The giant floating production, storage and offloading unit for Dana Petroleum’s Western Isles development project in the North Sea has reached Rotterdam following a seven-week trip from China.
The Western Isles FPSO was loaded aboard COSCO Shipping’s new semi-submersible heavy lift ship MV Xin Guang Hua in February following delivery from the Cosco shipyard in China. The FPSO, which has a storage capacity of up to 400,000 barrels of oil, is the first FPSO China has built for a foreign country.
Photo: Rotterdam Pilot via Twitter
Dana Petroleum’s $2 billion Western Isles Project involves the development two discovered oil fields called Harris and Barra in the Northern North Sea some 160km east of the Shetlands and 12km west of Tern field. The project involves a subsea development of at least five production and four water injection wells tied back to a newbuild FPSO, which will offload directly to shuttle tankers for export.
The MV Xin Guang Hua was built by Guangzhou Shipyard International in China and delivered to its owner COSCO Shipping Heavy Transport in December 2016. With a deadweight of 98,000 tonnes, it is the second-largest semi-submersible heavy lift ship in the world.
FPSO Loading:
Photo: Dana PetroleumPhoto: Dana PetroleumPhoto: Dana Petroleum
The prospect of a deal over Iran’s nuclear program saw oil fall sharply on Thursday. The reality is that Tehran has relatively little extra crude that it can bring back — but it could arrive in a market that’s gearing up for surplus.
Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow.
China’s widening trade surplus with the European Union is fueling fresh concerns that the 27-nation bloc risks becoming a dumping ground for cheap goods in the volatile tariff confrontation between Washington and Beijing.
May 15, 2025
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