A conventional offshore platform
FPSO was the term I came across for my second project. FPSO is the abbreviation of floating production storage and offloading. These days, almost all the easy accessible oils have been explored and produced. Majority of the existing production oil field are going to be dried soon. The oil exploration activity was broaden to the Deep Water Exploration and Production. The conventional drilling is done through the fixed platform generally. Nowadays, there is a trend that drilling and production activity on a floating vessel (ship). I just realized of this fact after being involved some projects in my current job. So far, I have been so oblivious and ignorant.
FPSO
FPSO looks something similar to the above picture. FPSO unit is a vessel which processes the crude oil and gas received from the nearby platform. The oil and gas will be discharged to the slug catcher before 1st stage separator. FPSO oil and gas processing unit generally serves several purposes. For instances, it has dew point control unit for oil processing which ensures the oil dew point is within the range of 8 to 10. If dew point is too high, the oil production company will earns more and people will pay more for less oil. If the oil dew point is too low, the oil becomes less easy to evaporate and it may reduce the oil production company. For the consumers’ benefit, lower dew point will be more favoured. For natural gas processing, it ensures that natural gas will never condense to liquid oil during the gas transportation through pipeline. These are two basic issues addressed mainly. Well, at least for my current experience and knowledge. (hehe, pls correct if I am wrong).
Flow assurance from the production oil rig to the FPSO is normally the main concern before production. Apart from that, due to the deep water exploration, flow assurance studies slowly becomes crucial to the whole production. It is a study to ensure the successful flow of oil and gas from the reservoir to point of sale (FPSO normally). As the above picture shows, there is some S-shape bend before it flows into the FPSO unit. This is done to break the riser slugging which can cause horrendous damage to the FPSO (it may burst the crude oil and gas receiving vessel). There are some other activities involved for FPSO risers like Pigging.
Normally, so far as I know, FPSO can serve for approximately 20 years and the company that constructs FPSO in Malaysia is Bumi Armada. I suppose there are some companies doing similar project. Another great competitor to Bumi Armada is MODEC, a multinational engineering company with head quarter located in Tokyo, Japan and main offices in Tokyo, Houston and Singapore and Brazil.
