Alliance Engineering, part of the John Wood Group, has been appointed Topsides Owner's Engineer by Petrobras America, a subsidiary of Petrobras, for the first floating, production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) to be used in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Alliance will assist Petrobras for up to a three-year period with two scopes of work for the Cascade and Chinook fields. Alliance will support Petrobras with verification of the topsides design for a leased FPSO early production system (EPS).

The FPSO is planned to be on location for five years. In addition, as part of a full field development (FFD) scope, Alliance will assist Petrobras with the selection and planning of the final solution to replace the EPS and produce the fields over a longer term.

"Our successful track record for designing topside production facilities on FPSOs worldwide and our floating platform experience in the Gulf of Mexico has positioned Alliance as the ideal choice to support Petrobras on this development," said Norb Roobaert, president of Alliance Engineering. "We look forward to working with Petrobras on this landmark project."

The FPSO will have an oil storage capacity of 600,000 barrels, an oil processing capacity of 80,000 barrels per day and a gas export capacity of 16 million standard cubic feet per day. Located in 8500 feet of water, the FPSO will be the deepest installation of its kind to date.

Tags: Alliance Engineering