South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has obtained DNV GL's approval in principle (AiP) certificates for three models of its “Standard FPSO” design.

Vidar Dolonen, Regional Manager of Korea and Japan at DNV GL – Maritime, presented the AiPs to Jun Sung Park, COO of the offshore plant business at HHI.

The standard FPSOs are the topside and hull integrated models developed by HHI. The FPSOs include two mid-sized oil FPSOs, with a storage capacity ranging from 1.0MMbbls and 1.5MMbbls, and one gas FPSO which has a topside gas processing capacity of 840MMSCFD.

The two oil FPSOs were developed in line with current market conditions and trends, while the gas FPSO was developed to target the future demands of the Australian and Indonesian markets.

The model name of the standard FPSOs, is “Hi-PROS” in which PROS represents “Proven, Ready-made, Optimized and Schedule-Driven”.

The FPSOs were developed up to the initial stage of FEED, including the basic dimensions such as the hull size and topside layout. When an order is placed, HHI can reduce the required design period by using their in-house engineering database.

HHI expects this to reduce the cost of production by up to 30% through improvements in the engineering and design process, such as the standardization, localization of the materials and mega-block construction methods, etc.

Furthermore, the hull design platform, which was developed based on HHI’s technology and experience with FPSOs, enables HHI to automatically calculate and analyze the motion, structure analysis, hull shape fixing and weight estimation.