Build Modified Quality FPSO,Chase a Deep Blue Dream—— Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry and MODEC Cooperate in Offshore Oil and Gas Equipment Retrofitting

Guan Xiongjie

On July 18, in the calm and sparkling sea of Dalian, the 11th FPSO Almirante Barroso retrofitted by Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry for MODEC, set sail on a new journey to the working oilfield in Brazil.

In 2007, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry and MODEC started a friendly cooperation journey and lasted for more than 15 years. Working hand in hand for 15 years, we have been pursuing a deep blue dream, and the two sides formed a deep strategic cooperative partnership. The delivery of the ship has injected new momentum into the deep friendship and continuous cooperation between the two sides.

Open up new ground with mutual trust

In 2006, with the completion and operation of the 300,000-ton floating dock “Dalian” and the 300,000-tons ship repair dock and related supporting facilities, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry began to fully implement the product transformation strategy of “developing both ship repair and shipbuilding, steadily advancing, and making efforts in ‘special’”. At that time, with the continuous offshore oil and gas development, the international demand for FPSO was increasing. At the same time, China increased its support for ocean development. In this background, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry prepared the “FPSO repair industry market research report”, with a detailed analysis of the development trend and prospects of the FPSO modification market, based on their own strong ship modification strength, decided to take FPSO modification as a breakthrough in entering the offshore engineering market, and continued to improve the competitive strength in this field through the construction and improvement of its software and hardware.

In 2006, when Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry was entering the offshore engineering product m o d i f i c a t i o n m a r k e t, M O D E C company sent people to China to find an ideal FPSO modification base, in order to make a breakthrough in the Chinese market. Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry won the trust of MODEC company with its advantages of qualified hardware facilities, perfect production organization and management, rich experience in the offshore engineering products repair and the development concept of the offshore engineering products modification. In the end, MODEC decided to give the FPSO modification business to Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry.

In March 2007, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry and MODEC company formally signed a project contract on retroffiting the VLCC “Helios Toshie Uematsu” into FPSO, mainly including 6500-ton steel structure, 20000m2 oil tank special coating, 30000 m pipeline renewing, 270000 m cable laying, the contract vaslue of $35 million, the largest domestic contract target ship modification order, thus unveiling the Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry entering the FPSO modification market.

Shortly after the retrofitting project began, MODEC added an additional 21 upper modules installation and integretion project, seven of which were manufactured by Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry. In July and December 2007, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry again undertook the FPSO modification project of MODEC -- “Ocean Pride” and “Carp”; in June 2008, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry signed the fourth FPSO modification contract with MODEC; in April 2009, the fifth “Rising Sun” modification contract was signed, which became the largest modification order for single ship repair industry at that time.

Hammer out good products with one heart

At the first regular project meeting, Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry and MODEC plant residing proeject team set the target, that is, “work together to make every FPSO modification project into a high-quality project”. With the continuous progress of the project, the record created by the previous project has been continuously broken by the subsequent projects. Dalian COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry and MODEC Company have made one concerted effort and made one quality work after another.

In September 2008, “Helios Toshie Uematsu” was successfully named and delivered, its engineering quantity and technical difficulty were far more than the Panamax oil tanker “Ocean Pride”, after the completion of the retrofitting, it became the world's very large FPSO integrating offshore oil production, processing, storage and transport of the global largest tonnage, and the main parameters are among the top in the world. Named in November 2009, the “Cypress Pine” has 350 million m3 natural gas daily processing capacity, it is the world's first FPSO with higher gas processing capacity than oil processing capacity. Starting In April 2013, the “Songjie” has been applied for the first time by AM 3 D modeling software to the offshore engineering modification project, formed a new offshore engineering modification design mode with the core of 3D modeling and unit design. Delivered in December 2016, the “Stade” added many hi-tech and large-difficulty production modules, such as oil and gas separation, compressed air, and power stations, conquered new processes and new techs including titanium alloy pipe system welding, super bidirectional stainless steel welding, superlarge size module long-distance transfer, inclined ventilation tower installation. The delivery of the 11th FPSO Almirante Barroso in June 2022 set the largest record for the overall construction and lifting of the FPSO flare tower in China...

At the Almirante Barroso delivery ceremony, COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry Chairman Liang Yanfeng said his company has formed deep strategic partnership with MODEC company in jointly building the boutique project, the two sides will take the project delivery as an opportunity to continue to deepen cooperation, jointly create more high-quality products, and strive to make greater contribution to the offshore oil and gas industry.