommodation units for offshore workers. As subjects of the FPSOs distributed production schedule, the accommodation units for the aforementioned FPSOs  will also be fabricated in China. The units now need to be shipped to Brazil, and therefore require adequate transportation.

BBC Chartering was awarded the contract to bring the first of four, six-story high housing units from Dalian, China to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And this July, BBC successfully delivered module No.1 for the ‘P-67’ FPSO destined for ‘Lula Norte’, a field which is expected to produce oil in 2016.

As this is not a usual piece of cargo, we are pleased to feature an interview with Jimmy Jensen, technical director of BBC Chartering in Singapore. He elaborates on the challenges of this project the team faced while preparing the exceptional transfer  of this 1380mt heavy accommodation unit.

Sources: Petrobras - at a glance (June 2014); www.oilandgastechnology.net

What is an FPSO?

A floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the processing of hydrocarbons and for storage of oil. An FPSO vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline. FPSOs are preferred in frontier offshore regions as they are easy to install, and do not require a local pipeline infrastructure to export oil. FPSOs can be a conversion of an oil tanker or can be a vessel built specially for the application. A vessel used only to store oil (without processing it) is referred to as a floating storage and offloading vessel (FSO). There are also under construction (as at 2013) floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) vessels, which will extract and liquefy natural gas on board. Source: www.wikipedia.org