Photos: Western Isles FPSO Arrives in Rotterdam

Photo: Vuyk Engineering Rotterdam

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.

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.