Maersk Contractors has entered into a seven-year contract with Woodside Energy Ltd. Maersk will be providing a Floating Production and Storage Offloading vessel (FPSO) on service agreement basis, for development of Woodside’s Vincent oil discovery 50 km North West of Exmouth in Western Australia.
Maersk Contractors will design and manage the construction of the FPSO. The conversion of the 308,000 tdw tanker vessel ELLEN M?RSK into an FPSO will take place at the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore from early 2007. Oil production on the Vincent field is expected to start during 2008.
Maersk Contractors is working with the Australian Industry Capability Network (ICNWA) to identify Australian suppliers for inclusion in its tendering processes.
Maersk Contractors expects to assign approximately 60 people to the design and construction phase. Once the FPSO goes into operation, two offshore crews of each 22 people and 10 onshore personnel are required to operate the facility.
When completed, the FPSO will have a production capacity of 120,000 barrels of oil and 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. The storage facilities of the vessel will hold 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Maersk Contractors will be drawing on experiences from two currently operated FPSO’s in the UK North Sea and one FGSO (Floating Gas Storage Offloading) offshore West Africa.