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Reservoir data allow shipbuilder to increase production capacity in Guyana
—-SBM CEO
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dutch-shipbuilder SBM, Øivind Tangen
Kaieteur News- Øivind Tangen, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dutch-shipbuilder SBM Offshore has disclosed that reservoir data on Guyana’s Stabroek Block which is operated by ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) is what enables optimisation of the Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading units (FPSOs) for higher oil production rates.
SBM Offshore, operates three FPSOs for ExxonMobil in Guyana with two more to come (One Guyana and Jaguar). The Liza Destiny, Liza Unity, and Prosperity FPSOs are currently producing a combined 650,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
FPSO Unity (Reservoir data allow shipbuilder to increase production capacity in Guyana)
The Liza 1 project, utilising the Liza Destiny vessel, was initially designed for production of 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), later optimised and is currently producing 157,000 bpd. The Liza Unity FPSO, which started in February 2022 with a capacity of 220,000 bpd, was also optimised. Recently, Exxon disclosed that this vessel is producing 252,000 bpd but disclosed that there are plans to hit a daily output of 270,000 bpd.
The Prosperity vessel, which began production in November 2023, had a quick increase in its production. The vessel reached 100,000 bpd in November, then exceeded 180,000 bpd by the end of December. This vessel’s current authorized production capacity is 252,000 bpd.
During an interview with OilNow, Tangen spoke about how SBM works closely with Exxon to ramp up production levels on these assets through a process called debottlenecking. This process involves identifying areas and equipment on the vessels and making changes to safely increase production.
Tangen said, “When you design an offshore asset, there’s a lot of theoretical assumptions and sort of conservative assumptions into the design, so you’re certain that you can cater for whatever the reservoir delivers.” He added that once real-time reservoir data becomes available, it creates an opportunity to fine-tune the vessel, moving away from the initial conservative assumptions to “an optimised operating philosophy.”
SBM’s CEO simply noted that the debottlenecking approach involves integrating real data into the FPSO design concept, allowing production rates to increase. “You can make, with very minor modifications to the asset, or non-modifications at all, have a higher throughput, and that’s what we’ve been able to do,” he shared. Moreover, Tangen highlighted that the company, “Look at it holistically and say, what are the production rates that we can achieve on any given asset without bringing it outside of its design and operating envelope.”
He stressed that the optimisation of the FPSOs stay within the asset’s original design and safety parameters. Notably, the CEO outlined that adjusting production of offshore assets based on real data is a standard practice. “Not just for debottleneck, but in general terms, you always make a design from very few data points, so it caters for a whole lot of variations of those and once you get into real operation, you have the real data on which you can always optimise,” he shared. In Guyana’s case, he said that these adjustments have led to “increasing production throughput perfectly within the operating envelope of the original design and the safety barriers that we have in place in that design, of course.”
(Reservoir data allow shipbuilder to increase production capacity in Guyana)
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