Case Study: Zohr Project

Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea. The project represented one of the most challenging offshore developments ever undertaken by ENI and required extremely demanding technical specifications for pipe coating systems.

During the development of the Zohr project, our Customers informed us about the extremely demanding technical specifications required by ENI for the coating system, particularly regarding peel strength performance of ≥10 N/mm at 80°C according to ISO 21809-1 requirements. MPB wanted to reassure Customers that our adhesive material would be capable of consistently meeting those targets under real production conditions, with any coating plant, in any corner of the world.

This was not a case of solving a customer failure in production. Instead, we proactively decided to verify internally whether our adhesive system could comfortably satisfy the project requirements. Using our pilot line facilities, we tested Coesive® L8.92.8 (u).

• Verification of peel strength performance at 80°C
• Focus on long-term process reliability

The tests successfully demonstrated that our adhesive system was already capable of achieving performances significantly above the ENI requirements.

At that point, we made an important strategic consideration internally: all Customers worldwide — including those operating older or less efficient coating plants — should be able to reliably achieve the same high performances. For this reason, we decided to further improve the product robustness while remaining fully within the same TDS specifications. The objective was to provide additional process stability and larger safety margins for every customer, independently from plant conditions or operational variability.

As a result, we achieved peel strength values corresponding to 160–180% of the required performance (≥10 N/mm) at 80°C.

• Successful internal validation against ENI requirements
• Improved product robustness without changing TDS specifications
• Enhanced reliability for Customers worldwide
• Strengthened customer confidence in our technology
• A proactive example of technical partnership and innovation

The Zohr project became another important milestone in our track record, as we successfully served all coating contractors involved in the project, from South America to Southeast Asia, including Egypt. We later discovered that some contractors had encountered difficulties during PQT activities while using competitors’ products, and MPB solution proved decisive in helping them overcome a critical phase of the project.

This experience strengthened the partnerships with these Customers reinforced our philosophy: together with our Customers, we are ONE COMPANY ONE TEAM.