Australian FPSO cutting its ties to two oilfields after 26 years

As it continues to tick off items from its decommissioning list, a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel in the Timor Sea is severing its bonds with two oilfields off the coast of Australia. To this end, a new milestone has been reached in its progress, enabling it to remove the possibility of oil leakage.

The Department of Industry, Science, Energy & Resources (DISER) and its contractors, on behalf of the Australian government, are set on ensuring the safe, efficient, and responsible decommissioning of the FPSO Northern Endeavour, which has been stationed at the Corallina and Laminaria oilfields about 550 kilometers northwest of Darwin in the Timor Sea for more than two decades.

While the decommissioning and remediation are expected to take several years and involve three phases, Phase 1, which entails decommissioning and disconnecting the FPSO from the subsea equipment, is well underway, as the vessel has been disconnected from the two oilfields in April 2025, when the series of risers and umbilical pipelines that connected the FPSO to these fields were removed.

This is considered to be a significant milestone in the decommissioning program that reduces risk to people and the environment, as the eight risers and umbilical pipelines, which connected the FPSO Northern Endeavour to the Corallina and Laminaria oilfields for 26 years, were cut and lowered to the seabed by the Skandi Hercules multi-purpose vessel and Petrofac Facilities Management, hired as Phase 1 contractor in 2022.