MARITIME

OFFSHORE ENERGY
FPSO
Guide to Life
Extension
By William Stoichevski
There are new-builds, and there are conversions. In lean
times, there’s also “life-extension” for FPSOs increasingly
seen as the best hope of developing oilfi elds too
pricy as platform projects. Life extension is about making
fi rst-time money, cutting costs or continuing to earn when a
fi eld or fl oater enters a new stage. It’s also about safety. Life
extension involves major, multiyear considerations for operators
and FPSO contractors, and for all approaches to longer
life, history is the great decider.
42 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • SEPTEMBER 2015
“Inspect, never expect,” urges Ketil
Hox, Teekay Petrojarl’s FPSO startup
manager for the North Sea. The
chemical engineer with two decades of
Kvaerner (Aker Solutions) process experience
oversees production units as
they become producers. A major area of
concern for Hox is also “safe late-life”,
which in the language of the NORSOK,
the Norwegian contract standard, means
managing “barriers” to disaster. Good
safety strictures, good equipment, good
people and a sea-safe vessel are all “barriers”.
Backing up Hox is Shell’s Penguins
FPSO lead, Ali Anaturk, a respected
industry voice. He explains how safety
barriers might be compromised from the
get-go if start-up happens to involve a
late-life FPSO or someone’s field lifeextension
project. Three decades of experience
on four continents — at Bonga,
the new-build FPSO Bonga South West,
Penguins and others — has taught him
that danger lurks in all life-extension
propositions. He’s put that experience
into print, writing voluminously about
FPSO design, hydrodynamics and offshore
structures. When he speaks, slowly
at first and under intense nearby lighting,
it’s about the unnerving evidence he’s
seen from the burdensome legal standpoint
of an operator examining a lifeextension
candidate.
With the average life of the world
FPSO fleet between 15 and 20 years,
“Some are fast approaching their design
life,” Anaturk says. Of the 164 FP-