FPSO P-70 ARRIVES FROM CHINA AND IS ANCHORED IN THE GUANABARA BAY TO RECEIVE THE LAST ADJUSTMENTS BEFORE PRODUCTION AT ATAPU

JAN 24, , 2020

The FPSO P-70, which began its journey to Brazil on December 9 last year, is anchored in Guanabara Bay. The FPSO will carry out its activities in the Atapu field, in the Santos Basin pre-salt. The unit left the COOEC shipyard in Qingdao, China, where the integration works for the platform modules were carried out. The ship’s hull was also built by the Chinese at the Cosco shipyard. As a reminder, an accident during transport left one worker dead and left five others in need of medical attention. The incident occurred about 51.8 km off the coast of the city of Durban, in South Africa. Workers at Boskalis (the company that transported the platform) and other subcontracted companies were ill after drinking ethyl alcohol. They were rescued from the FPSO by a helicopter and then transferred by plane to a hospital in Durban.

The work of the P-70 is grandiose and impresses by the level of complexity of the structure,  80 thousand tons and 316 meters in length. The transport of the P-70 was done in the dry tow mode. In other words, the platform was loaded onto a semi-submersible vessel to transport heavy cargo. According to Petrobras, this made it possible to reduce travel time from China to Brazil by about 40 days. Worldwide, this was the second time that this type of maneuver had been carried out. The first occurred in the transport of P-67, another FPSO from Petrobras. The P-70 will have the capacity to process 150,000 barrels of oil per day and 6 million cubic meters of natural gas per day. The unit is part of the series of replicating platforms, whose projects have been standardized for the pre-salt environment. Production is expected to start in the first quarter of this year.

Source: PetroNoticias