More locals than ever before have been engaged to build fixtures for Guyana’s newest floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, ONE GUYANA. A steel strike ceremony was held at Industrial Steel Fabricators (InFab) Good Hope facility, on the East Bank of Demerara, to commemorate the start of construction.
The FPSO is being built for ExxonMobil’s fourth Stabroek Block development project, Yellowtail.
ZECO is the newest Guyanese company to join the ranks of qualified locals, alongside Guyana Oil and Gas Support Services Inc.(GOGSSI) and Infab. General Manager of SBM Offshore, Martin Cheong, said the two latter companies also constructed fixtures for the Prosperity FPSO, which is currently on its way to Guyana. Cheong said he is proud, as SBM Offshore’s first Guyanese General Manager, that more local companies are coming on board, and that the activity is a reflection of the company’s local content master plan.
“We will continue to expand our initiatives in this regard—engaging and building the capacity of local companies to drive the country’s oil and gas industry, and this is a goal that we are committed to,” Cheong said.
Prosperity FPSO first to be outfitted with fabricated steel from Guyana | OilNOW
ZECO’s General Manager, Mohinder Singh, said the company opened in 2002 as a small welding and fabrication shop, now expanded and transformed to provide construction, engineering, oilfield and labour supplies and services. ZECO has had to do a lot to build its capacity and standards to cinch this job.
The ONE GUYANA hull recently entered dry dock at the Keppel Shipyard, Singapore.
“It is not easy to have an FPSO being built in Asia, and to do steelwork for it here,” said GOGSSI Director, Nicholas Deygoo-Boyer. He explained that the steel has to be shipped from Asia for steelwork in Guyana, then returned to Asia to be fixed on the vessel.
“That’s a commitment to local content,” Deygoo-Boyer said. He commended ExxonMobil and its sub-contractors for starting the ball rolling, even before the Local Content Act, by having their own internal local content policies to drive participation. The Stabroek Block consortium has also contributed considerably to the development of local content, with investments in the Centre for Local Business Development.
President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge noted the steel strike is a significant development in local content implementation, which is crucial in bringing the benefits of the industry to the people of Guyana. “It takes strategy and a whole lot of collaboration to accomplish this,” he stated.
Martin Pertab, Director of the Local Content Secretariat, stressed the importance of collaboration with the private sector to find the right balance, and committed to expanding on the progress that has been made.
The ONE GUYANA vessel is being designed to produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day, with an associated gas treatment capacity of 450 million cubic feet per day and water injection capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. The floater will be moored in water depth of about 1,800 metrrs and will be able to store around two million barrels of crude oil.
The project’s turnkey phase is being executed in conjunction with United States engineering and construction company, McDermott, under a special purpose company. In it, SBM Offshore holds 70% and McDermott 30% equity ownership. But the FPSO will be fully owned by SBM Offshore.
