Floating Production and Storage Unit

As onshore oil discoveries continue to decline, FPSOs will become increasingly more vital for the oil and
gas industry. There are more than 200 FPSOs today operating around the globe. They're less expensive
than traditional offshore oil and gas platforms, more flexible, safer, and time-efficient

A floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and
gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil. An FPSO
vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced by itself or from
nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto
a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline. FPSOs are preferred in frontier offshore
regions as they are easy to install, and do not require a local pipeline infrastructure to export oil. FPSOs
can be a conversion of an oil tanker or can be a vessel built specially for the application. A vessel used
only to store oil (without processing it) is referred to as a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel.

Oil has been produced from offshore locations since the late 1940s. Originally, all oil platforms sat on the
seabed, but as exploration moved to deeper waters and more distant locations in the 1970s, floating
production systems came to be used.

The first oil FPSO was built in 1977 on the Shell Castellon field, located in the Spanish
Mediterranean. Today, over 270 vessels are deployed worldwide as oil FPSOs.

The vessels themselves are equipped with processing equipment for the separation, storage and
offloading of oil and gas that comes from sub-sea oil wells or platforms. When oil and gas is processed, it
is safely stored in the FPSO until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or a pipeline for transportation
ashore.  
 Anchor Handling Vessels

Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) vessels are mainly built to handle anchors for oil rigs tow
them to location, and use them to secure the rigs in place. AHTS vessels sometimes also serve as
Emergency Response and Rescue Vessels (ERRVs) and as supply transports.

The anchor handling tug is a naval vessel that is solely concerned with the objective of either
tugging or towing an oil-rig or a ship. When it comes to oil rigs, these tugs form the most
important necessity as without their help, it would be impossible to place oil rigs in the required
sea and oceanic areas. anchor handling tug vessels or systems have a crane like equipment
(known as the winch) that can be attached to the oil rigs and then propelled forth in the water.
The “anchor supply “, mentioned as a part of the vessel’s name, is then allowed to be sunk into
the seawater in order to keep the rigs steady.

AHTS vessels are a type of supply vessels that supply tugs and anchors to not just oil rigs but
also to cargo-carrying barges. Technically, an AHTS is a very huge naval vessel, mainly because
of the equipments that it carries – tugs and anchors along with the winches. In order to
transport such a heavy bulk in a manner that they are lost while the AHTS is moving, it is but
natural that the design and construction of such ships has to be accommodating to fit such
equipments easily.