Aqualis Offshore, a marine and engineering consultancy, has won a contract to provide positioning services for the installation of the Ichthys FPSO offshore Australia.
The company will provide the services as a sub-supplier to Singapore’s POSH Terasea Offshore, which will manage the towage of the FPSO from DSME’s Okpo yard in South Korea to offshore Australia.
Once complete at DSME’s yard, the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility will be towed 5,600 nautical miles to the Ichthys field in the Browse Basin, offshore Western Australia for offshore hook-up, commissioning, and start-up.
It will be permanently moored to the seabed about 3.5 kilometers from the project’s central processing facility (CPF) for the 40-year life of the project.
The FPSO will be used for processing and storing condensate from the CPF and periodically offloading stabilised condensate to shuttle carriers for export directly to the market.
The 336 by 59-metre FPSO is designed to hold more than one million barrels of condensate in its hull and will accommodate a workforce of up to 200 people.
The FPSO is a part of the giant Ichthys LNG project, operated by Japan’s Inpex. Once it is completed, the Ichthys LNG project will be producing 8.9 mtpa of liquefied natural gas at its onshore processing facilities located at Bladin Point near Darwin.
First LNG from the multi-billion project is expected in the first quarter of 2017.
The Ichthys project is a joint venture between Japan’s Inpex, major partner Total of France, Taiwan’s CPC Corporation and the Australian subsidiaries of Tokyo Gas, Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric, Chubu Electric Power and Toho Gas.
LNG World News Staff