Keel Laid at Nantong: Wison's Sakarya Phase 3 FPU Enters Hull Assembly, With Steel Work Only Half Done

Turkey's push to turn the Sakarya gas field into a long-term supply anchor reached a visible milestone in late October, when Wison New Energies laid the keel for the Phase 3 floating production unit at its Nantong yard in China. Keel laying is a bookkeeping formality more than a technical threshold, but in this case it marks the point where the 282 m × 54 m double hull moves from steel cutting into block assembly in the dry dock — the phase in which a floating production unit's structural steel consumption is concentrated.

What follows separates what Wison and TPAO have confirmed from what remains opaque, particularly on steel, scheduling and the division of contract scope between the FPU and the offshore pipeline package.

The unit and its unusual constraint

The design driver worth noting is not the water depth but the exit route. The FPU must pass the Bosphorus, whose 56 m air-draft limit constrains how tall the hull-plus-topsides stack can be. That, rather than reservoir performance, is why the vessel carries an unusually long 282 m hull: deck area is bought horizontally because it cannot be bought vertically. It is a useful reminder for anyone modelling the unit's steel demand that the configuration is driven by a strait, not by a field.

Where the project actually stands

Wison's own chronology runs: first steel cutting for the hull in February 2026; formal construction commencement ceremony at Nantong in early February 2026, attended by Türkiye's consul in Shanghai, TPAO and TP-OTC executives and DNV; topsides fabrication start in May 2026; keel laying and dry-dock block assembly on 25 October 2026.

The forward schedule published by the builder is hull float-out in April 2027 and main module lifting in June 2027. Beyond that, accounts diverge — materially.

Wison's February statement pointed to offshore installation and commissioning "completed by the end of 2027." Oil & Gas Journal, reporting the September 2025 award, cited commissioning in mid-2028, with Phase 3 commercial production beginning around 2030. The gap is not a rounding error; it is roughly a year on the critical path, and it matters for anyone planning around first gas. My reading is that the builder's end-2027 language describes the yard's delivery obligation rather than production, and should be treated as optimistic until Wison or TPAO publishes a commissioning date.

Two contracts, one development

Phase 3 is not a single procurement. It splits into an FPU package and an offshore subsea/pipeline package, awarded separately in September 2025:

• FPU EPCIC — Wison New Energies. Full engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning of the newbuild unit, engineering in Shanghai and fabrication at Nantong.
• Offshore EPCI — Saipem, ~US$1.5 billion. Eight rigid flowlines and a roughly 183 km, 24-inch export trunkline to the Filyos onshore terminal. (Saipem's release could not be retrieved directly during this research; the figures come from secondary reporting and should be read as reported rather than confirmed firsthand.)
• Wells. 27 wells across Sakarya and Amasra are in Phase 3 scope, with subsea systems separately contracted.
• Classification. DNV attended the commencement ceremony; its formal role as classification and verification party is a reasonable inference rather than an explicitly confirmed appointment.

TPAO holds 100% of Sakarya and operates it. Contracting for offshore works runs through TP-OTC, the TPAO affiliate that handles offshore project execution and lender-facing disclosure.

The steel question

For steel suppliers, the honest answer is that this project's steel book is large and largely closed to new entrants, and the published numbers are thin.

The ~25,000 t topsides figure circulating for this FPU comes from KRAFT Europe's project page, a Dutch contractor that describes bidding for complete topsides on an EPC basis including an E-house. KRAFT's own page states the award went to Wison. That makes the tonnage an indicative design basis from a losing bidder, not a confirmed fabrication weight — and it is topsides only. Neither Wison nor the TP-OTC lender information package appears to disclose hull steel weight, lightship displacement or total fabrication tonnage.

Structurally, the procurement is embedded in Wison's EPCIC scope. Wison is a Chinese yard buying Chinese plate; hull steel for a unit already in dry-dock block assembly will overwhelmingly have been ordered and much of it cut. Topsides module steel and outfitting continue into 2027, but those purchases sit inside Wison's supply chain and any external opportunity would be as a sub-supplier to Wison or to module fabricators, not as a direct TPAO package. Treat any suggestion of an open hull-steel tender as unsupported.

For European mills, the more interesting steel demand in Phase 3 is arguably not the FPU at all but Saipem's 183 km of 24-inch line pipe — a large, discrete order with a European-adjacent contractor. That is a separate assessment and no award details are public.

Why it matters beyond the yard

Sakarya, discovered in August 2020 with roughly 405 bcm of proven reserves about 170 km offshore in the western Black Sea, is the centrepiece of Turkey's effort to reduce import dependence. Phase 2 first gas came in April 2023 using the converted FPSO Osman Gazi (ex-BW Opportunity), which sailed to the Black Sea in late 2026. Phase 3 adds a purpose-built unit designed to sustain a much higher plateau; Wood Mackenzie has estimated Sakarya could cover around 30% of Turkish gas demand by 2030 — an analyst projection, not a commitment.

One documentation caution: a TP-OTC announcement on the Saipem contract refers to the "Osman Gazi FPU" in a way that conflates the Phase 2 converted vessel with the new Phase 3 unit. Wison's and OGJ's accounts treat them as distinct assets. Readers citing TP-OTC material should check which vessel is meant.

What to watch

• April 2027 hull float-out — the first genuine test of whether the April/June 2027 milestones hold, and a signal on whether the end-2027 or mid-2028 commissioning view is closer to reality.
• Any disclosure of hull steel tonnage or lightship weight in TPAO/TP-OTC reporting. None has appeared so far.
• Topsides module subcontracting. Wison has not published its module fabrication split. If modules are farmed out to other Chinese or Southeast Asian yards, secondary steel demand surfaces there.
• Saipem line pipe sourcing for the 183 km trunkline — the most plausible remaining large steel order in the development.