FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading unit)

An FPSO is a processing plant on a hull. Crude comes up the risers from subsea wells, passes through separation and compression units, is stored in the hull's tanks, then goes to a shuttle tanker. The unit is moored to the seabed through a turret around which it weathervanes with swell and wind. Insurance gets complicated because the asset is two things at once. As a vessel it sits under the hull policy and maritime liability; as a plant, under industrial property, business interruption and well control. The policies meet at the boundary: a fire in the process area is an industrial loss, a broken mooring line a maritime one, and production loss after either is settled under the field cover. A turret or mooring failure can force the unit to disconnect and move, stopping all production from a field that has no other outlet. FPSOs are often converted tankers ten to twenty years old, and the surveyor looks at hull fatigue as closely as at process safety. Not to be confused with the FSRU, which regasifies LNG instead of processing crude.