British oil giant BP has, through social media, revealed a photograph of its new Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
The 270 metres long, 52 meters wide FPSO, to be named Glen Lyon, is currently under construction at a Hyundai Heavy Industry shipyard in South Korea.
Once completed, the vessel will be deployed in the UK sector of the North Sea, west of the Shetland Islands, as part of BP’s Quad 204 development project.
The FPSO will have a storage capacity of 900,000 barrels of oil and is expected to process 130 thousand barrels of oil and 220 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.
Quad 204
In July 2011 BP and partners said they would invest approximately £3 billion to redevelop the Schiehallion and Loyal fields as part of its Quad 204 project, located 175 km west of Shetland.
Schiehallion and Loyal have produced nearly 400 million barrels of oil since production started in 1998.
The Quad 204 development aims to unearth the remaining estimated 450 million barrels of oil still available and help extend production from the fields out to 2035 and beyond.
The development involves the installation of a new floating, production, storage and offloading vessel – the Glen Lyon – which is due to arrive in the North Sea in 2016, together with a major upgrade and replacement of the subsea facilities.
The new Glen Lyon FPSO replaces the Schiehallion FPSO, which started production in 1998. Production was suspended in 2013 to make way for Quad 204 subsea works.