Offshore marine and engineering consultancy Aqualis Offshore has been awarded the position keeping role for the installation of Total’s Egina FPSO offshore Nigeria.

    Aqualis Offshore said on Wednesday that the work was awarded by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI), the EPCIC contractor for the FPSO.

    The newbuild FPSO was towed from South Korea and arrived in Nigeria in late January for final integration of topside modules built in Lagos.

    Once the FPSO is located at the Egina field, Aqualis Offshore will manage the position keeping procedure and provide position keeping masters offshore while the vessel is being connected to the pre-installed mooring spread. In total, the Egina FPSO will be spread moored on 16 mooring lines.

    Phil Lenox, director for Asia Pacific at Aqualis Offshore, said: “Having last year successfully managed the position keeping roles for the Ichthys Venturer FPSO and Ichthys Explorer central processing facility, we are no stranger to installing large offshore structures. We look forward to supporting SHI and Total with the Egina FPSO, which is a challenging deepwater field development.”

    The FPSO, operated by Total, is 330 meters long, with 61 meters across and 34 meters high, with a storage capacity of 2.3 million barrels of oil. The FPSO will be moored at the Egina oil field, located some 130 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria at water depths of more than 1,500 meters.

    When operational, Egina, the largest FPSO in Total’s fleet, will be producing 200,000 barrels per day, increasing Nigeria’s daily production by 10 percent.