The floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, a key component of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) Phase 1 LNG development, has arrived at its final location offshore Mauritania and Senegal.
Following completion of its construction at the COSCO Qidong Shipyard in China, the FPSO has travelled more than 12,000 nautical miles to the GTA site.
The FPSO vessel is currently being moored at the site 40 kilometers offshore in a water depth of 120 meters. It will be operated by BP, on behalf of its project’s partners Kosmos Energy, PETROSEN and SMH.
The project will produce gas from reservoirs in deep water, approximately 120 kilometers offshore, through a subsea system.
The FPSO is expected to process over 500 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. It will remove water, condensate and impurities from the gas before transferring it via pipeline to the Floating Liquified Natural Gas (FLNG) vessel Gimi at the Hub Terminal approximately 10 kilometers offshore.
At the FLNG vessel, the gas will be cryogenically cooled, liquefied and stored before being transferred to LNG carriers for export, while some is allocated to help meet growing demand in the two host countries.
The FPSO will have up to 140 people on board during normal operation. With an area equivalent to two football fields and 10-storeys in height, the FPSO is made of more than 81,000 tonnes of steel, 37,000m of pipe spools and 1.52 million meters of cable.
“This is a huge landmark step for the project, an innovative LNG development that is leading the way in unlocking gas resources for Mauritania and Senegal. The FPSO vessel has travelled halfway around the globe and its safe arrival and installation is testament to the resilience, skills, teamwork and huge effort of all the partners involved. We are now entirely focused on safe completion of the project as we continue to work towards first gas,” said Dave Campbell, bp’s senior vice president, Mauritania and Senegal.
The GTA Phase 1 development is expected to produce around 2.3 million tonnes of LNG annually for more than 20 years.