FPSO vessel arrives at Greater Tortue Ahmeyim LNG project site
BP announced on June 4 that the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel had reached the final site of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) LNG project, situated on the maritime border of Mauritania and Senegal.
The FPSO vessel is currently being moored at the site, 40 km offshore in a water depth of 120 m. It will be operated by BP on behalf of the project’s partners: BP, PETROSEN, Société Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures (SMH), and Kosmos Energy. The project will produce gas from reservoirs in deep water, approximately 120 km offshore, through a subsea system.
Following the completion of its construction at the COSCO Qidong Shipyard in China, the FPSO traveled more than 12,000 nautical miles to the GTA site.
The GTA Phase 1 development is expected to produce around 2.3mn tonnes/year of LNG for more than 20 years. It is the first gas development in this new basin offshore Mauritania and Senegal.
The FPSO will process over 500mn ft3/day of gas and remove water, condensate, and impurities from the gas before transferring it via pipeline to the floating LNG vessel at the hub terminal approximately 10 km offshore.
At the FLNG vessel, which reached the site earlier this year, the gas will be cryogenically cooled, liquefied, and stored before being transferred to LNG carriers for export. Some of the gas is allocated to help meet growing demand in the two host countries.
In February of the previous year, BP and its partners, confirmed the development concept for the second phase of the GTA LNG project. This development, known as GTA Phase 2 expansion project (GTA2), will be evaluated for a gravity-based structure (GBS) as the foundation, with an anticipated total capacity ranging between 2.5-3mn tonnes/year.