Shapoorji Pallonji Group partners with Malaysia based Bumi Armada Berhad
By Jacob Puthenparambil
Shapoorji Pallonji Company Limited, a diversified business group with multiple business segments and the Malaysia-based international offshore oil and gas services provider, Bumi Armada Berhad, have announced the departure of its FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading) vessel, “Armada Sterling” at a ceremony at Keppel Shipyard, Singapore.
The project is a partnership between Forbes & Company Ltd, a subsidiary of Shapoorji Pallonji Group and Bumi Armada Berhad.
The FPSO Armada Sterling is chartered by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) at the D1 field, 200 km offshore from Mumbai. The D1 FPSO is the first FPSO vessel used by ONGC and marks yet another milestone in ONGC’s development of its marginal fields in India.
Signaling the departure, Mr Shapoor Mistry, Chairman & Managing Director of Shapoorji Pallonji Group said, “Shapoorji Pallonji has always been at the forefront of undertaking projects that contribute to building infrastructure for India. The delivery of the first FPSO project is a major step towards ensuring self-sufficiency in the strategically critical area of Oil and Gas exploration for country.”
Mr Hassan Basma, Executive Director/CEO of Bumi Armada Berhad, “From the start, ONGC demanded a fast track, zero tolerance schedule of 19 months from contract award to First Oil, underscoring their confidence in our capabilities and faith in our execution model. We remain on schedule for a record First Oil date in December 2012.
This FPSO presented Bumi Armada with major challenges such as designing a permanent mooring system for the extreme monsoon weather off the west coast of India. The internal turret mooring system, the first for Bumi Armada has been specifically designed for severe monsoon conditions prevalent in the field with maximum wave height of 21.4 meters. We have done it safely with a total of 5 million man-hours without LTI*.”
