VWS Westgarth, a Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies company, has been awarded a $20m-plus contract by SBM Inc., for the Petrobras P57 deep water oil development in the Jubarte field in the Espirito Santo basin, offshore Brazil.

The P57 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel is the largest ever constructed by SBM and this order is the sixth awarded to VWS Westgarth by SBM for the supply of a complete water injection treatment package. This package includes a membrane-based sulphate removal process (SRP).

The SRP package will be designed to the demanding engineering standards and materials specifications required by the oil and gas industry and in service will produce 231,700BPD (36,840m³/day) of low sulphate sea water for injection.

The membranes employed in the SRP package remove sulphate and other divalent ions from the sea water prior to injection, greatly reducing the tendency for barium sulphate and strontium sulphate scale to form in the reservoir and production system. The reduced sulphate content also minimises the risk of souring in the reservoir.

The complete package will be engineered in VWS Westgarth’s UK office in East Kilbride, Glasgow, based on a detailed project specification and vendor list. A requirement to maximise the local content of this package is common to previous Petrobras contracts, and will be supported by the VWS Brazil office through existing long-term relationships with local suppliers.

This order for P57 further establishes both the sulphate removal process as the industry recognised solution to reservoir scale management, and VWS Westgarth’s world leading position in the design and supply of this specialist technology.