Philip Levy (left), President of Hanwha Ocean’s EPU, and Vidal Dolonen, CEO of DNV Korea and Japan, pose for a commemorative photo at the AIP award ceremony held on the 24th./Hanwha Ocean
Hanwha Ocean (042660.KS) has secured global classification-society approvals for its low-carbon standard design of a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, extending its offshore-plant standardization strategy into the low-carbon field.
The company said on the 25th that it had won approval in principle (AIP) for its low-carbon standard FPSO design framework from Norway’s classification society DNV. It also obtained an AIP from the U.S. society ABS, along with a certificate for its Project Sustainability Execution Plan (PSEP).
Environmental performance has recently emerged as a key evaluation criterion in FPSO project orders, as global energy companies tighten their carbon-reduction requirements during the ordering process. Major offshore-plant companies are likewise expanding their low-carbon designs and sustainability execution frameworks.
In response, Hanwha Ocean is building a low-carbon standard FPSO platform that systematizes applicable low-carbon technologies based on the standard FPSO design it had already developed and can be tailored to the requirements of each project. The strategy moves beyond the previous approach of applying low-carbon technologies individually to each project, instead standardizing verified technologies for repeated use across a range of projects.
Hanwha Ocean has consistently pursued its FPSO standardization strategy. In 2024, it developed a standard FPSO applicable across West Africa and obtained certification from ABS and France’s classification society BV. This year, it developed a standard FPSO optimized for South America and received certification from ABS and DNV.
With this AIP, Hanwha Ocean has established a core foundation for designing low-carbon standard FPSOs and applying them to actual projects. DNV confirmed the company’s framework for incorporating reduction technologies for each major greenhouse-gas emission source into FPSO design. ABS verified its execution framework for implementing and managing sustainability goals such as carbon reduction and improved energy efficiency.
Building on this, Hanwha Ocean plans to refine its low-carbon technologies into reusable technology packages that can be selected and applied according to each project’s requirements, and to use the PSEP as a standard sustainability execution foundation for FPSO projects.
“This certification is significant in that both pillars — low-carbon design and a sustainability execution framework — have been verified,” a Hanwha Ocean official said. “We plan to develop the verification results into low-carbon technology packages and a sustainability execution framework that can be repeatedly used in future projects, strengthening our competitiveness in winning orders and our project execution capabilities.”