Hanwha Ocean's 'Floating Refinery' Sets Sights on South American Deep-Sea Oilfields

Hanwha Ocean (042660) is stepping up its push into South America's booming offshore energy market, unveiling a standardized floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit designed specifically for the region's deep-sea oilfields.

The company said on July 26 that it had received Basic Design Review (BDR) certification from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for a standard FPSO front-end engineering design (FEED) tailored to South American conditions. Norway's DNV separately granted the design Approval in Principle (AIP), giving Hanwha Ocean two independent stamps of technical validation as it prepares to bid for upcoming large-scale offshore projects in the region.

An FPSO is often described as a 'floating refinery at sea' because it draws crude oil or gas from subsea wellheads, processes and stores it onboard, and then offloads the product to shuttle tankers. Contracts for a single unit typically exceed 1 trillion won (roughly $720 million), making the vessels among the most lucrative orders in offshore shipbuilding.

This is not Hanwha Ocean's first move in the region. The company previously completed a standard FPSO concept design, known as Pre-FEED, applicable across deep-sea oil and gas fields off South Africa, earning concept approval from ABS and France's Bureau Veritas last year. Together, the certifications reflect a broader strategy of building a family of standardized FPSO platforms that can be adapted to different offshore markets rather than designing each vessel from scratch.

Global demand for FPSOs has been climbing, driven largely by major deep-water discoveries off South America and West Africa. Hanwha Ocean said it plans to develop additional standard models suited to the South American market as it rounds out a portfolio spanning the region's key offshore basins.

Company officials framed the dual certifications as validation of Hanwha Ocean's design capabilities on the world stage. "Our FPSO design and technical competitiveness has now been recognized globally," a Hanwha Ocean official said, adding that a standardized platform would let the company respond faster to region-specific requirements in South America and West Africa while sharpening its bid competitiveness.

By moving away from bespoke, project-by-project engineering toward a verified standard platform, Hanwha Ocean expects to cut both design-to-delivery timelines and construction costs — a combination the company is betting will help it win a larger share of upcoming FPSO tenders as international oil majors accelerate deep-sea exploration off Brazil and other South American basins.