These images show the Glen Lyon FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading) vessel under construction in South Korea.
The state-of-the-art FPSO will eventually make a journey across the world to work on the £3billion Quad 204 redevelopment project of the Schiehallion and Loyal fields, west of Shetland.
Glen Lyon replaces the Schiehallion FPSO, which started producing oil in 1998 and continued doing so for 15 years until operations were suspended for Quad204 subsea work.
South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries signed a contract worth about $780million to build the Glen Lyon FPSO for Quad 204 in February 2011.
At present, the Deepsea Aberdeen semi-submersible is drilling on Loyal field and will later move on to Schiehallion in advance of first oil from the Glen Lyon FPSO, which arrives next year.
The vessel has a storage capacity of 900,000 barrels of oil and is expected to process 130 thousand barrels of oil and 220 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.
BP and its partners announced their intention to go ahead with £3billion plans for redeveloping the fields, extending production to 2035 and possibly beyond, nearly four years ago.
Quad204 is targeting an estimated 450million barrels of oil.