The Exmar Group, headquartered in Antwerp, is a diversified and independent shipping group which serves the international gas and oil industry. Within the expansive Exmar Group is Exmar Offshore Company (EOC) which is an innovative owner, offshore designer and engineer which serves providers across the global energy industry. The EOC division is headquartered in Houston, Texas and provides multi-disciplinary maritime and offshore solutions which it designs and delivers to achieve sustainable and efficient value to its customers worldwide.
Whilst the global Exmar Group focuses on shipping needs, the EOC is a global maritime company which delivers tailor-made technical and crewing services to the maritime and offshore industries. EOC focuses its operations on the building, owning, leasing, managing, and operating of high-specification assets. EOC designs and develops solutions for its customers across the oil and gas industry for production, storage, supply, and transportation needs. Having built its operations on the back of decades of offshore experience, EOC has moved from exploration to production across the development spectrum to begin facilitating the vastly expanding need for energy worldwide. Therefore, EOC is an expert in designing the best offshore solutions for its customers’ needs. What sets EOC apart from peer companies is its focus on innovation, and it believes that innovation is the key to providing its customers with solutions that have a competitive edge.
EOC provides a range of floating production solutions which they have developed for unique commercial and technical solutions. The in-house expertise of its vast array of engineering staff means customers can be sure that solutions provided are made with every detail considered, and for the most efficient timeline, all whilst remaining cost-effective and practical. The engineers provide complete engineering, project management, construction, supervision, and field management across its renowned solution offerings.
One of the most crucial developments by EOC is its OPTI® Production Semisubmersibles which are a hull and deck truss form which aids in the execution of projects and is designed to lower life cycle costs. The OPTI® proprietary hull form and single deck truss feature combine to provide superior hydrodynamic performance with payload weight efficiency, ease of construction and a simple integrated, rapid, and flexible project execution. The main reason the OPTI® system is so innovative is that it provides a complete solution that is proven, scalable, flexible, and repeatable within the industry’s leading cost, schedule, and mission performance. Consequently, EOC provides complete strategic solutions which are carefully engineered to suit the commercial and operational tools to reduce project cycle times with uncompromising safety and quality performance.
The OPTI® submersibles are made with innovative features to withstand the most extreme of weather circumstances. These solutions are built with multi-side columns which are designed to reduce drag forces and lead to lower mooring forces vortex-induce motions (VIM). Consequently, the proprietary ring pontoon shape reduces the heave motions. However, the reduced motion structure still maintains a simple construction design as all solutions are made and designed by EOC to be made with minimal structural shapes, thickness and steel materials grades which have all been expertly chosen to reduce fabrication costs and increase shipyard efficiency.
The truss structure of EOM’s OPTI® Submersibles has a flat upper desk which allows for modular equipment skids to be integrated near-ground level in a flexible sequence. All of the solutions designed by EOM are scalable, flexible, and repeatable so that the hull forms and deck truss can be best suited for a broad selection of global fabricator capabilities. Structurally the columns, pontons and nodes are all repeatable and allow for easy repetition across projects for easy scalability. Therefore, EOC’s design allows them to facilitate energy solutions for the future to easily scale and reshape the existing models to be scaled up or scaled down to suit its customers’ needs.
Some examples of EOC’s include its OPTI-Micro™ which was introduced in 2016 for limited recoverable reserves or as an early production system. It offers flexible development solutions with upside production potential. This system has a 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) production capacity which offers a strategic alternative to a complicated, expensive tie-back and at a lower price point than its larger conventional counterpart hubs. The OPTI-EX® is the industry’s first speculative build semisubmersible floating production system, and now a decade after this system was first established, it has a capacity of 60,000 bpd a day. Additionally, the OPTI-1100™ has up to 100,000 bpd and is now an industry-leading and award-winning Delta House facility which is operated by LLOG Exploration.
However, as EOC looks towards the future they have developed a hub to deal with the increasing energy needs of the world. The OPTI-1600™ provides rates of 120,000 bpd, and the space and load capacity for water flood, gas injection and subsea boosting equipment. This design features all the same technologies and features of previous and original models making it cost effective, but with a much larger service capacity to meet the growing energy needs of the future.
However, for EOC floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) facilities are still the main development solution across the world where local markets, export pipelines and facility infrastructure either do not exist or cannot deal with an increasing demand for energy needs. Therefore, companies such as EOC are providing dedicated FPSO facilities including some notable ones including the FPSO Farwah and the FSO Luxembourg which shows the company’s adaptability across the globe for all its customer’s FPSO needs.
Additionally, EOC is recognised as a specialist and reliable partner in the market of accommodation barges for which it owns, operates, crews, refurbishes and maintains a fleet of barges for international and national oil companies. Under EOC is the Wariboko, which was built in 2010 and later purchased by Exmar, and accommodates 300 POB with a dynamic gangway, 900km2 of clear deck and a 68 metric tonne (mt) crane. The Nunce is also a barge under EOC featuring its proprietary design which was delivered in 2019. The barge is able to accommodate 450 POB and can be quickly converted to a DP unit. It has a 900m2 clear deck and a 25mt crane. However, the final accommodation barge of EOC is a new build which is being developed to accommodate 500POB using its in-house design systems to innovatively make a barge for the future. It is hoped that through this barge it can meet the offshore project challenges of the future with its proprietary designs for both barge and semisubmersible efficiency.
Overall, Exmar Offshore Company are leading the offshore solutions industry with its innovative designs which are able to bring a range of mono-hull, barge and semi-submersible systems for use in floating production, mobile offshore drilling and a range of other vessel needs. Through its development over the years, we have seen how its renowned OPTI® systems have forged a new path towards the future of energy solutions. However, what has remained the same for EOC throughout every offshore solution is its commitment to facilitating every stage of its renowned engineering and design process. Therefore, EOC’s customers can be sure that every detail of its solutions offerings will be delivered using top-quality systems, all whilst supported by an expansive team of experts.
