Altera Infrastructure has secured the mandate to supply a floating production, storage and offloading vessel for the third phase of Eni's Baleine development offshore Côte d'Ivoire, as first reported by Offshore Technology.

The assignment keeps Altera at the center of one of West Africa's most consequential deepwater builds. Eni discovered Baleine in the Ivorian offshore portion of the Tano Basin, straddling the maritime boundary with Ghana, and has moved the field from exploration success to phased production at a pace few African upstream projects have matched in the past decade.

What the award covers

Under the arrangement, Altera will provide the FPSO that will handle production from Baleine's third development phase. The company has not disclosed whether the unit will be a newbuild conversion, a redeployment from its existing fleet, or a chartered third-party vessel, and that question now sits at the top of the commercial due-diligence list for contractors tracking the award.

The vessel selection matters beyond Baleine itself. Altera's fleet decisions ripple through the global FPSO market, where shipyard slots for conversion work and long-lead mooring and topside fabrication capacity remain contested by operators across Brazil, Guyana, and the Gulf of Guinea. A newbuild or major conversion for Baleine Phase 3 would tighten that market further.

Basin context

Baleine holds a singular position in Côte d'Ivoire's petroleum economy. Since Eni brought the field onstream, it has transformed the country from a marginal hydrocarbons producer into a growing West African exporter, with the state treasury, the national oil company PETROCI, and regional gas-supply arrangements all tied to its output trajectory.

The phased development concept — successive production units tied to successive reservoir sectors — lets Eni monetize early volumes while appraisal and debottlenecking work continues. Each phase has added processing capacity and export flexibility, and the Phase 3 award signals operator confidence that the resource base supports a further step-up in production.

For Eni, Baleine anchors a broader Ivorian and West African portfolio that the Italian major has built through exploration drilling and targeted acquisitions. The company has treated the region as a core growth leg alongside its African legacy positions in Nigeria, Angola, and Congo.

Contractor implications

For Altera, the award extends a business that has been reshaped in recent years through fleet restructuring and a sharpened focus on long-cycle production contracts with investment-grade counterparties. FPSO contracts of the kind implied by a phase-three award typically run for a decade or more, with extension options, giving the owner contracted revenue visibility that supports refinancing and newbuild sanction.

The award also cascades work downstream to fabricators, turret and mooring suppliers, subsea tree vendors, and installation contractors. Those tenders will emerge as Eni and Altera convert the supply agreement into an executed project schedule.

Watch items

Three milestones will define the next twelve months for this project. First, the formal sanction package and schedule: Eni has not yet published a startup window for Phase 3, and contractors will price their bids against whatever date the operator sets. Second, the vessel route: a conversion versus a redeployment decision changes the timeline by years, not months, and the shipyard or yard cluster selected will signal it early. Third, the production capacity figure: Eni has not stated the FPSO's nameplate processing rate for Phase 3, and that number will determine how much incremental crude Côte d'Ivoire adds to Atlantic Basin supply when the unit starts up.

Until those details land, the award stands as a strategic commitment rather than a fully specified project — a vote of confidence by Eni in Baleine's remaining inventory, and a long-cycle revenue anchor for Altera, with the engineering detail still to come.