SBM - Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO)

SBM Offshore has a unique strategy for FPSO execution, which leverages our huge FPSO experience. Using our global team of around 6,000 personnel, including over 1,500 engineers and designers, SBM typically designs, procures, manages construction, commissions, installs and operates our FPSOs using primarily our in-house resources. Our in-house strategy covers all areas of the FPSO design – hull, mooring s and topsides – making us unique in the FPSO industry. This complete in-house expertise minimises dependence on third party subcontractors, and so enables us to have consistency in our design, as well as a seamless feedback from fleet operations to new projects, so driving a powerful continuous improvement process.

Today, SBM Offshore focuses on projects where we can use our unrivalled FPSO experience and expertise to add value to the most difficult challenges in the industry. These currently include ultra deepwater where we are striving towards the 3000m goal, HP/HT fields using steel risers, sour fields with complex topsides processing needs, and high production rates. Some of our current projects require a combination of all the above, and can now exceed 20,000t of topsides weight and a total topsides shaft power demand of over 200 MW.

Moreover, we are constantly seeking new challenges of more complex process systems. Today, our development work includes enhanced FPSO products for LNG production, gas commercialisation using a compact Gas to Liquids process, and ultra heavy oil production. Moreover, in our laboratory in France we have developed pioneering swivel technology that continues to push the envelope of proprietary SBM swivel capabilities for ever more challenging conditions.

A standard and versatile design

Basic Design Approval has been given by both Bureau Veritas and ABS. The design is optimized for deployment in a wide area from Latin America to West Africa, with the flexibility to be tailored to the specific needs of a project. It consists of a generic new-build hull (the ‘MPF’ for Multi-Purpose Floater) able to accommodate:

• internal turret, external turret or spread moored configurations.
• ~50,000 tonnes of operating topsides (subject to field specifics) and future tie-backs.
• a catalogue of topsides modules for all FPSO systems with a number of different capacities available. The key to an optimal layout is modularization, which allows maximum interchangeability of the modules depending on each project’s needs, without disrupting the overall functionality.
• the large deck space available on the MPF allows us to lower the module height and reduce the complexity of the topsides substantially.

 Technical standards

The design for the Fast4Ward™ FPSO is underpinned by SBM Offshore’s Group Technical Standards (GTS). Introduced in 2003, they draw on the expertise and lessons learnt from a delivery portfolio of more than 50 floating production systems and over 320 years of operating experience.