This document provides requirements and guidance for the structural design and/or assessment of floating offshore platforms used by the petroleum and natural gas industries to support the following functions:
— production;
— storage and/or offloading;
— drilling and production;
— production, storage and offloading;
— drilling, production, storage and offloading.
NOTE 1 Floating offshore platforms are often referred to using a variety of abbreviations, e.g. FPS, FSU, FPSO (see Clauses 3 and 4), in accordance with their intended mission.
NOTE 2 In this document, the term "floating structure", sometimes shortened to "structure", is used as a generic term to indicate the structural systems of any member of the classes of platforms defined above.
NOTE 3 In some cases, floating platforms are designated as "early production platforms". This term relates merely to an asset development strategy. For the purposes of this document, the term "production" includes "early production".
This document is not applicable to the structural systems of mobile offshore units (MOUs). These include, among others, the following:
— floating structures intended primarily to perform drilling and/or well intervention operations (often referred to as MODUs), even when used for extended well test operations;
— floating structures used for offshore construction operations (e.g. crane barges or pipelay barges), for temporary or permanent offshore living quarters (floatels), or for transport of equipment or products (e.g. transportation barges, cargo barges), for which structures reference is made to relevant recognized classification society (RCS) rules.
This document is applicable to all possible life-cycle stages of the structures defined above, such as:
— design, construction and installation of new structures, including requirements for inspection, integrity management and future removal,
— structural integrity management covering inspection and assessment of structures in-service, and ...