The US$1.7 billion “ONE GUYANA” Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel being built by Dutch shipbuilder SBM Offshore for the fourth ExxonMobil development offshore Guyana is in the final stages of completion.
This was revealed by SBM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Øivind Tangen, during a recent interview with OilNOW, where he provided an update on his company’s progress as it relates to building the “ONE GUYANA” FPSO, which is supposed to produce first oil in the second half of next year from the Yellowtail development.
“It’s going great. So, the project right now is in the final stage, where we go through the commissioning of the unit. So, it consists of testing the integrity of the integration scope. As we take our modules, we integrate them into the asset and connect them together. And then we go through a series of leak testing, commissioning testing, to say, we’re good to go,” Tangen said.
“That’s progressing really well, in the Keppel (ship) yard in Singapore. So, we’re not far off. The teams that are working on it benefit, again, from what we learned on Payara, Unity, and what we learned from our prior projects that run in China. And are going to Brazil these days. And we bring our teams from one to the next unit. So, we find ways of improving the quality of the work and executing it with greater efficiency. So, “ONE GUYANA” is on track.”
Meanwhile, work on the Jaguar FPSO, which will service ExxonMobil Guyana’s sixth oil development, Whiptail, offshore Guyana, is also progressing. Tangen explained that they have the same team that worked on the Liza Unity FPSO, which is operational right now in the Liza Phase Two oil and gas development working on the Jaguar FPSO.
“The Jaguar, same team, by and large, as what we have on Unity. So, we bring, inherently, all the (lessons) from Unity and the execution of Unity, into that project. Right now, it’s coming to the end of the engineering phase. This means we’ve essentially placed all the purchase orders for all the items. It means we are going to the final model reviews, before moving into the detailed design of the project. So, it’s really well advanced.
“We started to do the steel cutting in the module yards and of course, we have the MPF5, which is in the SWS yard in China, which is nearing completion as well. We’ll be moving down to Singapore in the new year. So, the project is on track and it’s a fantastic team and it’s really progressing, as we would have wished for,” Tangen also said.
There are currently three FPSOs operating in Guyana’s waters: the Liza Destiny, the Liza Unity and the Prosperity in the Liza One, Liza Phase Two, and Payara off-shore projects respectively.
Six FPSOs are expected to be operating offshore Guyana by 2027. The fifth FPSO, which would be named “Errea Wittu”, meaning “abundance” in the Indigenous Warrau language, would operate in the Urau project. It would have an oil storage capacity of two million barrels, an oil production design rate of 250,000 barrels per day, and be able to offload approximately one million barrels onto a tanker in approximately 24 hours.
This vessel will be delivered by MODEC, a Japanese company which has confirmed the construction of this FPSO with a ceremony on February 2. The projected start-up date of the US$12.7 billion Uaru development is 2026.
The Stabroek Block is 6.6 million acres (26,800 square kilometres). Exxon, through its local subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), holds 45 per cent interest in the Block. Hess Guyana Exploration Ltd had had a 30 per cent interest, which it recently sold to Chevron.
CNOOC Petroleum Guyana Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, holds the remaining 25 per cent interest.
