From Houston (BN): Preparation continues for Shell’s Appomattox (SEN, 32/8) deepwater hub development in the Gulf of Mexico.
FMC announced it has received an award for enhanced vertical deepwater trees, subsea manifolds, topsides controls, a control system and a field distribution system.
Plans on file with regulators call for Appomattox to be a four-column floating production facility serving a number of discoveries in eastern Mississippi Canyon and western Desoto Canyon.
It is slated to be Shell’s largest floating production system and is to be moored in Mississippi Canyon Block 437 in 2,286 m of water, about 250 km southeast of New Orleans.
With plans calling for six drill centres, 15 producing wells and five water-injection wells, Appomattox is a massive undertaking in the Norphlet trend.
It will be costly, but Shell estimates oil in place at 700 MMbbl to 800 MMbbl, and with Shell’s Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Rydberg discoveries nearby, there is additional opportunity around it.
But Shell is proceeding cautiously. Even as it made the final investment decision, it said it had cut costs by 20%.
Recent filing and withdrawal within weeks of the installation plan for the platform fit with a cautious approach as Shell seeks to right-size Appomattox in a world of $50 oil.
Technip has landed a contract from Eni to supply umbilicals to the Block 15/06 East Hub (31/23) floater development off Angola.
The field is in water depths of 450 m to 600 m and the contract covers project management and manufacture of about 15 km of dynamic and static steel tube umbilicals.
Technip Umbilicals facility in Lobito, Angola, with support from Technip Umbilicals in Newcastle, U.K., will manufacture the umbilicals that are scheduled to be completed in second-half 2016.
The deal follows another project awarded to Technip last year for the fabrication and installation of flexible and rigid pipelines at Block 15/06.
The East Hub project involves development of the Cabaça North and Southeast discoveries. The discoveries are being developed in different phases; the first phase foresees the development of Cabaça SE and the drilling of 10 subsea wells and the installation of an FPSO vessel with a capacity of 80 Mbbl/d.
Keppel Shipyard is handling the conversion of a tanker into a 1.7-MMbbl storage FPSO unit for the field.
Aker Solutions has been awarded a contract from Murphy Sabah Oil Co. to deliver the subsea production system for the Rotan (32/11) deepwater natural gas development offshore Malaysia.
The delivery includes hardware for four subsea wells, a hub manifold, in-line tees, a connection system and production control system. First deliveries are scheduled for second-quarter 2016.
Rotan will be produced through the PFLNG 2 floater.
Aker Solutions has worked with Murphy on the Kikeh (32/2) oil and gas project, the first deepwater development in Malaysia and the Siakap North-Petai (31/14) oil and gas development, a tieback to Kikeh. Both fields are in Block K offshore East Malaysia at the easternmost state on the island of Borneo.
Shell Nigeria (SNEPCo) has kicked off production from the Bonga Phase 3 (32/13) project, an expansion of the Bonga Main development with peak production expected to be about 50 Mboe/d.
Output will be transported through existing pipelines to the Bonga FPSO vessel, which has the capacity to produce more than 200 Mbbl/d of oil and 150 MMcf/d of gas.
The Bonga Field, which began producing oil and gas in 2005, was Nigeria’s first deepwater development in depths of more than 1,000 m. Bonga has produced more than 600 MMbbl of oil to date.
The Bonga project is operated by SNEPCo as contractor under a production sharing contract with the Nigerian National Petroleum Co., which holds the lease for OML 118, in which the Bonga Field is located.
Golar LNG’s Cameroon (32/8) floating LNG (FLNG) project has reached a major milestone with the final approval by all parties of the gas convention for the project.
This final investment decision commits the project to a targeted start date for commissioning of second-quarter 2017.
Golar, Perenco and SNH are developing the FLNG project, located 20 km off the coast of Cameroon, using Golar’s floating liquefaction technology (GoFLNG).
The project will take in 14 Bcm of natural gas reserves from the offshore Kribi fields, which will be exported to global markets via the GoFLNG facility Golar Hilli, now under construction at the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore.
It is anticipated that the allocated reserves will be produced at a rate of 1.2 mtpa of LNG, representing about 50% of the vessel’s nameplate production capacity, during about eight years. It is expected that production will commence in second-quarter 2017.
As many as 64 FPSO units are expected to start operations worldwide over the course of the next five years giving a strong push to offshore oil and gas production, according to a new report from GlobalData.
Brazil will drive the global FPSO industry growth with an expected startup of 25 FPSOs by 2019. Development of fields in the subsalt and post-salt areas in the deep and ultradeep offshore areas of Brazil will drive the FPSO unit deployment in the country.
In Europe, development of offshore projects in the North Sea and Barents Sea will the drive the deployment of FPSOs.
The U.K. is expected to witness the startup of seven FPSOs by 2019, while Norway will see the deployment of three FPSOs, mainly for fields in the Barents Sea.