Oil & Gas

FPSOs

The floating production sector has been going ahead full steam for the past couple of years. But lately, slumping oil prices and the financial crisis has been slowing down activity by several knots.

Still, the long term prospects remain promising, as, in order to meet the world’s energy demands, the industry will have to move into deeper waters and harsher environments, where FPSOs continue to be the best answer.

The Nexus FPSO was one of Ramboll Oil & Gas' greatest projects

On top of FPSOs

FPSOs come in different shapes and sizes, but whether we are talking about converted tankers, or purpose-built ship and cylindrical shaped vessels, there is relatively little space on board. These circumstances naturally call for highly optimized topsides designs, which is one of our key areas of expertise.

Durable design solutions

Built upon our vast experience designing topsides for traditional rigs in harsh environments, we have further developed our topsides designs to also fit the dynamic movements and confined space of an FPSO. And we have accomplished this without compromising operability, safety or cost. Simply put, we offer durable solutions that meet the highest HSE standards and ensure our customers a high return on investment.

Two of our most well-known successes are topsides designs for Kanfa/Sevan Marine’s cylinder shaped platform, Piranema, and the first Nexus FPSO built by Samsung Heavy Industries.

Ramboll was responsible for the topsides engineering on the innovative cylindrical Piranema FPSO

From ship-shaped vessels to cylinder shaped platforms

The Nexus FPSO is a large, generic ship-shaped FPSO with harsh environment capability designed to operate in hurricane and typhoon prone waters as well as, for example, the North Sea where the weather conditions are generally volatile. The Nexus was a grand scale international project, which was completed on time and within budget. For Kanfa/Sevan Marine’s innovative cylinder shaped platforms, which due to their geostationary properties are both wave and windproof, we were able to design a topsides able to nestle neatly within its curvaceous confines, also on time and within budget.

Ramboll provides consultancy services within oil, gas and offshore wind energy

Safety on board

Safety is a key concern on all rigs, and we have made risk and safety studies an integral part of service portfolio. We have conducted comprehensive risk and safety studies on most of our FPSO projects ranging from hazard identification to marine analyses. Using advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics-based modelling and simulations, we are able to anticipate accidents with great accuracy, design against them, and set down necessary safety procedures.

Managing it all

Demand for project management skills and resources is high for projects of a magnitude such as FPSO topsides process design. We have through the successful conclusion of several such projects proven our project management capabilities to the satisfaction of all of our customers.