ABS brings Swiss player on board FPSO project being undertaken for Petrobras

The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), a classification society, has hand-picked Switzerland-headquartered structural performance management software solutions provider Akselos to provide software to monitor one of the four floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) units in the Cessão Onerosa region of the pre-salt Santos Basin off the coast of Brazil.

Thanks to a contract to provide and test a digital twin solution for real-time condition monitoring for one of Petrobras’ FPSOs, ABS has hired Akselos to deploy the Akselos Structural Performance Management software that will be evaluated over a year by monitoring one of the four FPSO units in the Cessão Onerosa oil field.

Matthew Tremblay, ABS Vice President, Global Offshore, commented: “Condition monitoring is an important process for supporting older assets. ABS has deep technical knowledge and experience supporting clients with effective life extension programs.

“The key is to maintain safety. The life extension evaluation process takes place to verify that the unit will be able to operate in conformance with existing safety standards beyond its design life. Incorporating real-time operational data from Akselos will provide even more information to improve our analysis for Petrobras.” 

The ABS solution will provide a digital twin of the asset. Petrobras bought 5 billion barrels of oil and equivalent gas rights in the areas, known as the Cessao Onerosa, in 2010. As a result, the Brazilian firm secured the right to produce, with 100% participation, a volume of up to 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in six blocks in the pre-salt of the Santos Basin, which are now the fields of Búzios, Sépia, Atapu, Norte de Berbigão, Sul de Berbigão, Norte de Sururu, Sul de Sururu, Itapu, Sul de Lula, and Sul de Sapinhoá.

Thomas Leurent, Chief Executive Officer of Akselos, highlighted: “Through our expertise in structural performance management, we are able to offer simulations of the Petrobras FPSO with unprecedented speed, scalability and accuracy. We have the unique capability to simulate the structural integrity of the entire FPSO in real-time and at high fidelity. In this way, the asset life can be extended as safely as possible.” 

The auction of surplus volumes of the Cessao Onerosa transfer of rights took place in 2019, and Petrobras acquired the areas of Búzios in consortium with the Chinese companies, CNODC Brasil Petróleo e Gás (5%) and CNOOC Petroleum Brasil (5%), and Itapu, as sole operator (100%). The start of operations of the FPSO P-71, installed in the pre-salt area of ​​the Itapu field, was originally scheduled for 2023 but occurred in December 2022, earlier than planned.

During the transfer of rights period, the firm operated four platforms in the Búzios wells: P-74, P-75, P-76, and P-77. In December 2023, the number of operated FPSOs increased to five and the Brazilian player plans to install another six platforms at the site. Five years after the start of operations, the Búzios field reached a cumulative production of 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in June 2023.

While the American Bureau of Shipping secured work with BP for a batch of services related to a floating production unit (FPU) destined to work at a deepwater project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Akselos inked a strategic enterprise agreement with Shell to expand their existing collaboration to the energy major’s worldwide oil and gas portfolio.

Meanwhile, Petrobras explains that around 80% of its total production comes from the pre-salt layer, which is set to grow as the firm’s strategic plan foresees an investment of $73 billion in E&P from the planned $102 billion investment between 2024 and 2028, with 67% of this amount earmarked exclusively for the pre-salt layer.

The company sees oil and gas as drivers of growth, which will propel and fund the energy transition to greener sources of supply. The Brazilian player plans to deploy 14 new FPSO vessels over five years. Petrobras is also working on multiple projects outside Brazil, including two discoveries offshore Colombia that have raised the gas potential in the Guajira Offshore Basin to approximately 6 trillion cubic feet (tcf).

Recently, the firm also got the green light to acquire a stake in the Deep Western Orange Basin (DWOB) block in the Orange Basin, where TotalEnergies, Shell, and Galp recently made oil discoveries.