Publications

As subsea oil is discovered in increasingly remote areas, the viability of recovery often has unacceptable limitations of both a physical and financial/economical nature. To overcome those problems, floating production systems are being developed. A floating production system is defined therefore as a production system which uses either subsea or conventional completion equipment, linked to a floating production platform with either storage and a shuttle tanker loading system incorporated or with -storage and a shuttle tanker loading system as separate unit. These systems are advantageous for the following situations: 1) When an early start of production is the prime consideration. 2) Small oilfields, which are not economical to produce using the conventional pipeline and fixed platform approach. 3) Marginal fields, where prolonged testing of reservoirs is needed. 4) Reservoirs of an irregular shape, where deviated drilling patterns are found to be uneconomical . 5) Where either the waterdepth or location makes it economically or technically unattractive to follow the pattern of a con- ventional offshore development. 6) In case cash flow has to be generated as early as possible during the investment in expensive and probably more sophisticated conventional offshore development systems. This paper will look into the floating production systems, developed to cope with the above stated situations.