China’s Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) shipyard has delivered the Liza Prosperity hull, the second one to be built under SBM Offshore’s Fast4Ward standardized-FPSO-hull program, according to MarineLink.
The construction of the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Prosperity hull started in January 2019. The Prosperity will be Guyana’s third FPSO.
The FPSO Prosperity is expected to be deployed at ExxonMobil’s Stabroek block offshore Guyana, as part of the Payara oil field development.
Subject to government approvals in Guyana, project sanction, and an authorization to proceed with the next phase, SBM Offshore will construct, install and then lease and operate the FPSO for a period of up to 2 years, after which the FPSO ownership and operation will be transferred to Exxon, MarineLink reported.
The FPSO Prosperity which will be able to produce 220,000 barrels of oil per day, will have an associated gas treatment capacity of 400 million cubic feet per day and water injection capacity of 250,000 barrels per day.
It will be spread moored in a water depth of about 1,900 meters and will be able to store around 2 million barrels of crude oil.
President Irfaan Ali’s new Administration is currently engaging international experts to review the project proposal before it makes a decision on the Payara project in the Stabroek Block.
After being plagued with delays, Exxon was hoping that the Payara project would have gotten off the ground late this year. The project was originally supposed to start in 2019, but was delayed due to the absence of a functioning Government.
Guyana currently produces oil via the SBM Offshore-supplied Liza Destiny FPSO, which started production in December 2019.
Meanwhile, the second FPSO Liza Unity is on target to achieve first oil in Guyana in 2022. The Liza Unity will have a 220,000 bpd per day capacity. The FPSO is currently in dry-dock in Singapore where work is progressing on the integration of the mooring system and the preparation for the lifting and integration of the first topside modules.
Guyana is expected to significantly ramp up oil production in the coming years. US oil giant, Exxon has estimated that there are eight billion barrels of recoverable reserves in the Stabroek Block, and until recently, it predicted that the country would produce 750,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.
According to experts, 750,000 barrels of oil per day would make Guyana the fourth-largest oil producer in Latin America in current production growth, that would be behind Brazil, Mexico and Columbia.
In a couple of years, this would place Guyana as one of the largest sources of non-OPEC supplier.
