A breakthrough green oilfield technology, developed by a specialist UK company, has revolutionised international clean sea standards through its performance in Brazil’s massive new offshore extraction area.

The Compact Flotation Unit is installed on the FPSO Maersk, (floating production, storage and off-take vessel) serving the two platforms on the Peregrino field, commissioned last year off Rio de Janeiro, and has a production capacity of 100,000 barrels a day.

With estimated recoverable oil of up to 600 million barrels, the Peregrino field is the biggest operated by Statoil outside Norway.

Opus – whose motto is ‘Results Delivered’ – had the device built, installed, tested and commissioned against a tight timescale and then optimised the process to achieve the ‘above-spec’ quality of water being discharged back to the sea.

The company’s Director of Strategic Operations, Glen McLellan, said: “At Maersk Peregrino, we were told by the client that our installation and services were the smoothest part of the FPSO topsides development project.

“Between that and the superb performance of the CFU, we are making sure we live up to our aim to not only deliver results but to continuously develop our technologies and services to stay ahead of the field.”

The CFU is the fourth such unit to be deployed internationally by Opus, whose research and development facility is on the Orkney ‘oil-hub’ island of Flotta, with design, project management and process optimisation run from their Guildford, Surrey, base.

Fergus Ewing, energy minister in the Scottish Government, said: "Scotland's oil and gas sector leads the world, and the skills and knowledge developed in Scotland since the development of the North Sea are a key strength to Scotland's economy and play a vital role in our future, both in the oil and gas sector and the developing renewable energy sector.

"This technology developed by Opus is an example of the sort of innovative thinking Scotland excels in, and I wish them every success."

Tags: Opus