First oil at Shell’s Stones project in the Gulf of Mexico is on the horizon, as the Turritella floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO) set sail from Singapore this month.
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The Turritella set sail from Singapore to the GoM earlier this month. Image from Shell Flickr. |
The Stones project - the deepest FPSO project in the world - is 200mi southwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the Walker Ridge area in the Gulf of Mexico’s lower tertiary geologic trend.
The Turritella vessel, which was built in Singapore, set sail from the city on 10 November, to the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where the facility will connect to subsea infrastructure in 9500ft water depth, breaking the existing water depth record for an oil and gas production facility, Shell said.
Shell selected the vessel design of the Turritella to optimize field development.
“Using this floating vessel allows us to address the relative lack of infrastructure, seabed complexity, and unique reservoir properties. Aside from being the world’s deepest facility, it also features an industry-first application of combining a disconnectable buoy with steel lazy wave risers – steel pipe with in-line buoyancy that absorbs the vessel’s motion and boosts riser performance at extreme depths,” Shell said.
Phase one of Stones includes eight subsea production wells tied back to the FPSO. Multiphase seafloor pumping is planned for a later phase to pump oil and gas from the seabed to the vessel, increasing recoverable volumes and production rates.
At peak production, Shell expects Stones to reach 50,000 boe/d in its first phase, from more than 250 MMboe of recoverable resources. The field is estimated to contain more than 2 billion boe of oil in place.
Shell owns and operates 100% of Stones.
In October, Technip was awarded the contract for the development of subsea infrastructure for Stones that includes two subsea production tie-backs to the FPSO, in addition to engineering of the second pipeline end terminations (PLETs); fabrication of the PLETs and piles; and installation of the subsea production system, inclusive of associated project management, engineering and stalk fabrication.
OneSubsea landed a contract to supply subsea processing systems in August, which includes a dual pump station with two 3 MW single-phase pumps and two subsea control modules, a topside power and control module, a barrier-fluid hydraulic power unit with associated spares as well as installation and maintenance tools.
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