Armada Claire FPSO sailing towards Balnaves field in Australia

Singapore’s Keppel Shipyard on Saturday held a sail away ceremony for the Armada Claire floating production and offloading unit, Malaysia’s The Sun Daily has reported.

The 240 meters long FPSO is now on its way to the Apache-operated Balnaves offshore oil field, located 180 kilometers off the coast of North West Australia. The vessel, owned by Malaysia’s Bumi Armada, underwent refurbishment and life extension works at Keppel’s Tuas yard. The works also included the installation and integration of topside modules.

The purpose-built double hull disconnectable FPSO has oil processing capacity of 80,000 barrels (bbls) per day, produced water handling capacity of 30,000 bbls per day, water injection capacity of 60,000 bbls per day, gas re-injection  capacity of 53 mmscfd and storage capacity of 750,000 bbls.

First oil from the Balnaves development, according to information found on Apache Corporation’s website, is scheduled for the first quarter of 2014.

The Balnaves Development Project has a field life of approximately 5 years. Gross production will peak at approximately 30,000 barrels of oil per day and the estimated gross recoverable resource is 17 million barrels of oil and 30 billion cubic feet of gas.

 Update: February 11, 2014

The news of the Armada Claire sail away ceremony has been confirmed by both Keppel and Bumi Armada in separate e-mails sent this morning to Offshore Energy Today.