Floating Production Storage and Offloading Unit
A floating production storage and offloading ( FPSO , English floating production and storage unit ) is a ship that at Offshore -Gewinnung using rigs or drill holes of the recovered for production, storage, cleaning and loading oil or natural gas is used.
Former tankers and new constructions built for this purpose are used as FPSOs , which take up, process and store the delivery volumes of the platforms by means of underwater pipeline transport , in order to pump them out again later for shipping or - in rare cases - for further transport via pipelines .
FPSOs are usually used in offshore operations because they eliminate the need to build a complex and expensive pipeline infrastructure at the site of production.
Examples of units still operating in the Atlantic are the SeaRose FPSO , which works for Husky Energy and Petro-Canada off Newfoundland , and (2010) the world's largest Kizomba A , built by Hyundai for ExxonMobil , 320 kilometers off Angola , which has a capacity of 2.2 million Barrels or 350,000 m³.
The Petrojarl Cidade de Rio das Ostras , which has been operating off the Brazilian coast since 2008, was designed for the purification and storage of particularly heavy crude oil with an API grade of 12.5 . On this ship, not only water, but also paraffin , hydrogen sulfide and other fractions are separated using thermal processes .
FSO and FSU
As a Floating Storage and Offloading vessel ( FSO ) vessels are called, which only serve as a storage and transfer stations. The largest and longest tanker in the world, the Years Viking , was named Knock Nevis as FSO . FSO Asia and FSO Africa are sister ships of the currently largest ships in the world (2013). The FPSO far exceeds its capacity.
Ships that are only used for storage, such as the Belokamenka in Kola Bay, are known as floating storage units ( FSU ).
