Nigeria’s oil and gas sector is set to record another milestone as the $3.3 billion Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) unit built by Samsung Heavy Industries of Korea (SHI) for the 200,000 barrels per day capacity Egina oilfield sailed away in the early hours of Sunday from LADOL Free Zone in Lagos to the offshore field, investigation has revealed.
Having successfully completed the fabrication and integration works in Lagos, the FPSO will in three days’ time arrive at the Egina oilfield located in Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130, which is being developed at the cost of $16 billion by the French oil major, Total.
The FPSO sailed away from the quayside at Samsung Yard in Geoje, South Korea on October 31, 2017 and arrived at the Samsung Yard (SHI-MCI FZE quayside) in LADOL free zone in Lagos in January, where it was integrated locally by Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria (SHIN) Limited.
It was gathered that the fabrication and integration of the Egina FPSO in Nigeria was the first time such complex tasks were executed in Africa as there is no other FPSO integration yard elsewhere in the continent.
The SHI-MCI FZE located in LADOL Free Zone, is a fabrication and integration yard, the only one of its kind in Africa, built by SHI as part of the efforts to make Nigeria the hub of FPSO integration in Africa.
THISDAY gathered that with the completion of the fabrication and integration works, the FPSO, which is one of the world’s largest, will today enter into the offshore phase.
