4Subsea, a provider of tech solutions for the offshore energy industry, has secured a service agreement to monitor steel catenary risers on the Bacalhau field FPSO, offshore Brazil. The field, in Brazil's Santos Basin, is operated by Norway's Equinor.

4Subsea, part of Subsea 7, will deliver the service using its 4insight Subsea Asset Integrity a digital service that continuously monitors the physical integrity of different subsea and offshore infrastructures using retrofittable autonomous sensors and algorithms and machine learning methods optimized for different assets and measurements.

"The results are presented as easy-to-interpret insights and dashboards, simplifying the complex analysis and effectively support critical decisions. 

The data is also available through open APIs, which the Operator’s own data platforms can access for further analysis," 4Subsea said.

Peter Jenkins, CEO of 4Subsea, said: “We are pleased to be chosen to monitor the integrity of the risers at Bacalhau. These services have proven to reduce operational risk and costs during complex operations and are great demonstrations of the digital transformation of offshore operations to increase safety.”

The Bacalhau FPSO, to be delivered by Japanese FPSO specialist MODEC, will be deployed at the Bacalhau field in the BM-S-8 and Carcará North blocks located in the giant “pre-salt” region of the Santos Basin some 185 kilometers off the coast of the municipality of Ilhabela/SP, in the state of São Paulo. Equinor’s field partners are ExxonMobil (40%), Petrogal Brasil (20%) and Pre-sal Petroleo SA (PPSA). 

The FPSO vessel will be permanently moored at a water depth of approximately 2,050 meters by a spread mooring system to be supplied by MODEC group company, SOFEC, Inc.

First oil production is planned for 2024, with the license period running until 2053.

The FPSO will be one of the largest FPSO ever delivered to Brazil. It will have a large topside designed to produce up to 220,000 barrels of crude oil per day, produce and inject up to 530 million standard cubic feet of associated gas per day and inject up to 200,000 barrels of seawater per day. Its minimum storage capacity of crude oil will be 2,000,000 barrels.