OREANDA-NEWS. April 22, 2014. Degremont was awarded a new contract for the Engineering and Procurement of water treatment units to equip two floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels.

Ordered by Petrobras, the FPSO units are designed for the ultra-deep oilfields offshore Brazil. The oil has to be extracted under water depths up to 2,000 meters, making the production process highly complex.

The contract covers the design & supply of two sulphate removal units and two reverse osmosis units for oil dilution.

The sulphate removal units will enable the treatment of seawater in order to make it suitable for water injection. It prevents from clogging the porous rock reservoirs and contributes to enhanced oil recovery.

The reverse osmosis units will enable the transformation of seawater into fresh water, allowing the removal of salt from crude oil. Recently in 2013, Degremont was already awarded the engineering and procurement contract for designing and providing five water treatment units (three sulphate removal and two seawater desalination units) for another three FPSOs platforms of “pre-salt” Brazilian oil reserve at Petrobras projects. Thereby winning 60% of the orders of the Brazilian market.