In November 2018 Resinex supplied to Go Offshore a support buoy for an offtake support vessel to the FPSO Venturer on the Ichthys Field, managed by INPEX and located about 220 kilometres offshore Western Australia.
At the very beginning the buoy request was a little bit unusual, as the customer required a subsea buoy filled with syntactic foam despite the expected use was at 30-40 m depth. This happened because they considered that a subsea buoy design, with 10 tons of net buoyancy, could have endured and moved better on the water surface than a traditional surface buoy, because of the hard environmental conditions imposed on it.
In November 2018 Resinex provided Go Offshore with a support buoy for an auxiliary vessel to the FPSO Venturer in Ichthys Field.
Therefore, Resinex proposed to use a special mixed foam composed of high-density polyurethane and macrospheres, conceived by Resinex researchers through the years. The macrospheres occupy most of the volume of the buoy and they do not absorb water, the high density polyurethane foam occupies only the small interstices between the macrosphere instead. This brought to have a buoy with an internal compound with a very reduced capacity to absorbe water, a high resistance against the harsh environmental conditions and reduced costs compared to the only syntactic foam option, firstly requested by the client. Resinex has been using this compound for many years and many different applications, and it has always been a great success.
The buoy, shipped at the beginning of November 2018, is 5.3 m high, has a diameter of 1.8 m and a net buoyancy of 10 tons.
This is not the first supply of Resinex buoys for the Ichthys Field: in 2017 Resinex also manufactured for McDermott n° 6 deep-water buoys rated 550 metres for the same project.
Here the video of the installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDAla-lwdJA
In November 2018 Resinex provided Go Offshore with a support buoy for an auxiliary vessel to the FPSO Venturer in Ichthys Field.
