Two Chinese yards are going head to head in the race to land a subcontract from Malaysia's Yinson for the conversion of a floating production, storage and offloading unit for use by Petrobras off Brazil.

Contracting sources familiar with the matter said CIMC Raffles and Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry are each involved in advanced talks with Yinson over the job to convert the floater to be used for an integrated development on the Parque das Baleias field in the Campos basin.

Contracting sources said Yinson is in pole position to land the contract to supply the FPSO, having fended off competition from a consortium of Dutch player Bluewater and Italy's Saipem after offering a lower price.

The Bluewater-Saipem consortium had earlier lined up with another Chinese yard, China Merchants Heavy Industry, for the possible conversion work.

The sources added that Petrobras is expected to award Yinson the floater contract within the next two months.

The FPSO is set to have processing capacity of 100,000 barrels per day of oil and 5 million cubic metres per day of gas.

The floater is likely to be converted from one of the two very large crude vessels Yinson bought last year.

The Ridgebury Eagle, owned by Ridgebury Tankers, and the Apollonia, owned by Neda Maritime Agency, were both built by South Korea’s Samsung Shipbuilding & Heavy Industries. The Ridgebury Eagle was built in 2002 and the Apollonia in 2003.

CIMC Raffles just lost out to Cosco in its bid for a 1.2 billion yuan ($174 million) subcontract from Yinson to convert the VLCC Falcon to an FPSO to develop Petrobras' Marlim 2 development, also off Brazil.

Cosco is China’s top yard for fabricating or converting FPSOs. Of the 16 FPSOs under construction in China, about half have been fabricated at Cosco facilities in Dalian, Nantong and Zhoushan.

The conversion of the Marlim 2 FPSO is scheduled for completion in two years.

When Petrobras revised its business plan in December, the Parque das Baleias FPSO was one of several units to have first oil delayed one year to 2023.

Rigs And Vessels

Yinson pushes for Brazil job