Newbuild FSO design wins thumbs-up from ABS

OceanStar Marine & Offshore Investment, a subsidiary of Singapore’s OceanStar Elite group of companies, has received a blessing from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) in the form of a recent approval in principle (AIP) for its newbuild floating storage and offloading (FSO) design, which is expected to help come to grips with the rising demand for storage capacity in the offshore energy industry.

Featuring a shipshape hull design specifically developed to cater to midsize FSOs with a storage capacity to scale up to 750,000 barrels of oil for operational demands in the Asia Pacific and African coastal offshore fields, the OceanSTAR FSO-01 comes with a larger strengthened deck area, expandable living quarters and piping routings that can adapt to topsides for either FPSO or FPU applications.

Matt Tremblay, ABS Vice President for Global Offshore, commented:  “The floating production market is a cornerstone of ABS’ leading position in the offshore side of classification. We are proud to work with OceanStar on their latest FSO design which promises to support the growing demand for storage capacity.”

According to OceanStar Marine & Offshore Investment, Bureau Veritas (BV) has also delivered the basic design assessment for this FSO design. The company explains that the basic engineering design availability will expedite the delivery of the newbuild hull, a critical component to any floater’s development requirement.

“This expedited new delivery and generic design will offer competitive pricing compared to existing trading tanker hull. The new build will offer long-term (>30 years) high asset integrity and will also provide flexibility for contract extension or future multi redeployment options,” outlined the Singapore player.

One of OceanStar’s recent achievements is the newly built hull FPU Trunojoyo-01, which achieved the first gas in the fourth quarter of 2022. This FPU, constructed in China, has a design capacity of 175 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d).

The FPU Trunojoyo 01, made for the Madura satellite fields (M satellite fields) in the Madura Strait, comes with a length of 160 meters and a width of 32 meters. OceanStar also won work for FPSO and FSO projects with Yinson, MISC, BW Offshore, and SOECHI.