Trelleborg bearings for ENI production vessel in Mexico

Trelleborg, Sweden – Trelleborg AB’s offshore operation has been awarded a fast track contract to produce over 80 laminated elastomeric bearings for MODEC, an offshore floating systems supplier.

The first delivery was made in July 2019 and the bearings will be installed on a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for use by Italian energy company ENI, offshore Mexico, Trelleborg said in a 21 Aug statement.

The bearings are produced with steel plates encased within rubber and installed between the hull of a vessel and the vessel’s modules.

They are used to accommodate axial, shear and rotational movement, to keep the vessels safe from impacts of adverse sea and weather conditions.

Trelleborg has been supplying elastomeric bearings to Tokyo-headquartered MODEC for the past five years, according Vincent Tan, sales and marketing manager at Trelleborg’s offshore facility in Singapore.

“Our working relationship with them [MODEC] focuses on local communications and accessibility for factory acceptance testing (FAT) for this global project,” he added.

MODEC will own the FPSO and provide the operations and maintenance services to Eni Mexico for an initial 15-year period with the option of one-year extensions for a further 5 years.

The FPSO will be capable of processing 90,000 barrels of crude oil per day, 75 million cubic feet of gas per day, 120,000 barrels of water injection per day and have a storage capacity of 700,000 barrels of crude oil.

The first oil production by the FPSO is planned for 2021.