The development of the giant oil fields of Albacora, Mariim, and Barracuda, in Campos Basin, Brazil, discovered in the late 80's, represented an enormous challenge for Petrobras. Considering that the existing pipeline network in Campos Basin was already at maximum capacity, the use of FPSOs showed to be the most attractive floating production concept for the development of these fields. Petrohras experience with such units began back in 197/9 with an FPSO moored to a Tower-Yoke system in shallow water Garoupa Field. Petrobrns has Installed, since then, seven FPSOs/FSOs. By June of 2000 four more units will be in operation and two more are planned to be installed by the end of 2001. In this paper some operational aspects of these FPSO's will be discussed, such as global efficiency, production loss causes and process plant uptime. This paper will also address the definition of the environmental design criteria for the various activities usually carried out in an FPSO, such as plant operation, production riser's pull-in and offioading manoeuvres. The importance of the experience acquired In the last twenty years for the improvement of the new FPSO units will be also pointed out, as well as the experience gathered in recent years with the new turret moored FPSOs.
The first mono-huU floating production unit to operate in Campos Basin (and one of the first FPSOs in the world) was the former tanker P.P.Moraes. This 33,000 dwt tanker was built in 1959 and, in 1975, it was jumboized to 54,000 dwt. A 60,000 bpd process plant was installed in the snip, in 1979, to allow it to operate at Garoupa field.
