Wison New Energies wins Turkish Petroleum floating platform contract

Wison New Energies reported that it has won an EPCIC contract from Turkish Petroleum Corp. (TPAO) to engineer, build and install a new floating production unit (FPU) project for Phase 3 of the Sakarya gas field development project in the Black Sea.

Located about 170 km offshore in the Black Sea at a water depth of 2,150 m, the Sakarya gas field was discovered in August 2020 with proven gas reserves of 405 Bcm.

As Türkiye’s largest-ever natural gas discovery, the field is being developed in three phases by TPAO. 

As a centerpiece of Phase 3, the FPU has to meet the Black Sea’s challenging conditions, including deepwater operations at 2,150 m and navigating the Bosphorus Strait’s 56-m air draft restriction. 

The FPU is designed with a gas export rate of 25 million scm/d (883 MMscf/d), a produced water treatment capacity of 1,350 sm³/d, and a MEG regeneration and injection capacity of 2,503 m³/d for hydrate inhibition, with a minimum 30-year design life.

As a flagship project in Türkiye’s national energy strategy, the Phase 3 development of the Sakarya gas field is expected to enhance the country’s energy self-sufficiency; reduce its dependence on natural gas imports; and boost domestic gas supply capacity. 

A statement from the Republic of Türkiye said that the new FPU will be “similar to the Osman Gazi floating production platform,” meaning an FPSO design. 

The statement also said that the new ship-shaped platform will be 273 m long, 54 m wide, and 26 m deep. It will be anchored to the seabed in four groups with a total of 20 rope systems in an area about 180 km offshore with a water depth of about 2,200 m, where it will remain stationary. The platform will provide accommodation for 150 personnel.

The new FPU will process raw natural gas production from the wells on-site, perform well control, water separation, drying, compression, measurement, and similar operations. After these processes, the natural gas will be transported to shore via an underwater pipeline. The natural gas sent from the platform will be directly transferred to the national transmission network. 

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in a statement that the new floating production platform will increase daily natural gas production in the Black Sea to 40 MMcm.

Recalling that 9.5 MMcm of gas are currently produced daily from the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea and that production will reach 20 MMcm per day with the Osman Gazi floating production platform, which will begin operations in mid-2026, Minister Bayraktar said: “A sister platform will join our Osman Gazi floating production platform. We expect [that] our new platform, currently under construction in China, to set sail for Türkiye by the end of 2027. The new production platform, which we plan to commission by mid-2028, will operate in the Black Sea and enhance our production capacity there. With our new platform, which will take us to phase 3, our production at the Sakarya gas field will increase fourfold compared to today, reaching 40 million cubic meters per day.”