MTS Houston Luncheon

The Floating Production Unit: Relocation Realities
                                               
The August MTS Houston Section luncheon will be held on August 22 and will feature a presentation by Carlos Mastrangelo, SBM Offshore’s Senior Vice-President on Floating Production Units.    

Over the years, the worldwide offshore industry has seen numerous oil & gas developments with operators focusing on mitigating reservoir risks. To address these inherent risks, operators aim at minimizing pre-investment by including the flexibility to adjust the facilities as needed.

For many years we have seen Floating Production Units (FPUs) deployed as extended well test units, early production systems, or even phasing the exploitation development. Often, the key reality is how to address the reservoir uncertainties. Many times FPUs are debottlenecked, relocated to different fields, other countries or even re-assessed for life extensions to accommodate unpredicted levels of production. FPUs are seen as prone to being relocated; especially if advertised as having the flexibility to relocate with a minimum impact on production.

At our August meeting Carlos Mastrangelo, Sr. VP with SBM Offshore will share SBM experiences with life extensions and relocations. He will include examples of real case scenarios in various environments and with different regulatory regimes.

The presentation will also address how disruption to production can be minimized, how to make the path forward to a flexible unit and how to consider a floating production unit as an asset to be re-assessed for redeployment in a new location or a new environment.

Easy oil is gone, both offshore and onshore. The industry must learn to deal with the inherent uncertainties of reservoirs. We know that we don't know enough about the reservoir to predict the production characteristics, profile and composition years from first oil. However, past experiences show it is not feasible to embed every scenario into the first development phase, risking the economics of the project itself. Therefore, the option for relocation, debottlenecking and/or life extensions must be considered from day one. SBM offshore has relocated, debottlenecked and extended lifetime dozens of times. The presentation will focus on its experiences.