Australian FPSO cutting its ties to two oilfields after 26 years

As it continues to tick off items from its decommissioning list, a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel in the Timor Sea is severing its bonds with two oilfields off the coast of Australia. To this end, a new milestone has been reached in its progress, enabling it to remove the possibility of oil leakage.

The Department of Industry, Science, Energy & Resources (DISER) and its contractors, on behalf of the Australian government, are set on ensuring the safe, efficient, and responsible decommissioning of the FPSO Northern Endeavour, which has been stationed at the Corallina and Laminaria oilfields about 550 kilometers northwest of Darwin in the Timor Sea for more than two decades.

While the decommissioning and remediation are expected to take several years and involve three phases, Phase 1, which entails decommissioning and disconnecting the FPSO from the subsea equipment, is well underway, as the vessel has been disconnected from the two oilfields in April 2025, when the series of risers and umbilical pipelines that connected the FPSO to these fields were removed.

This is considered to be a significant milestone in the decommissioning program that reduces risk to people and the environment, as the eight risers and umbilical pipelines, which connected the FPSO Northern Endeavour to the Corallina and Laminaria oilfields for 26 years, were cut and lowered to the seabed by the Skandi Hercules multi-purpose vessel and Petrofac Facilities Management, hired as Phase 1 contractor in 2022.

Thanks to the removal of the connection between the 274-meter-long FPSO and the wells, it is believed that there is no risk of oil leaking from the unit, which is interpreted to mark an important point in the FPSO’s history since its initial connection to the subsea wells in 1999.

While Wood was picked to oversee the first decommissioning phase of the vessel, Xodus was tasked with providing advice on project coordination, regulatory and environmental, health and safety, technical, quality assurance, and contract management for the same phase.

As nine mooring chains keep the FPSO Northern Endeavour connected to the seabed, keeping the vessel safely in place, cutting the chains will be one of the last steps to be taken before removing the FPSO from the field. This operation is on the agenda for later in 2025.

Once this is over, Phase 2 of the decommissioning program will encompass the permanent plugging and well abandonment, followed by Phase 3, which covers the removal of subsea infrastructure and remediation of the Laminaria and Corallina fields.