China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Valve and Actuator Technology for the Offshore Industry
Published in Karan Sotoodeh, Coating Application for Piping, Valves and Actuators in Offshore Oil and Gas Industry, 2023
An FPSO is a kind of ship that can produce, store and offload produced hydrocarbon, such as oil, to a pipeline or tanker. Oil and gas go through a series of processes, which are all done on board the ship, before being transferred to storage. As illustrated in Figure 5.7, an FPSO is used to develop and produce oil and gas in subsea areas at depths of 3,000 m or more. The first step is to drill the subsea well and transfer the three phases of oil, gas and water from the wellhead to the FPSO through flowlines. The first step of production on the platform or FPSO takes place in a separation unit. A separator is a type of pressure vessel used to separate the three phases of oil, gas and water from each other. The separation can be achieved in one, two or three stages, in which one, two or three separators are used for the separation process, respectively. The produced oil can be stored for a period of time before being transported from the separator to a pipeline or tanker. If the amount of produced oil is high, then a pipeline is a more suitable choice for further oil transportation from the FPSO. All the piping, valves and actuators in this case are located topside, on the deck of the FPSO. Since some valves and actuators are used subsea and thus immersed in the water, the next section provides some general information about subsea oil and gas development.
Anchoring systems
Published in White David, Cassidy Mark, Offshore Geotechnical Engineering, 2017
Floating production, storage and offloading platforms (FPSOs) are the most widely used floating facility. FPSOs are ship-shaped processing facilities, often converted oil tankers, that sit on station and weathervane about a rotating turret moored to the seabed. Shuttle tankers periodically relieve the FPSO of its oil and take it to shore. Since the first FPSO was installed for the Castellon field in the Mediterranean Sea in 1977, FPSOs have been widely used, mostly in marginal fields, remote or hostile environments or where no pipeline infrastructure exists. Currently, there are around 120 FPSOs in production worldwide. Floating production systems (FPSs) have their origins in drilling platforms and typically comprise a hull of four circular steel columns connected to a ring pontoon, although they can be ship-shaped like FPSOs. FPSs are moored by catenary or taut-lines to anchors at the seabed. FPSs can serve several fields processing oil or gas from subsea wet trees. For example, the Na Kika development in the Gulf of Mexico is designed to handle six oil and gas fields, some several kilometres away, with tie backs to the main semi-submersible FPS.
A Comparison of Loading Conditions Effects on the Vertical Motions of Turret-Moored FPSO
Published in Adam Weintrit, Tomasz Neumann, Safety of Sea Transportation, 2017
S.A. Erkurtulmus, E. Peşman, H. Copuroglu
A floating, production, storage and offloading units (FPSO) system for offshore oil and gas production employs a custom-built ship or tanker with structural modifications. It is equipped with hydrocarbon processing equipment for separation and treatment of crude oil, water and gases, arriving on board from sub-sea oil wells via flexible pipelines. FPSOs were found to be viable production systems that can withstand the harsh environment offshore Gulf of Mexico (Wichers et al. 2001).
Hydrodynamic performances of FPSO and shuttle tanker during side-by-side offloading operation
Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2019
Xiaosen Xu, Prasanta Sahoo, Johanna Evans, Yanwu Tao
The Floating Production Storage and Offloading Unit (FPSO) is one of the most popular approaches to exploiting petroleum and natural gas. In the field of offshore petroleum production and storage, FPSO has proved its importance due to its flexibility and good seakeeping performance. Offloading operation is an indispensable aspect of the whole process of producing oil and gas, which plays a key role in the entire design. The shuttle tankers role in offloading petroleum has a major economic advantage over underwater pipelines, especially in remote offshore oilfields. Generally, the offloading process between FPSO and shutter tanker can be classified in two approaches. One is tandem offloading and the other one is side-by-side offloading (SBS). For the tandem offloading system, the stern of FPSO is connected by taut hawsers to the shuttle tanker, as it is a safe and common practice. But for relatively mild sea states (<2.5 m), the SBS offloading system is a more economical and feasible practice (Zhang et al. 2016).
Wave-free characteristic of heave motion response for new sandglass-type model
Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2018
Wen-Hua Wang, Ya-Zhen Du, Lin-Lin Wang, Yi Huang
With ocean oil and gas exploration and production gradually expanding towards the deep sea, floating, production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) will own wide and good application prospects (Ma et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2013). But traditional ship-type FPSO exhibits some performance shortcomings (Wang and Feng 2011; Wu 2012). Therein, the traditional ship-type floating body is extremely sensitive to the wave direction. Next, with the complicated environment and single point mooring system, the FPSO would be usually in the oblique (beam) sea, which may result in poor heave and roll performances. Hence, the cylindrical FPSO is taken to solve the above shortcomings. However, it is a pity that sometimes the natural period of heave motion for the cylindrical floating body is still in the centralised area of wave energy and thus the heave motion response would be large. Therefore, based on the performance advantage of wave-free structures, a new concept of floating body with an innovative sandglass-type shape was presented by Huang et al. (2015, 2016) and Wang et al. (2016a, 2016b) to solve the performance limitations of traditional ship-type and cylindrical FPSOs.
Investigation of roll damping effects on deep water FPSOs with riser balcony through global coupled analysis
Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2023
Alexandre Rezende Diezel, Fabrício Nogueira Correa, Murilo Augusto Vaz, Breno Pinheiro Jacob
Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels have been considered the most appropriate type of production system for deepwater offshore scenarios such as the Brazilian pre-salt fields, located at distances exceeding 250 km from the coast, and exceeding 2000 m of water depth. One of the biggest advantages of an FPSO is its large oil storage capacity, which avoids the necessity for the installation of an infrastructure for exportation of the production, since it can be transferred to the coast by shuttle tankers. Another advantage is the large area available on the main deck to fit the process plant, which should be capable of producing more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day.