Trelleborg purchases hose technology By Mike McNulty

The new transfer hose system, expected to be completed and qualified in 2014, will be used to extract floating liquid natural gas in more demanding environments, according to Mikael Fryklund, president of Trelleborg Industrial Solutions.Production of the hose system will take place at the company's Clermont-Ferrand, France, plant, a Trelleborg spokeswoman said. Saipem and Trelleborg have been working on an offloading system since 2009, she said, using floating cryogenic flexible hoses to transfer gases as liquid natural gas Grain oil hoses suppliers or liquid petroleum gas in open seas.

Floating liquefied natural gas is a cost-effective, flexible way for commercializing new gas discoveries in deep water locations, the company said. Currently, it said, there are few qualified systems available for offloading floating liquefied natural gas."For some time now, Trelleborg has held a leading global position within oil hose systems for offshore offloading," Fryklund said. With the technology acquired from SBM, "we will strengthen our total offering within offloading oil and gas."

Meanwhile, he said SBM will continue to be a strategic partner to Trelleborg in the development of technologies. In the 2000s, the Tank truck hoses suppliers jointly developed Trelline technology for oil offloading line transfer systems, according to the spokes- woman.Historically, liquid natural gas off-loading has been conducted solely at fixed locations connected to land, Fryklund said, but that is changing because the technology is being developed to take advantage of offshore offloading of floating natural gas."This shift creates new technological challenges requiring a more flexible offloading system that enables the extraction of liquid natural gas in more demanding environments, without extended downtime and with a significantly reduced risk," he said.