MODEC, Inc. (MODEC) has announced that it has signed a contract with Sumitomo Heavy Industries to build a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit for British energy giant Shell’s Gato do Mato project in the pre-salt oil field of the Santos Basin in Brazil.
Under the contract, Sumitomo Heavy Industries will be responsible for building the bow hull of MODEC’s next-generation FPSO Gato do Mato. The collaboration is being hailed as a major milestone for the Japanese shipbuilding industry.
It is understood that MODEC has won the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for FPSO Gato do Mato in April 2024, and signed a purchase and sale agreement for this type of FPSO and a 20-year FPSO operation and maintenance contract with Shell in March 2025. Under the contract, MODEC will be responsible for the design of the hull and all related topside facilities of FPSO Gato do Mato.
FPSO Gato do Mato will adopt a customized new generation hull to meet the 25-year design life, with a daily production capacity of 120,000 barrels and the ability to produce associated gas and water. It will be moored at a water depth of about 2,000 meters, about 250 kilometers from the coast of Brazil. The stable crude oil produced will be stored in the FPSO tanks and then unloaded to shuttle tankers for transportation to the market. This is the 19th FPSO developed by MODEC for Brazil and the second offshore unit that the company has directly delivered to Shell for operation in Brazil.
The Gato do Mato project is located in the Santos Basin, approximately 200 kilometers offshore Brazil, at a water depth of approximately 2,000 meters. It is a pre-salt condensate gas discovery area covering two adjacent blocks: BM-S-54 (concession contract signed in 2005) and Sul de Gato do Mato (production sharing agreement signed in 2017). It is expected to be put into production in 2029 and the final investment decision (FID) was made in March 2025.
The Gato do Mato project consortium includes Shell (operator, 50%), Ecopetrol (30%), TotalEnergies (20%) and Pré-Sal Petróleo (PPSA), the latter being the production sharing contract (PSC) manager.