BW Offshore’s FPSO staying until 2030’s end at North Sea field

May 8, 2026, by Melisa Cavcic

Oslo-headquartered BW Offshore has made arrangements to keep its floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel occupied until the end of the current decade at its ongoing assignment in the North Sea on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).

While announcing a contract extension for the FPSO BW Catcher, BW Offshore disclosed an agreement with the Catcher field partners to amend the contract period for the vessel. This unit is deployed at the Harbour Energy-operated Catcher field, around 173 kilometers southeast of Aberdeen, with associated fields, including Varadero, Burgman, and Laverda.

Marco Beenen, CEO of BW Offshore, commented: “We are strengthening the long‑term commercial framework for BW Catcher, adding material cash-flow visibility, while also improving our ability to market the unit for future opportunities.

“The Catcher FPSO is a high-specification, harsh-environment asset, making it a highly valuable redeployment unit. In the current strong FPSO market, enhanced contractual clarity and flexibility are key drivers for unlocking additional value over time.”

These amendments, effective from the start of February 2026, are said to convert the current contract into an agreement with a defined end-of-term framework to December 31, 2030, and remove the previous unilateral options for one-year extensions.

This is expected to increase the company’s firm operating cash flow backlog by approximately $490 million as of that date. Since the revised contract structure provides BW Offshore with clarity on the end-of-contract timeline, it is interpreted to enable active marketing of the FPSO for new redeployment projects.

The updated terms are perceived to reflect a discount equivalent to 10% of the current bareboat charter day rate, applied as an offset against the operations and maintenance (O&M) day rate.

In addition, the parties have agreed on a revised production tariff structure from 2028 that introduces a cap linked to prevailing oil prices, while maintaining the existing tariff framework.

This FPSO extension comes shortly after BW Offshore won a front-end engineering and design (FEED) deal for an FPSO set to work at Equinor’s oil project off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.