Shapoorji Pallonji’s FPSO Armada Sterling V, India’s largest “Floater”, achieves sail-away readiness

Shapoorji Pallonji’s FPSO Armada Sterling V, India’s largest “Floater”, achieves sail-away readiness

• Designed for continuous operations up to wave heights of over 27 metres
• Engineered and delivered by a team of Indi­an engineers and project personnel
• Design life of 20 years, without need for dry docking

Shapoorji Pallonji Oil and Gas Private Limi­ted (SP O&G), India’s sole specialist in floating pro­duction storage and offloading units (FPSOs), has achieved a significant milestone of sail-away readiness for its FPSO Armada Ster­ling V at Sembcorp Shipyard in Singapore. The FPSO is owned by SP O&G’s 70:30 joint venture with Malaysia’s Bumi Armada Group. This is Shapoorji Pallonji’s fourth FPSO and its third FPSO for Indian waters.

FPSO Armada Sterling V will be deployed in Cluster 2 of ONGC’s KG 98/2 block in the east coast of India, which is ONGC’s first deep-water development. ONGC is investing over US $5 billion on this development, which includes an FPSO, a process platform and other facilities. The overall production of Cluster 2 is expected to peak at approximately 16.5 million standard cubic metres per day of gas and 78,000 barrels per day of crude oil, with the potential to re­duce India’s annual import bill by $4.5 billion. At this crucial time, ONGC’s committed efforts to the project’s success will go a long way to­war­ds ensuring India’s energy security. The project has provided valuable deep-water experience to ONGC and will give it enormous confidence to pursue challenging ultra-deep-water developments in India’s east coast.

The FPSO features 13 modules and central piperacks, weighing over 20,000 tonnes, with a processing capacity of approximately 60,000 barrels per day of liquids and 3 million standard cubic metres per day of gas. It will be the largest “floater” in Indian waters, measuring 321 metr­es in length and 60 metres in width, with a storage capacity of over 800,000 barrels.

Armada Sterling V is designed for continuous operations up to maximum wave heights of over 27 metres. It is engineered and delivered by a team of Indian engineers and project personnel. It is equipped with state-of-the-art technologies, including artificial intelligence and machi­ne learning aspects, radar-controlled oil slick monitoring technologies and remote monitoring.

Mr Ravi Shankar, Chief Executive Officer and Director of SP O&G, commented, “In the next decade, the world will need an additional 40 FPSOs, at least 20 floating storage and re­gasification units (FSRUs), and 10 floating liquified natural gas units (FLNGs). We are well positioned to deliver large projects efficiently with state-of-the-art in-house engineering, project management teams, and operations and maintenance capabilities. We have the advantage of the high quality talent pool that India provides for the offshore industry. The capabilities we have developed will gradually enable In­dian shipyards and fabrication entities to tran­sition from conventional shipbuilding to ha­nd­ling technologically advanced vessels.”

Mr Ankit Garg, President, Projects of SP O&G, noted, “We are working towards leveraging the enormous potential of artificial intellige­nce. We equip our FPSOs with artificial inte­lli­­gence solutions, which allows us to better plan maintenance, thereby ensuring continuous oil and gas production.”

Despite challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic and supply chain disruptions on ac­c­ount of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the ONGC team has stretched to ensure timely delivery of oil and gas to the nation.

The FPSO is financed by a consortium of Indian banks and the bond market. Mr Venkata Sethuraman, president and chief financial officer of SP O&G, thanked the lenders for their confidence in Shapoorji Pallonji’s capabilities and for their support to this project, which is critical to India’s energy security. The Ministry of Manpower of Singapore has awarded this FPSO the prestigious SHARP awa­rd for two years in a row, for being the best performing FPSO project in terms of safety and health.

The joint ventures of SP O&G and the Bumi Armada Group also operate two FPSOs, Armada Sterling and Armada Sterling II, in the west coast of India with one of the best uptimes in the FPSO industry. Both these FPSOs recently achieved the coveted 5-star rating from the British Safety Council in all three do­mains, namely, Occupational Health and Sa­fe­ty Management System, Process Safety Mana­gement System and Environmental Sustaina­bility Management System. They have also won the prestigious Globe of Honour award from the British Safety Council.