The Italian company Cannon Artes is ready to ride the coming waves of development taking place in the Middle East, as a huge desalination project is in the making in Egypt, and plans are to capitalize on the company’s vacuum degassing solution offshore.
Alessio Liati, Sales Director at Cannon Artes tells Robban Assafina about this one stop shop, which offers a wide range of specific water treatment technologies for the oil and gas business and the plans ahead.
We would like to introduce Cannon Artes to Robban Assafina readers and followers.
Cannon Artes is a company established in Italy in 1977, almost 50 years on the market now. It is part of the Cannon Group, a private Italian group specialized in industrial engineering. As an engineering company and a manufacturer, our main business is industrial water and wastewater treatment, with our factory located in South of Italy.
How are Cannon Artes’ technologies contributing to the maritime and energy industries?
For Cannon Artes, the maritime business means offshore and oil and gas, and we particularly target extraction platforms, FPSOs and FLNGs. We have a wide range of specific water and wastewater treatment technologies, being a one stop shop for the water business and covering client’s needs, ranging from desalination, demineralization to de aeration.
Our focus is the produced and injected water mainly in the extraction platforms or FPSO’s. We can provide the complete treatment for the produced water, which involves the plant getting the water separated from crude oil and purified in order to be reused, reinjected or discharged with no harm into the sea.
Our expertise also lies in the injection water; In order to keep the pressure within the oil field, water must be injected at a high pressure with specific characteristics without oil, or suspended solids, or oxygen.
And this is what our systems provide.
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Looking at an industry aiming to provide environmental solutions, how is Cannon Artes committed to sustainability?
One of the key issues in terms of sustainability is the quality of the produced water, since it is originally polluted. So, it is a challenging task to treat the produced water and provide very efficient technologies to make it suitable for discharge and reuse, as well as in the process of reinjection into the oil field.
We also have applications in the energy transition sectors, such as water treatment for the biofuels, biorefineries, carbon capture and storage, blue and green ammonia.
How can you describe the Middle East maritime market? And how is the company benefiting from the infrastructure developments taking place there?
Middle East is the stronghold for our company; even though Cannon Artes is an Italian company most of our business is done in the Middle East, with major hubs such as UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, followed by Oman and Kuwait.
We are involved in a number of projects taking place in the Middle East; in Abu Dhabi for example, we are providing an injection water treatment placed offshore on an artificial island, treating 1000m3/hr of sea water.
We also have some initiatives onshore, for petrochemical plants and produced water treatment.
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How do you keep an eye on other developing markets in this field, like Egypt for example?
North Africa is another important point for us; apart from projects in Libya and Algeria, we are currently in the middle of the biggest contract in the history of our company taking place in Egypt. The USD 30 million project is a desalination plant for a refinery in the red sea and is expected to be delivered during the first quarter of next year.
What are the upcoming goals that the company plans to accomplish?
Our vision is to stay involved in the energy sector, allowing it to be of a sustainable footprint. We also plan to keep an eye on the energy transition sector, carbon capture, hydrogen, biorefineries and biofuels. On the other side, we expect to find a new frontier for our business in the carbon sequestration sector, through our ZeroGas vacuum degassing technology, which is suitable for removing carbon dioxide from seawater.
Robban Assafina, Issue 88, Nov./ Dec. 2023, Maritime Host, pg. 89
