Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras has officially launched the tender for the P-86 FPSO, which will be part of the revitalization plan for the Marlim Sul and Marlim Leste oil fields.
It is understood that the tender will be closed until April next year. The new ship adopts the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model. The bidder needs to build and operate the FPSO in the initial stage and then hand it over to Petrobras. This places higher demands on the bidding companies, requiring stronger financial and management capabilities.
P-86 is expected to be a medium-sized FPSO with a daily output of 140,000 barrels of oil and 7 million cubic meters of natural gas.
According to reports, several shipbuilders including Singapore’s Seatrium, South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean, China’s COOEC and CIMC Raffles are expected to be invited to participate in the tender.
The Marlim Sul and Marlim Leste oil fields were discovered in 1987 and began production in 1994 and 2009 respectively. In order to increase production, Petrobras launched a bid to introduce a new FPSO. The company said last year it would invest $64 billion in oilfield exploration and production by 2027. Its goal is to put 11 more FPSOs into operation to boost production to 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent.
At the end of last year, COOEC withdrew from the EPC bidding for the P-84 FPSO due to localization requirements, causing Petrobras to renegotiate with the only remaining bidder, Seatrium. In May this year, Seatrium announced that it had won the EPC general contract for Petrobras’ P-84 and P-85 FPSOs, with a total contract value of US$8.15 billion, and is scheduled to be delivered in 2029.
Among them, CIMC Raffles is responsible for building the hull, living quarters and some modules for P-84 and P-85. So far, CIMC Raffles has delivered the P-71 hull, P-78 hull sections and upper modules of multiple FPSO projects of Petrobras, and has undertaken the general contract for the construction of the P-80 and P-83 FPSO hulls.
Currently, Seatrium holds Petrobras’ EPC contracts for six FPSOs, namely P-78, P-80, P-82, P-83, P-84 and P-85.