The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah is a floating production storage and offloading

Floating Production Storage and Offloading

A floating production, storage and offloading unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore industry for the processing of hydrocarbons and for storage of oil. A FPSO vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it...

 (FPSO) vessel. It operates in the Jubilee oil field

Jubilee oil field

The Jubilee oil field is an oil field located in the Atlantic Ocean.The Jubilee field is located 60km offshore between the Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three Points blocks in Ghana...

s off the coast of Ghana

Ghana

Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

. She is named after the first president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...

.

History

VLCC tanker Tohdoh was built by Mitsui Eng. & Shipbuilding Co.,Ltd. in 1991. She was owned and operated by NYK Line. In 2008, she was sold to MODEC

Modec

Modec was a Coventry, UK electric vehicle manufacturer, specialising in Commercial vehicles in the N2 category. It unveiled its first model in April 2006 and announced its intention to commence series production in March 2007, with the first production vehicles destined for Tesco...

 for US$42.5 million. MODEC renamed the sip Ohdoh and started her conversion into FPSO vessel. Conversion was done by SembCorp Marine

SembCorp Marine

Sembcorp Marine Limited is part of SembCorp Industries, an Asian company based in Singapore. It is listed on the Singapore stock exchange or SGX and is part of the Straits Times Index there...

 at the Jurong Shipyard in Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

. On 1 May 2010, the vessel was renamed Kwame Nkrumah MV21, and on 15 May 2010 she started her trip for her base in the Western Coast of Ghana. She arrived in Ghana on 21 June 2010. The vessel is estimated to cost US$875 million.

Technical description

The vessel has a width of 65 metres (213.3 ft) and is 330 metres (1,082.7 ft) in length. It is about the size of three standard football fields put together.

The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah uses the biggest turret

Turret

In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...

ever constructed in the oil industry. It can process 120000 oilbbl/d of oil and 160 Mcuft of production gas, with a storage capacity of 1.6 MMoilbbl. It has 17 modules weighing more than 12,500 tonnes installed on it. The modules include a water treatment plant, a crude separation plant, a chemical injection plant, a gas processing and injection plant, a 120-room accommodation. The vessel has the capacity to generate energy for its work. It receives fluid from a sub sea oil well and processes it on board to produce crude oil which is then exported to a refinery by shuttle tankers.