New turret design for large deep-water fields

A NEW turret design for floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels could accommodate up to 120 risers, facilitating the economic development of large fields in water up to 3,000 metres deep. In a paper* due to be presented at the Offshore Technology Conference in May, engineers from FMC Sofec describe a very large turret (VLT) of up to 40 metres diameter - much wider than the 12 metres or so possible with present designs. The additional size will allow engineers to design production systems with fewer subsea manifolds, reducing costs and speeding field development time. The authors point out that, in many fields, each subsea production well is connected to three risers - one