Gambiaj.com – (DAKAR) – PETROSEN, the Senegalese State oil company, has announced the arrival of the long awaited floating gas production and storage unit in Senegalese-Mauritanian territorial waters. The unit is destined for the PETROSEN Announces Arrival of Key Production Unit for GTA Gas Field in Senegalese Waters (GTA) field.

In a press release to the Senegalese Press Agency, the national oil company stated that the Floating Gas Production and Storage Unit (FPSO) arrived on Saturday at the GTA gas site after a six-day journey from the Canary Islands in Spain.

PETROSEN Holding emphasized that this floating unit is a crucial component for the gas production from this field, marking a significant milestone in the implementation of the gas project.

The floating factory, construction of which began in 2019 in China, was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It left the COSCO shipyards in January 2023 for the Sembcorp shipyards in Singapore for additional work, as indicated in the press release.

After a scheduled stop in Mauritius, the floating unit made a technical stopover at the Hidramar Yard in Tenerife to complete certain works, ensuring greater safety in production.

PETROSEN assures that the remaining activities of the floating unit, currently 92.5% complete, will be finished in Senegalese-Mauritanian waters before its commissioning for the production of gas from the GTA field.

During this commissioning stage, there will be interconnection with the various underwater equipment before the start-up of this floating plant, specifies the source. The floating unit is used to conduct the first treatment of the gas to separate it from other elements accompanying it during production, notably water and condensate.

According to the Senegalese oil company, during this pretreatment, the gas passes through various stabilization and conditioning modules, providing a product that meets the standards and specifications for export to the hub-terminal.

The natural gas deposit in GTA was discovered in 2015 with the drilling of the Tortue-1 (Ahmeyin-1) well in Mauritania and the Guembeul-1 well in Senegal. The deposit contains approximately 20 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas or 530 billion cubic meters (Nm3).

The production of this natural gas, initially planned for 2023, was postponed due to delays linked, among other things, to the completion of operating infrastructure.

The GTA development’s first phase is set to produce around 2.3 million tons of LNG per year. Condensate will be periodically transferred from the FPSO to shuttle tankers for export to the market. The FPSO, which will sit in about 120 meters of water, will have up to 140 people on board during normal operation and serve as a home for the project’s production team.

With an area equivalent to two football fields, the FPSO is made of more than 81,000 tons of steel, 37,000 meters of pipe spools, and 1.52 million meters of cable. Allseas’ vessels were executing the subsea pipelay scope at the GTA project and significant progress was made on the installation of the infield flowlines and subsea structures.