Being transferred from the beaches of Perth to the beaches of Brazil is a tough ask, but someone has to do it. One of ICON’s most senior field development engineers was seconded to help troubleshoot a Campos Basin field design the operator feared might be sub-optimal, given the technical risk and market conditions at the time.
From FPSO to Fixed Platform: Rethinking the Concept
The field was discovered in 2003 and sits roughly 100km offshore in 160 metres of water; the current operator acquired the asset in 2019. Its main producing reservoirs hold heavy oil requiring artificial lift — in this case, Electric Submersible Pumps (ESPs), since there wasn’t enough associated gas to lift it another way. Before ICON was engaged, the development concept was subsea wells tied back to an FPSO, but market conditions and a commercial and technical risk assessment suggested that approach might not be optimal for the field.
ICON was selected to lead feasibility and concept select studies, working closely with the operator’s subsurface, wells, operations, and regulatory teams. The scope covered reviewing previous facilities work, developing a basis of design, brainstorming every credible development option, and technically and commercially assessing each one — including opportunities like phased development, capex-versus-opex trade-offs, and the potential to re-deploy recycled field hardware. ICON drew on Subject Matter Experts based in Europe, Asia, the US, and Brazil to support the Australian-led team, and revised the existing FPSO-led concept in favour of a Normally-Manned Installation-to-FSO design.
What Was on the Table
The options and sub-options assessed ran across every major system: wells (dry versus wet trees, and how many), drilling mode (jack-up versus platform rig versus floater versus tender-assist), artificial lift (number of ESPs, workover method), power generation (associated gas versus imported gas versus crude), the production facility itself (FPSO versus platform versus other configurations), and oil storage and export (FPSO versus FSO versus tying into a third party). At the end of this stage, ICON and the operator settled on a preferred Base Case, along with several sub-options flagged as potentially adding further value.
Pre-FEED: Narrowing to a Single Concept
From there, ICON moved straight into Pre-FEED engineering, working to narrow the Base Case and its sub-options down to one defined development scheme ready to enter the project’s FEED phase. This covered preliminary process design and equipment sizing, further definition of the fixed platform option, additional assessment of MOPU-type platforms, FPSO mooring studies (spread versus fixed), and condition and adequacy checks on existing hardware including the FPSO, FSO, and MOPU options under consideration — supported by field surveys where existing hardware needed a closer look.
The result: a fixed platform with dry trees, tied back to a turret-moored FPSO. The new design significantly improved the project’s economics and its technical risk profile over the life of the field — this kind of concept select and pre-FEED work sits within ICON’s broader Studies & Concept Engineering and Front End Engineering Design capabilities.
Contact ICON if you’d like assistance with any part of your field development.
