Pazflor FPSO Vessel

The Pazflor floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel was built by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) for Total E&P Angola.

The Pazflor project is located in offshore Angola, in water depths of 600-1,200m, about 40km east of the Dalia FPSO and 150km away from the shore. The FPSO is spread-moored at a depth of approximately 2,500ft atop 25 subsea oil wells, two gas-injection wells and 22 water-injection wells.

In December 2007, Total placed a $2.3bn new-build FPSO order with DSME to provide engineering, procurement and construction services for the vessel’s moorings, hull and topsides. In February 2008, KBR was awarded a contract by DSME to provide topsides engineering, procurement and interface design services for the Pazflor FPSO.

In September 2009, the hull of the Pazflor FPSO was launched at DSME’s No 1 dock. In January 2011, the FPSO sailed from the company’s facility in South Korea to Block 17 in Angola’s offshore oil field. First oil is scheduled to flow by September 2011.

The FPSO is the first of its kind to process two very different grades of oil: heavy oil (17°-22° API) from Miocene reservoirs and lighter oil (35-38°API) from the Acacia Oligocene reservoir.

Construction

The Pazflor FPSO was constructed at DSME’s fabrication yard in South Korea. Around 120,000t of steel was used to build it, making Pazflor one of the largest FPSOs ever built.

The Pazflor project has unique characteristics that distinguish it from usual commercial ships: it is three times the size of the vessel of a commercial vessel and the number of blocks used is double that of an LNG ship.

Design

The Pazflor is a purpose-built FPSO with topsides weighing 32,200t. It has a processing capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet of gas per day, and a storage capacity of about 1.9 million barrels of crude. The FPSO’s facilities are designed for a 20-year service life. The vessel has an overall length of 325m, a width of 61m and a height of 32m. It has living quarters to accommodate around 140 personnel.

Facilities

The two subsea production systems include 49 wells (25 producers, 22 water injectors and two gas injectors) and three subsea separation units, which are connected to six pumps. Around 175km of pipeline and 90km of control lines, also known as umbilicals, will snake across the seabed.

Balltec has supplied and installed 16 permanent subsea mooring connectors for the FPSO vessel. The connectors are designed with a minimum break load of 12,993kn. They connect the suction piles and ground chain and can be disconnected at any time during the design life of the facility.

The vessel has a seawater treatment plant sized for 301,900bpd (48,000m³ / day) of low sulphate water and a wash water System for 19,620bpd (130m³ / hr). Feed seawater is pre-treated by a membrane filtration system. The pre-treatment filtration system supplies feed water for four trains.

KONE has supplied Pazflor’s personnel elevator. Powered by KONE EcoDisc hoisting machine, the elevator is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the most demanding environments.

The ship is powered by onboard gas turbines rated at a record 120MW, which is equivalent to the power consumed by a city with approximately 100,000 inhabitants.