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the complete underwater hull up to 0.5 m above the deep load water line. Some coat- ings suppliers oer products that exhibit low abrasion characteristics, compatible with working through ice. However, these dier signicantly from those specically devel- oped for ice conditions. An example of this type of specialist coating is our own Intershield 163 Inerta160 at International Paint. Used for the past 35 years on nearly 1,200 applications (and on more than 140 drillships), this coating assists ice slip and resists ice adhesion. One of our customers, Lukoil, has used it to protect an ice-resistant oshore mooring system in the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea, a region regularly covered with ice up to 0.7 m thick during winter months. In this instance, two coats of Intershield 163 Inerta 160 are used to give extended asset lifetime without mainte- nance. Laboratory testing conrms that an inter-coat adhesion value of 20 MPa can be achieved for such two-coat systems. To put this in perspective, a 10 MPa result for stan- dard anticorrosive paint would be considered satisfactory. is inter-coat adhesion is also proven in the eld. At a recent dry docking, the icebreaker Krasin was found to have an inter-coat adhesion value of 12 MPa between the original coat (more than 12 years old) and that which was freshly applied as a touch up. The adoption of this type of coating can also reduce hull roughness, which can have an impact on the amount of fuel used in operating these vessels. Such fuel savings align well with the Arctic CouncilĀs Arctic Oshore Oil & Gas Guidelines, 2009 which state that air emissions associated with oil and gas exploration should be reduced. ese are the kinds of challenges that will require careful evaluation of vessel and other asset performance as development of the arc- tic region increases over the next 10 years. Toby Stein is a marketing executive with International Paint, a division of AkzoNobel. January 2011 www.sname.org/sname/mt