F.P.O. "Zafiro Producer"

Owned and operated by Exxon-Mobil, this vessel is on station 40 miles off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. She is currently in full production and likely to stay on station for at least the next 10 years. As a continuing upgrading exercise with the classification society, the owner needed to carry out steelwork repairs / modifications within the ballast tanks and fuel oil tanks.

Obviously to take the vessel to dry dock would of incurred very large costs not only in docking, but in the lost revenue to the operator as well as the oil company.

To overcome this a carefully planned operation was put together between the owner and Matatec staff in conjunction with the Classification society to carry out all the required works on station thus eliminating any lost time or revenue.

Site visits were carried out to determine work scopes, logistics, etc, from this Matatec put together a team of workers consisting of 1 English supervisor, 1 English safety officer, 2 English scaffolders and 19 Polish tradesmen (welders, platers & burners).

This team was sent out to Malabo along with two 40 ft containers fitted out with all the equipment, welding machines, burning gear, lifting equipment, staging, lighting, ventilation and all the general equipment required for a steel job of this magnitude.

The work itself consisted of installing additional vertical stiffeners on the transverse bulkheads of each ballast tank as well as various repairs to longitudinal beams and brackets.

A full quality assurance package was put together and a full weld procedure was set out including tests to 6GR and approved by class. Matatec’s own safety officer liased on a daily basis the operators safety staff. The project commenced in November 1997 and was completed by the end of February 1998, completely to everyone’s satisfaction and approval.

The 2nd stage of similar works commenced in April 1998 with a further two bulkhead being tackled.

This work will continue over the next two years until all the ballast tanks are completed to Classification society approval. At one time Matatec had 120 operatives employed on day/night shift basis and to-date currently 2,000 tonnes of steel have been renewed. Current workforce on station is 30+.

New plates being prepared on a barge alongside the vessel	New stiffeners pre-fabricated and ready to lower into the tanks	Lowering new pre-fabricated sections into the tanks via newly installed permanent accesses

New stiffeners in the process of being installed	New stiffeners completely welded ready for coating

New additional blkd stiffeners being lowered into the tanks	New stiffeners being welded into place from Matatec erected scaffolding	Final welding of additional stiffeners