Deepwater oil ship starts work in Gulf of Mexico

Shell invests in Fourchon Beach
March 21, 2012
BIG cash for college offered locally
March 21, 2012
Shell invests in Fourchon Beach
March 21, 2012
BIG cash for college offered locally
March 21, 2012

For the first time in the Gulf of Mexico, a specialized ship that processes and stores oil and natural gas in place of a production platform, is operating in the deep waters of the Gulf on a lease being developed by Brazilian oil company Petrobras USA.

This kind of oil- and gas-processing ship is used widely around the world for years but only now has made an entry into the Gulf. These ships are known in the industry as a floating, production, storage and offloading vessel, or FPSO. Petrobras relies on FPSOs extensively in Brazilian waters.


The BW Pioneer began processing its first oil from Petrobras’ Cascade field Feb. 25.


The ship is hooked up to a well about 1.5 miles below the Gulf and about 165 miles off the Louisiana coast and 285 miles from the Texas shore. The well is tapping into a reservoir that is nearly 5 miles below the sea floor that formed between 23 and 65 million years ago, Petrobras said.

The BW Pioneer is hooked by lines to the well and then will transfer the oil it brings aboard to shuttle tankers. Gas from the well will be shipped through pipelines.


Petrobras said the BW Pioneer can process 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The ship – owned by BW Offshore, a Norwegian floating production company – also can store 500,000 barrels of oil.


Benton F. Baugh, a Houston-based offshore engineer and member of the National Academy of Engineering, said FPSOs are common around the world, in particular in places where the network of subsea pipelines and offshore infrastructure is not as extensive as what exists in the Gulf.

“If you were going to an extreme offshore location, you had to plan for expensive pipeline infrastructure, you had to build a freeway out to it,” Baugh said. “Now you can dedicate one of these things to remote locations.”

Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc., doubted many more FPSOs would begin operating in the Gulf because the pipeline network here is already so extensive. “Is this going to be a regular event in the Gulf? I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “The industry has been successful in developing deepwater fields without their use.”

The new technology in the Gulf also raises new questions for environmentalists and regulators.

John Amos, a geologist and founder of SkyTruth, a West Virginia-based group that tracks oil spills using satellite imagery, said FPSOs have been dogged by problems. For instance, in December 2011 Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported a big spill occurred off the coast of Nigeria during the transfer of oil from an FPSO to a tanker, Amos said.

“That should be an eye opener,” Amos said. “With the FPSO operation, there is a lot of handling, you increase human involvement from moving that cargo from well to market. You have more opportunities for mistakes.”

He said an increase in FPSOs also would result in more oil tanker traffic, which brings with it new threats.

Eileen Angelico, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said the FPSO operation has been inspected five times and that another inspection will take place soon now that the facility is producing oil and gas.