Saipem awarded Schneider Electric a contract to design, fabricate and pre-commission two E-House modules, fully-integrated technical buildings, to support the Total E&P Angola-operated deep offshore Kaombo FPSO project.
Located 260km offshore Luanda in water depths ranging from 1400-1950 m, the Kaombo project will develop oil fields with estimated reserves of 650 MMbbl, covering an area of 800sq km.
Schneider Electric’s E-House solution meets all the challenging technical specifications and standards defined by the customer in Kaombo project. Each of the two E-House modules will be 30 m long by 20 m high on 2 stories, and weighs approximately 1300-tonne.
Design engineering and project management will be performed from Schneider Electric’s Asia-Pacific E-House Engineering Center in Brisbane, Australia. The construction, equipment integration and testing will be carried out onto an offsite yard in Batam, Indonesia. Final integration of the FPSO will take place in Singapore before a final transfer up to Angolan's coasts.
The Kaombo development scheme includes two floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, each with a production capacity of 115,000 b/d, capable of producing 50 MW electrical energy through gas turbines. Associated gas will be exported to the onshore Angola LNG plant. The Kaombo project includes 59 subsea wells, connected through around 300km of subsea lines.
Saipem France is the contractor in charge of the engineering, procurement, supply, construction, and commissioning for the FPSOs.
These two FPSOs will be the first turret moored production plants based on converted very large crude carriers (VLCCs) for Total. The final investment decision to develop the project was made in April 2014, concluding an intensive optimization exercise that reduced capital expenditure from $20 billion to $16 billion, with start-up expected in 2017.
The delivery of the first technical building for Kaombo project will be early 2016 for a first oil expected in 2017.