SIMIC

Michele Labrut | Jun 09, 2021

Equinor took its Final Investment Decision (FID) for the Bacalhau field offshore Brazil on 1 June 2021. The investment is worth around $8bn.

Equinor and MODEC signed a Sales and Purchase Agreement for the FPSO in January 2020, with the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) and pre-investment of the FPSO, MODEC has now officially been awarded the contract for Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) for the FPSO.

Related: Keppel Shipyard bags $2.3bn Petrobras FPSO project

The Bacalhau FPSO will be largest ever delivered to Brazil. The FPSO vessel will be permanently moored at a water depth of approximately 2,050 metres by a spread mooring system to be supplied by MODEC group company, SOFEC, Inc.

 It will have a large topside designed to produce up to 220,000 barrels of crude oil per day, produce and inject up to 530 m standard cubic feet of associated gas /day and inject up to 200,000 barrels of seawater per day. It”s minimum storage capacity of crude oil will be 2,000,000 barrels.

Related: Keppel O&M bags $52.5m in FPSO contracts from MODEC

The FPSO will be the first application of MODEC’s “M350 Hull”, a next-generation newbuild hull for FPSOs, full double-hull design. It has been developed to accommodate larger topside and larger storage capacity than conventional VLCC tankers, with a longer design service life.

MODEC said last week it will also provide Equinor with operations and maintenance service of the FPSO for the first year from its first oil production, after which Equinor plans to operate the FPSO until the end of the license period in 2053.

 The FPSO will be deployed at the Bacalhau field in the BM-S-8 and Carcará North blocks located in the giant “pre-salt” region of the Santos Basin some 185kms off the coast of Ilhabela/Sao Paulo, in the state of São Paulo.

Equinor’s field partners are ExxonMobil (40%), Petrogal Brasil (20%) and Pre-sal Petroleo SA (Government Company, PSA Manager).