Oslo-based BW Offshore has secured $740 million in work with Petrobras Americas converting, installing and operating a production ship at the Chinook Cascade fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

The eight-year deal comes with three year options that can be exercised in the first five years of the contract. The order will earn $80 million a year for BW in the fixed period, $70 million thereafter.

The floating production, storage and offloading vessel, or FPSO, will wield a detachable submerged turret production buoy and mooring system from subsidiary Advanced Production & Loading, or APL. At 2,600 metres, it’s “probably the deepest water depth an FPSO ever has been Installed”, a statement said.

The 600,000-barrel Chinnook FPSO will be installed in first-quarter 2010, when its 80,000 barrel-per-day process kit kicks in.

The APL swivel turret loading will assuage the future hurricane fears of the Petrobras board, which has yet to approve the deal: Some 1,500 “disconnects” are said to have taken place without much incident.