Woodside’s Scarborough FPU Hits Major Milestone With “Engineering Marvel” Integration
How a 67,000-Ton Offshore Giant Came Together
Woodside Energy’s $12 billion Scarborough gas project just cleared a critical hurdle: the successful integration of its massive Floating Production Unit (FPU). The topsides (30,000 metric tons) and hull (37,000 metric tons)—built separately in China—were merged via precision floatover off Dalian, keeping the project on track for first LNG cargo in H2 2026. For context, the combined structure weighs more than 10,000 elephants.
“This floatover was an engineering marvel,” said a project lead, citing the coordination between teams from Woodside, McDermott, and Chinese yards QMW and COSCO.
The FPU, contracted to McDermott in 2021, is the largest semi-submersible production platform in the firm’s history. Its topsides alone contain 169 core equipment units, 50,000+ meters of piping, and enough cabling (1 million meters) to stretch from Paris to Berlin. A battery storage system will help slash emissions—key for a project already facing climate activism headwinds.
The Long Journey to First Gas
After final integration at CIMC’s Yantai yard, the FPU will embark on a 3,700-nautical-mile voyage to Western Australia. There, it’ll be moored 375 km offshore, feeding gas to Pluto LNG via a new trunkline. The project is now 82% complete and will eventually produce 8 million tonnes of LNG annually—roughly 10% of Japan’s 2023 imports—plus 225 terajoules/day of domestic gas.
For Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill, the milestone validates the company’s bet on Scarborough’s 11.1 trillion cubic feet of gas. But challenges remain: activists continue protesting the project’s emissions, and analysts warn of cost overruns in Australia’s tight labor market. For now, though, the FPU’s floatover stands as a rare feat—merging megastructures at sea without a single crane.
