ExxonMobil’s Slagentangen refinery, located at the Oslo Fjord (Norway), was inaugurated in 1961. It currently receives ships up to 190,000t of deadweight and, every year, around 700 ships loaded with crude oil and petroleum products call at the port. ShibataFenderTeam’s staff at the German office collaborated closely with our in-house engineering team to cope with this multi challenge project – design, engineering and Covid-19. They successfully managed to replace the fender systems and ensure smooth future berthing operations.
The fender design was challenging as the dolphins, to which the fenders had to be installed, were different in their dimensions and the existing concrete was quite old and partly damaged. Also, the required stand-off distance was rather small, which posed a high demand for the design and installation of fenders, panels and chains. SFT overcame this challenge by integrating special tubes into the steel panels to mount the fenders to the steel panels without the need for additional flanges.
Along with that, there were other obstacles like bollards, concrete blocks, moorings hooks, and other mooring equipment on the top deck of the quay wall, forcing our team of engineers to locate each bracket individually along the full length of the quay wall. This is one of our strengths: the SFT in-house engineering provides clients with specific and fully customized fender solutions.
The 25 V Fender Systems (Arch Fenders, type SX-P 300) were delivered within a few months facing the last challenge: due to Covid-19, raw material availability and transportation endangered the on-time delivery. However, we managed to switch the production of the steel panels to our factory in Rechlin (Germany) and provided the steel panels on time, which shows the great advantage of having production facilities on different continents to fully meet the requirements of our clients and their projects.
As a true fender specialist, we are pleased to have contributed to a safer berthing process and would like to thank ExxonMobil for choosing SFT as their partner for this amazing project
