PHOTO: Western Isles FPSO launched in China

China’s Cosco Shipyard on Thursday held a launching ceremony for Dana Petroleum’s Western Isles FPSO. 

According to Cosco, which built the floating production storage and offloading unit, the ceremony was held on Thursday in Qidong, China.

Cosco said the FPSO would „soon be towed“ to the North Sea, where it will be used by Dana Petroleum to produce oil from the Western Isles development in the UK.

Dana Petroleum, a UK North Sea operator, is working on bringing online its Western Isles development in 2017.

The project has experienced delays after Dana in 2015 made changes to technical requirements for the FPSO planned for deployment at its North Sea fields.

The FPSO of Sevan’s cylindrical design, built by Cosco in China, was originally scheduled for delivery in Q2 2015.

At the time, announcing the FPSO delivery delay, the shipbuilder said the delivery date would be pushed to the first quarter of 2017.

To remind, Offshore Energy Today in January reached out to Dana Petroleum to ask about the progress and the expected project start-up.

Dana’s spokesperson Gordon Welsh then responded: “Dana continues to work towards a first oil date in late 2017 for our Western Isles Project. This will involve the FPSO moving to European waters in the coming months for final preparatory work at a selected shipyard.”

According to unofficial information, the FPSO could sail away late in February, with first oil slated for November, however, Dana Petroleum would not confirm this.

The Dana-operated Western Isles Project will develop two discovered oil fields called Harris and Barra in the Northern North Sea, 160km east of the Shetlands and 12km west of Tern field. It involves a subsea development of at least five production and four water injection wells plus two exploration wells tied back to a new build FPSO with oil export using shuttle tankers.