ExxonMobil made a shift from SBM Offshore to Mitsui Ocean Development & Engineering Company Inc. (MODEC) for its fifth production vessel – Errea Wittu.
While construction is in its early stages, Exxon remains confident that MODEC can deliver and match the industry-leading standards set by SBM Offshore’s Guyana floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels. This is according to Exxon’s Guyana head, Alistair Routledge.
“Our early indications are that they are in fact, ahead of the project curbs on procurement activities, which we find encouraging. It is early days with that venture with MODEC but we are very encouraged,” he told a news conference on May 19.
MODEC signed a Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) contract back in November for the ‘Errea Wittu’ vessel for the Uaru development.
Errea Wittu will have an oil storage capacity of two million barrels, and oil production design rate of 250,000 barrels per day (bpd). The vessel will be able to offload approximately one million barrels onto a tanker in a period of approximately 24 hours.
The proposed FPSO vessel will be a new-built facility with double-hull protection. The project will draw crude from the Uaru, Mako and Snoek fields. The combined recoverable resource therein is 1.319 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to estimates from Rystad Energy.
To date, all the FPSOs for Exxon’s approved projects offshore Guyana have been built by SBM. The Liza Destiny and Unity are producing oil at the Stabroek Block, the Prosperity FPSO (Payara Development) arrived in April for first oil this year, and the ONE GUYANA FPSO (Yellowtail Development) is under construction in Singapore.
