BW Offshore offloads FPSO in pursuit of floating energy investments

As part of its strategy to transition to floating energy infrastructure investments, Norway’s FPSO operator BW Offshore has completed the sale of a floating, production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel to a buyer, whose name was not revealed.

BW Offshore revealed on Wednesday, 19 April 2023, that it had closed the sale of the FPSO BW Athena to an undisclosed company. According to the firm, the sale of the FPSO will have “a limited positive effect” on results to be presented for 2Q 2023. At the time of closing, the unit was unencumbered and debt free.

The FPSO BW Athena was converted in 2012. This vessel has an oil processing capacity of 30,000 bbl/d, a gas handling capacity of 3.7 mmscfd, a water injection capacity of 30,000 bbl/d, and a storage capacity of 50,000 bbl.

This divestment comes a little over a month after BW Offshore sold the FPSO BW Opportunity. In addition, the company got rid of several vessels last year, including the FPSO Cidade de São Vicente and the FPSO BW Joko Tole.

Furthermore, BW Offshore is working on expanding the niche oil and gas segment by redeploying existing FPSOs and divesting non-core assets. To this end, the company is engaged in divestment dialogues for FPSOs:  Abo, Espoir Ivoirien and Sendje Berge and aims to close these deals in 1H 2023.

Additionally, the FPSO operator expects the recycling of the FPSO Petróleo Nautipa late in 2023 and the conclusion of the sale of the FPSO Polvo in 2Q 2023.

Meanwhile, BW Offshore recently secured another short-term contract extension with Eni for the FPSO Abo, which is carrying out operations on a field located offshore Nigeria.