Company Wins OTC Award For Fluid Technology

Single Buoy Moorings, Inc. (SBM), Monaco, a designer and supplier of single-point mooring systems and tanker-based floating storage and floating production systems, was awarded the Best Mechanical Engineering Achievement Award at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas.

The award, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Petroleum Division, was presented to SBM, which with its sister company IMODCO developed a high-pressure fluid swivel—a key component of tankerbased Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) systems worldwide.

Single-point moored FPSO systems have been used to develop marginal offshore oil fields in manj parts of the world, including thf North Sea and the South China Sea for the past 20 years.

But the use of FPSO systems has been restricted by the pressure and size limitations of fluid swivel assemblies, according to SBM, which says its new swivel advances the use of FPSO systems to handle several high-pressure multi-product flowpaths.