ABS recently participated alongside industry and regulatory agencies in a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) unit workshop supported by the Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo, Gás e Biocombustíveis (IBP) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers following the OTC Brasil 2013 conference and exhibition, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The primary objective of the, “How to Extend Operating Life,” workshop was to facilitate discussion about upcoming frontiers in technology development and applying technology to evaluate the possibility of extending the service lives of FPSOs working offshore Brazil.
Class societies provide operators with critical information such as the steps taken in hull reassessment based on a review of the original design calculation results – as well as updated ones – and the in-service inspection plan for life extension’s relationship with these calculation results. A wise approach to extend FPSO life is to map the unit’s structural behavior according to Rule Requirements and to develop trend curves for each finding by accumulating the design and operations modifications and their consequences on structural behavior and global performance..
This way, designers, operators and ABS can understand how each specific critical point of the hull structure develops by years. Having this data would allow engineers to better predict the future behavior of the unit and then to accurately specify safety factors and reduce the number of additional complex numerical simulations and close-up surveys.
As an example, there is an FPSO life extension R&D project under way at BOTC, where ABS is studying the impact that modifying structural design parameters will have on an existing FPSO. These findings are being catalogued so they can be incorporated into a new Guide on life extension based on ABS’ existing Rules for Building and Classing Floating Production Installations (FPI Rules).
It is important for industry to collect more data and periodically reevaluate global performance of FPSO units so operators and class societies alike can have a clear understanding of and develop best practices for service life monitoring and maintenance.
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