Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS) announced that on December 20, it signed a contract with SBM Offshore of the Netherlands for the construction of the hull of the sixth 2.3 million barrel “general purpose” offshore Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit.
The FPSO follows SBM Offshore’s original “universal” hull design concept, which is based on the hull of an FPSO with a storage capacity of 2.3 million barrels of crude oil.
It has an overall length of 333 meters and a beam of 60 meters, with a deck area equivalent to three standard soccer fields and a displacement of 460,000 tons. The FPSO is designed and equipped with a multi-point mooring system, which can meet the marine environmental conditions in West Africa, South America and other regions, and is suitable for oil and gas development operations in a number of seas around the world.
With the signing of the latest contract, SWS’s FPSO hull orders from SBM Offshore amounted to six units, five of which have already been delivered.
The first four of these ships will be delivered in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023, respectively. The fifth FPSO, Jaguar, started construction in April 2023 and was signed for delivery on November 14 this year.
It is worth mentioning that with the delivery of FPSO “Jaguar”, SWS has completed and delivered 579 ships and offshore platforms in the past 25 years since its establishment, with a total amount of 102,587 DWT, making it the first shipyard in China whose total amount of completed ships has exceeded the 100 million DWT mark.
Meanwhile, SWS is the only shipyard in the world capable of simultaneously building large civilian vessels such as large cruise ships, car carriers (PCTC), container ships, bulk carriers and tankers, as well as offshore equipment.
At present, SWS handheld orders include not only large cruise ships, large and ultra-large PCTCs, ultra-large FPSOs, but also medium-large and ultra-large container ships, large and ultra-large oil tankers, etc., and the proportion of medium and high-end ship types has reached 100%.