Floater Concept Selection for Ultradeep Waters in Brazil

Abstract

Uncertainties on design basis during early design stages of offshore fields are a known challenge to deal with when selecting feasible development options. Ultradeep water discoveries have hampered these choices.The scope of this paper is to describe the methodology applied for the identification of most suitable floater(s) to operate in an ultradeep waters block located in the Campos Basin south-east of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The block of study is located in a remote area far from shore within water depths nearly to 3000 m.FPSO and semisubmersible floaters are identified as the most preferable floaters. The paper will show the combination of most important design players and decision trees for reaching flexible solutions feasible for several production scenarios at an early project stage.Technical players such as Brazilian environmental conditions, variable risers and topsides loads, variable storage capacities, and floater motion restrictions have been combined with commercial and risk players, such as ultradeep waters technology maturity, local content, market requirements, shipyards capacities and previous experience in the country with solutions adopted in similar fields, locations or depths.As a result, the study will show a number of floater options integrating one or two hulls feasible to develop on further design stages.