How creativity, equity deals and nuclear power are reshaping offshore FPSO development

The offshore floating production sector is not short of stranded assets or undeveloped fields. What it has often lacked is the commercial and technical agility to bring the two together. That was the verdict from a recent webinar co-hosted by Energy Maritime Associates and Riviera Maritime Media, where three specialists examined FPSO redeployment dynamics, the deal structures opening up marginal fields, and a technology moving rapidly from theory to investment: small modular nuclear reactors for offshore power.

The panel comprised Energy Maritime Associates director David Boggs, Amplus Energy Services managing director Steve Gardyne and Lloyd’s Register Global Power to X director Mark Tipping. Mr Boggs, Mr Gardyne, and Mr Tipping each approached the same problem from a different angle.

The redeployment market: scale, segmentation and timing

Mr Boggs opened with a data-driven overview drawn from Energy Maritime Associates’ Flowline database, which tracks offshore projects and vessel activity across the full asset lifecycle. Of the 28 floating production units currently idle (17 FPSOs, five FSOs, two semi-submersibles, one FSRU, one SPAR, one MOPU and one barge), the firm assesses about 30% as strong candidates for redeployment. Around 35% are viewed as beyond economic reactivation and likely to be recycled, with the remaining 35% sit in a middle ground that depends on field requirements and owner expectations.

The shift towards redeployment has gathered pace. Of 72 FPSO awards between 2015 and 2025, 18 involved redeployed units, with four in both 2022 and 2023 and three in 2025, including the Aoka Mizu, Gryphon A and Petrojarl I. That trend reflects the fallout from the 2015 oil price collapse and Covid-era shutdowns, which brought units off hire early. As prices recovered, those vessels offered a quicker route to first oil and, in many cases, a cheaper option than conversion or newbuild. Newbuilds still dominate in absolute terms, driven in particular by SBM’s Fast4ward hull programme, which delivered 10 units over the period, but redeployment is steadily taking a larger share.

Mr Boggs was clear about where advantage is won and lost. The key differentiator in successful redeployments is early identification: operators that pinpoint a suitable unit, carry out front-end engineering and secure the vessel while it is still producing elsewhere can compress project timelines dramatically. The Sea Lion development in the Falkland Islands provided a case in point. Navitas adopted a more focused plan than its predecessor, shaping the first phase around a smaller redeployed FPSO targeting 50,000 barrels per day rather than forcing a modest resource base to support an oversized newbuild. Navitas took FID in December 2025 on the Aoka Mizu FPSO, which remains in production in the UK, aiming to move the vessel to the shipyard by mid-2026 and achieve first oil in early 2028.

Amplus, Finder and Petrojarl I: an equity-based solution

If Mr Boggs set out the context, Mr Gardyne supplied the case study. Petrojarl I, the most redeployed FPSO in history, with 11 campaigns in the UK, Norway and Brazil, had most recently operated on the Atlanta field offshore Brazil, producing roughly 30M barrels over six years under Altera. When it came off contract in November 2024, Amplus opened negotiations with Altera and closed a purchase agreement in early 2025, taking ownership in Las Palmas that May.

Buying a vessel without a contract in hand is not for the faint-hearted. Mr Gardyne described it as a calculated bet for a small privately owned business, but one he judged heavily in Amplus’s favour, given Petrojarl I’s redeployment pedigree and the company’s deep mid- to late-life brownfield experience in the North Sea. In parallel, Amplus had been building a relationship with Finder Energy and invited its team into early due diligence in Brazil while the FPSO was still on the Atlanta field. The potential fit was evident: Finder’s Kuda Tasi and Jaha fields offshore Timor-Leste, with around 25M barrels of resource, aligned closely with Petrojarl I’s processing envelope.

The commercial answer, reached after extended talks in Perth, was to move the vessel into the project company and compensate Amplus with a significant equity stake in Finder. Amplus also secured contracts across the full lifecycle of the project, from lay-up management and conversion oversight through to operations and maintenance. The structure, which shares upside and downside evenly, was presented not as innovation for its own sake but as the logical product of a long-running relationship and a clear view that a standard day-rate charter would not unlock this development. The vessel now sits in Tenerife, with pre-FEED and FEED in progress and first oil targeted for late 2027 after a shipyard campaign and relocation to the Far East.

Nuclear power for FPSOs: from concept to reality

Mr Tipping’s contribution began with a challenge to industry assumptions. Offshore players, he argued, significantly underestimate how far nuclear technology for floating production has already advanced. Lloyd’s Register’s guidance, Navigating Nuclear Energy in Maritime, sets out an integration framework that brings nuclear and marine regulation together for offshore and marine projects, covering multi-stakeholder engagement, risk management and the through-life handling of materials, including insurance and waste.

The pace of reactor development is striking. One design from Deployable Energy, now undergoing technology qualification with Lloyd’s Register, had its reactor core designed within the last 18 months and is heading towards testing. Offshore Contracting Alliance has publicly committed to deploying a unit around 2032. At the same time, factories designed to produce reactors at an industrial scale, in the hundreds and eventually the thousands, are already being built, marking a decisive shift away from the bespoke build model that has long defined nuclear.

For offshore operators, the case rests on several converging factors. Nuclear is a zero-carbon energy source designed for continuous operation, giving it a direct edge over genset configurations that burn the product being produced. Refuelling intervals, depending on the developer and technology, range from five to 30 years. In most concepts, the original equipment manufacturer retains responsibility for refurbishment and ultimate disposal of the reactor module, simplifying the operator’s liability. Developers working with Lloyd’s Register are targeting whole-life operating costs that undercut hydrocarbon-fuelled gensets at today’s energy prices.

On the question of timing, Mr Tipping’s view was that the first floating nuclear projects could realistically be operating in the early 2030s, with some clients already weighing steel-cutting commitments. To support those first movers, Lloyd’s Register has formed a consortium with Rolls-Royce, Babcock, Global Nuclear Security Partners, North Standard Insurance and Stephenson Harwood to provide the regulatory and commercial chain required from design through to operation. Insurance market appetite, he noted, is constructive, with nuclear viewed as an attractive risk class for underwriters prepared to engage with the technology.

Getting proactive, creative and aligned

Across different angles, the three panellists landed in the same place. The deadlock holding back marginal offshore developments is rarely purely technical. More often, it reflects a commercial stand-off, unfortunate timing or divergent risk appetites between asset owners and field developers. The tools to break that deadlock, from redeployment of well-matched existing tonnage to equity-based project structures and, in time, nuclear power generation, already exist and are maturing. Accessing them demands technical and commercial creativity, a willingness to structure flexibly and the nerve to move before full certainty arrives. As Mr Boggs put it, the solutions are there, but they depend on genuinely proactive thinking and a shared appetite for an aligned risk–reward balance.