Flotation collars protect Azurite field vessels

One of the mobile flotation collars for the Azurite mooring system.

Earlier, Helix contracted Resinex to supply a deepwater buoy measuring 1.6 m (5.2 ft) long and 3.6 m high for use in an anchoring system fitted to a vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. The same customer had commissioned Resinex to supply six spring buoys in 2008.

The modules for the buoys are filled with a special syntactic compound allowing them to operate in water depths of up to 300 m (984 ft). They were tested in Resinex's laboratory east of Milan, which has facilities to simulate conditions in water depths of up to 8,800 m (28,871 ft).

Over the past year, the company has also worked for two other major subsea contractors on Total's deepwater Pazflor development in Angolan block 17. Resinex manufactured around 50 buoys of various sizes at its plant in Torbiato, Italy, which were subsequently delivered to Technip's base in Dande, Angola. They were then loaded onto theDeep Blue and Deep Pioneer construction vessels for installation on Pazflor.

Saipem's new deepwater vesselSaipem 12000 is contracted for development drilling on Pazflor through early 2015. Following resistance, collision, and other tests at Resinex's Marine Research Center in Adro, the company supplied 89 flotation devices, or riser shims, to protect the steel drilling riser joints and auxiliary lines. These were manufactured with an external shell in orange Elastorex and fitted with a syntactic compound capable of withstanding a hydrostatic pressure of 370 bar (5,366 psi). Each complete riser shim has a length of 2 m (6.5 ft), an external diameter of 1.4 m (4.6 ft), and weighs 2,000 kg (4,409 lb).