The Glen Lyon Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Facility

The customer required real-time information on the relative position and motion of the Glen Lyon - a 100,000 ton, 268m long floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO), together with the magnitude and direction of environmental forces to ensure operations personnel were working safely within prescribed operational limits.

The integrated system was to collect, process, display and store meteorological & oceanographic (metocean) and environmental data. The entire set of data required was summarized as four distinct groups:

• Metocean data related to the environment, meaning all the relevant surrounding natural conditions
• Vessel attitude and motions that describe the motions and forces on the FPSO, moorings and risers resulting from the environment
• Structural load data concerning the FPSO’s loading condition
• Marine Vessel Interface data that provides the position and operating status of vessels within a 500m zone.

BMT has over 30 years of experience in the development of innovative marine monitoring systems to provide critical integrity and safety monitoring of offshore assets. To date BMT has provided over 120 permanent, life of field, marine monitoring systems. The Glen Lyon was not only a technical challenge because of the vast number of sensors and data channels but also because of the extremely harsh waters of the west of Shetlands. 

In 2012 the BMT team of Naval Architects, Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers and Software Engineers worked closely with project teams in Korea, Italy and the UK to deliver the complete system to the client late 2015. 

BMT continues to carry out preventive maintenance including the calibration of instrumentation on an annual basis and, onshore management of the suite of data including data analysis and reporting.

Key benefits:

The Marine Monitoring System, provides real-time visualizations of the relative position and motion of the FPSO and any vessels in close proximity, as well as the magnitude and direction of environmental forces. This allows the marine operations personnel and potentially the masters of attendant vessels to operate with greater information to enable them to work safely within prescribed operational limits.