LNG back in the spotlight

If the presentations at this year's event held in Florence, Italy are anything to go by, LNG is right back in the spotlight. In particular, floating oil production, storage and offloading (FPSO) technology was showcased. GE has just gained an order for an FPSO platform being built to develop the Guará Norte section of the Tupi oilfield in Brazil's Santos oil basin.

The multimillion-barrel, deep-water Santos formation lies 190 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. GE will supply the FPSO's builder SBM Offshore (SBMO) with four GE LM2500+G4 aeroderivative gas turbines, two turbocompressor trains driven by GE PGT25 gas turbines for CO2 compression and six motor-driven GE compressors by the end of 2012.

The FPSO will work in water 7,545 ft deep. It is designed to process 150,000 bpd of production fluids to treat 6,000,000 m3/day of associated gases for CO2 and H2S removal/compression and to inject 180,000 bpd water into the ground. Delivery of the FPSO is set for 2014.

See March/April issue of Turbomachinery International magazine for more.