Battling the Most Corrosive Conditions
On the Planet
Offshore environments are some of the most corrosive conditions on the planet. Steel structures are buffeted by winds, continual UV exposure, waves, high humidity, chloride contamination, and heat. While staggering technological advancements have enabled Oil & Gas (O&G) development to push past the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) into deepwater and ultra-deepwater, most coating systems designed to protect these assets were formulated when jack-up rigs were considered cutting-edge technology.
As offshore development continues to evolve into deeper water and farther from land, the environmental, safety and financial costs associated with maintaining surface coatings to protect these assets from corrosion has increased significantly.
During the recent COVID pandemic, personnel on board (POB) for manned assets were restricted to critical operations staff only, for health and safety reasons. This pandemic period severely restricted O&G Operator’s ability to carry out their fabric maintenance campaigns as planned. Many Operators found themselves struggling to keep up with maintenance painting efforts prior to the pandemic.
The reduced POB over the past 18 months to implement fabric maintenance programs together with high commodity prices have amplified the urgency to make up lost time on asset integrity programs. Furthermore, life-extension programs for existing platforms are adding pressure for maintenance teams that are tasked with protecting, preserving and prolonging asset life.
Historically, O&G Operator’s have looked to NORSOK M-501, NACE TM0304-2004, ISO 20340 or ISO 12944 CX to compare coating system performance for offshore use. These standards have undergone multiple revisions over the years in an effort to better align the accelerated test methods with field results seen offshore.
The challenge is that a large number of coatings perform well in testing but yield only 2-5 years of life offshore. With failure and replacement rates this significant, traditional fabric maintenance programs often have large backlogs that become primarily reactive to prevent steel loss or replacement.
Tesla NanoCoatings is a company founded this century with patented technology built to protect offshore assets. Our coating systems can be applied to your structures with the same equipment and manpower as traditional systems. The difference is, Tesla NanoCoatings actually work in offshore environments.
We understand the failure mechanisms that cause coatings to fail offshore and we’ve designed ours to act like a shield to protect steel substrates. Not only do our systems last and last and last, they can be applied in less than half the time of normal offshore systems. Often times we’re even faster to apply when the substrate includes complex geometries found on topsides. If all this sounds too good to be true, and you’re looking for demonstrable results, we’ve applied our technology to over a million square feet of steel in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) not including the assets we’re protecting in the Middle East, the Caribbean and West Africa.