Abstract
The first worldwide offshore FLNG projects are moving up to construction and commissioning phases, with first gases most likely planned for the next two years. These floating facilities will operate in exposed environmental conditions (typically Hs up to 2.5m), under which it has been demonstrated that side-by-side offloading remains a safe and viable operation. The excellent track records of marine loading arms in the LNG industry; as well as the great economical advantage to distribute LNG to conventional LNG carriers, naturally led to the development of offshore loading arms, being the references on the FLNG market today.
Nevertheless, the higher performances, enhanced availability and the ability to relocate the FLNG in any location of the world naturally forced the FLNG projects owners to look carefully at LNG tandem offloading, as a natural way to offload as per FPSO culture. Whereas the main showstopper was the lack of maturity of LNG tandem offloading technologies a few years ago, latest developments made on the FMC ATOL (Articulated Tandem Offshore Loader) in partnership with oil & gas majors, DP suppliers and LNGC operators change the stakeholders dreams into reality.
The FMC ATOL has not only been validated through comprehensive kinematic, stress and fatigue analysis to confirm a 99+% operability in the harshest Australian type conditions, it has also been fully validated thanks to an 1/5 scale model tested under the harshest environmental conditions with third parties involvement.
Field proven components designs and technologies resulting of 50 years of conventional LNG transfer records and today of offshore side-by-side LNG transfer with loading arms are transposed to the ATOL LNG tandem transfer solution and prototype-tested to real project conditions, like the FMC ATOL swivel joint which successfully passed a long life test equivalent to a 10-year maintenance-free period (considering 1 offloading a week). These are 7 years of development and 30 000+ hours of engineering which rose up the technology readiness level high enough for the deployment of the FMC ATOL on field.
On top of that, a consolidated execution plan has been developed detailing a 30 months delivery time, including project specific engineering, purchasing, construction and tests. As part of this execution plan, the FMC ATOL has been developed emphasizing the turnkey approach, to minimize the integration works duration on the FLNG to a strictly limited number of mechanical and electrical interfaces. Such all-in-one design allows performing an extensive tests campaign on the ATOL before its delivery, inclusive of functional tests, static and dynamic tests and simulations of emergency disconnections.
This is how FMC Technologies provides performance, safety and reliability guarantees before the integration of the FMC ATOL on the FLNG, in mirror of how the success story of the FMC OLAF on Prelude FLNG project has been built.
