The Leopold Sedar Senghor floating production, storage and offloading vessel for Woodside Energy’s up to US$5.2 billion Sangomar field development has sailed away from Singapore en route to Senegal.

Woodside is targeting first oil from Sangomar, Senegal’s maiden offshore oil development, in mid-2024, Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill confirmed on Wednesday. Upstream had earlier reported that the FPSO was expected to arrive at the field in February with production start-up expected around June next year.

Japanese floater specialist Modec was tasked with converting former very large crude carrier Astipalaia into a fit for purpose floater suitable for the Sangomar field in accordance with agreed specifications under an FPSO purchase contract entered into by Modec and Woodside, noted the project’s operator.

The Sangomar Phase 1 project includes the standalone FPSO with subsea infrastructure and an expected production capacity of approximately 100,000 barrels per day. The floater, which was named after Senegal’s first president, is travelling 12,000 nautical miles from Singapore to its final destination, approximately 100 kilometres offshore Dakar, Senegal.

“The successful and safe departure of the FPSO could not have been achieved without our strong relationship with Petrosen and our contractors Modec and Seatrium. Achieving this milestone having achieved 21 million exposure hours work on the FPSO without a lost time injury is an outstanding result and a credit to the contractor teams,” said O’Neill.

The floater had been moved to Seatrium in Singapore after work in Chinese yards had slowed, mainly because of restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, after the FPSO arrived in the city state, issues were found around material quality, not meeting Woodside’s expectations, O’Neill earlier this year said.

“Having to do remedial work on piping, valves… the individual scopes were individually small, but [there were] a reasonable number of them. And so unfortunately that work [has] slowed down progress in the shipyard in Singapore,” she told analysts on the first half 2023 conference call.

Subsequently, during the testing phase of certain equipment on the FPSO, alignment problems with the piping were detected, and Woodside elected to proceed with rectification work at Seatrium that extended the vessel’s planned delivery date from Singapore.

A Modec spokesperson earlier told Upstream: “Modec is always working closely with all relevant stakeholders to ensure the safe delivery of a quality FPSO that meets our client’s requirements.”