Mitsui Ocean Development & Engineering Co. (MODEC) is pleased to announce that it has signed a contract with ConocoPhillips Australia Barossa Pty Ltd to supply a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel for the Barossa field, offshore Australia. The FPSO part of the project alone is estimated at US$1.5 billion. The Barossa FPSO is intended to produce gas and condensate from subsea wells and after treatment, supply feed gas to the Darwin LNG Plant via a gas export pipeline.
The part of the project was expected to go to Samsung Heavy Industries, which signed a front end engineering and design (FEED) contract related to the project with American oil company ConocoPhillips in May last year. However, the Japan-China alliance beat the South Korean shipbuilder with a lower labor cost.
MODEC was awarded a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) contract of the Barossa FPSO in June 2018 and has now been selected as the turnkey contractor based upon its successful performance and deliverables of the FEED contract.
The Barossa FPSO is MODEC’s largest size of “Gas FPSO” to date, which will be able to export over 600 million standard cubic feet of gas per day as well as store up to 650,000 barrels of condensate for export. It has been designed to withstand a 100-year cyclone event at a water depth of 260 meters and located some 300 kilometers off north of Darwin, Australia.
MODEC will be responsible for the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) of the Barossa FPSO, including topsides processing equipment as well as hull and marine systems. Scheduled for delivery during 2023, the FPSO will be permanently moored by an internal turret mooring system supplied by a MODEC group company, SOFEC, Inc.
The Barossa FPSO will be the first application of MODEC’s “M350 Hull”, a next generation new built hull for FPSOs, full double hull design which has been developed to accommodate larger topsides and larger storage capacity than conventional VLCC tankers, with a longer design service life of 25 years and beyond. The hull will be built by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. (DSIC) in Dalian, China.
The FPSO features a boiler and steam turbine based power generation system instead of conventional gas turbines, which helps reduce the carbon dioxide footprint of the facility.
“We are extremely honored and proud to have been selected to provide the Gas FPSO for Barossa project,” commented Yuji Kozai, President and CEO of MODEC. “This contract award of a Gas FPSO reinforces one of our important business strategies, which we aim to penetrate into gas-related market. Also this new contract represents a significant milestone for MODEC in applying our next generation new built FPSO hull design of which we have developed to meet the new market demands for larger FPSOs. We are equally pleased to be a part of the team that will provide natural gas, a major clean energy source, for the benefit of the people and environment.”
The Barossa FPSO will be MODEC’s 6th FPSO in Australia and this contract award confirms its advanced position as the leading FPSO service provider in the country.
The Barossa joint venture is currently formed by ConocoPhillips Australia Barossa Pty Ltd (field operator, 37.5%), SK E&S Australia Pty Ltd (37.5%) and Santos Offshore Pty Ltd (25.0%).
