UT3 Issue 4 2019

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Issue FOUR 2019

1 POWER ∙ VEHICLES VEHICLES LIFTING∙ COMPOSITES ARCHAEOLOGY

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Benthos USBL/Acoustic Modem

Bowtech Cameras and LED Lights

BlueView Imaging Sonar RD Instruments CTD

TSS INS/IMU/MRU

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RD Instruments Doppler Velocity Log (DVL)

TSS Cable / Pipe Tracker

Impulse Connectors utilized throughout

RESON SeaBat T50-S

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www.teledynemarine.com

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Issue FOUR 2019

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CABLES ∙ VEHICLES ∙ USVS

VIV suppression system on a ROV Image: Matrix Composites and Engineering

Vol 13 No 4 ISSN: 1752-0592

SOCIETY FOR UNDERWATER TECHNOLOGY

1 Quality Court, Chancery Lane London, WC2A 1HR Editor: John Howes John@ut-2.com +44 7859905550 Editorial Assistant: Ant Colony Production: Sue Denham Advertising: Zinat Hassan UT3subsea@gmail.com Tel: +44 (0) 845 6522 483 Mobile: +44 (0) 781 1200 483

Published by UT2 Publishing for and on behalf of the Society for Underwater Technology. Reproduction of UT2 in whole or in part, without permission, is prohibited.

The publisher and the SUT assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material, nor responsibility for content of any advertisement, particularly infringement of copyrights, trademarks, intellectual property rights and patents, nor liability for misrepresentations, false or misleading statements and illustrations. These are the sole responsibility of the advertiser. Opinions of the writers are not necessarily those of the SUT or the publishers.

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NEWS

20 YEAR CONTRACT

Schlumberger has been awarded a 20-year subsea equipment and services master contract for subsea development projects in the Gulf of Mexico.

Combining this master contract with a preapproved catalogue of

NEWS

l Analysts Rystad Energy has predicted that the offshore industry has turned a corner and can reach a potential project commitment total of $123 billion in 2019, exceeding commitments in 2014 of $78 billion.

Overall offshore project sanctioning in 2019 has surpassed the $50 billion mark, In 2014, 74 offshore projects were sanctioned for nearly $78 billion. Total alone was responsible for $24 billion of these projects by growing its portfolios in West Africa and Brazil.

standard subsea equipment will enable Chevron to decrease operating costs in its subsea projects.

The provision of a OneSubsea custom catalogue of equipment (such as multiphase boosting systems and flowmeters, subsea production trees,

l The Balticconnector project's offshore pipeline has been completed.

Of the five worksites of the project, the offshore pipeline was the first one to reach completion. l Shell has taken the final investment decision (FID) for the PowerNap deep-water project in the US Gulf of Mexico. PowerNap is a subsea tie-back to the Shell-operated Olympus production hub. The project is expected to start production in late 2021 and produce up to 35,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) at peak rates.

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manifolds, controls and connections systems) will also include innovative technologies that meet Chevron’s project requirements. It also includes high-temperature projects or high-pressure projects requiring equipment that can withstand up to 20 000 psi.

l The Liza Destiny FPSO is currently sailing to Guyana, having recently departed from Keppel shipyard in Singapore. This key milestone follows a record turnaround time of just over 20 months for its construction phase

by SBM Offshore – including module construction at nearby Dyna-Mac yard. lTechnipFMC and Allseas have agreed to jointly pursue deepwater projects suited to the assets, products, and capabilities of the two companies.

Connecting What’s Needed with What’s Next™

Visit us at Offshore Europe Stand 2i40

REDEFINING AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY

Copyright © 2019 Oceaneering International, Inc. All rights reserved.

As your trusted partner, Oceaneering does things differently, creatively, and smarter by pushing boundaries to solve your subsea challenges. The development of the Freedom resident ROV combines our unmatched experience, remote piloting and automated control technology, and Onshore Control Centers to safely and cost-effectively improve efficiency and de-risk operations.

Connect with what’s next at oceaneering.com

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NEWS

CORAL SUL Eni has marked the start of Coral South’s Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) vessel hull construction with the 'First Steel Cut”' ceremony.

This takes place just 15 months after Coral South Project’s Final Investment Decision, highlighting the commitment of Area 4 Partners to start LNG production by 2022.

The Hull is designed to accommodate the storage facilities for all the substances that will be processed and produced in the floating liquefaction plant, mainly Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and condensates. In addition to the storage tanks, some of the electrical, instrumentation and mechanical rooms, as well as all maritime systems related to cargo management, will be located in the Hull.

The construction of the ship’s turret, took place in March this year in Singapore.

The other main component of the FLNG, the topside modules, will also be built in South Korea at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyards and the construction is planned to start end of this year. The FLNG is expected to be completed by the end of 2021 and first gas is expected in 2022.

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BMT AND SONARDYNE SELECTED SOFEC has selected BMT and Sonardyne, under their teaming agreement, to supply an innovative mooring monitoring system (MMS) for a major new deepwater development.

The new system will involve monitoring of the turret mooring system. With water depths ranging from 1,500-2,300 metres, SOFEC, a MODEC Group company, wanted to integrate a robust and reliable MMS to complement their market leading turret mooring solution.

SOFEC chose to use BMT and Sonardyne’s combined engineering strength in order to acquire the most technically competent and robust MMS. Their selection was based on high data availability, ease of remote operated vehicle (ROV) installation, robustness of the subsea technology and the longevity between maintenance periods that the BMT / Sonardyne MMS offers, compared with other solutions in the market.

Above the waterline, BMT will supply the station-keeping turret monitoring system and local control panel with touchscreen interface. The control panel will also house Sonardyne’s topside equipment, to minimise the system’s footprint. Additionally, the system will allow SOFEC’s client to gain remote data access through BMT’s secure cloudbased portal, BMT DEEP. Below the waterline, Sonardyne’s SMART (Subsea Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) will be used to constantly monitor mooring integrity on each of the 20 anchor legs.

Daily summary reports and automatic fault detections will be wirelessly communicated to the surface from the SMARTs real-time.

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NEWS

MARINER

Equinor has announced first oil from the Mariner field in the UK North Sea. The field is expected to produce more than 300 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years.

The Mariner reservoirs have up to 3 billion barrels of oil in place, a 50% increase on what was originally assumed, and the estimated recovery rate has been increased by 20%.

Mariner is expected to produce annual average plateau rates of around 55,000 b/d and up to 70,000 b/d per day at peak production.

"This has resulted in fewer and better placed wells and increased resources since the project was sanctioned in 2012.

“By gathering and interpreting new seismic data we have improved our understanding of the reservoirs," said Anders Opedal, executive vice president for Technology, Projects and Drilling in Equinor.

"With the significant volumes in place, we see clear potential to further increase the oil recovery from the Mariner field and will proactively seek opportunities to do so through the application of new technology,

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The Mariner field in the UK North Sea. (Photo: Jamie Baikie and Michal Wachucik / Equinor ASA)

additional drilling and future tie back opportunities.”

have been awarded to UK suppliers since the project started.

Mariner is one of the largest industrial projects in the UK in recent years. A gross investment of more than $7.7 billion, the development will support more than 700 long term jobs and generate significant revenue in the supply chain for decades to come.

Contracts worth more than $1.3 billion

“With the start-up of Mariner, we have delivered one of the most complex developments in the North Sea and Equinor’s portfolio. We will continue to apply digital solutions and new technology to deliver safe and efficient operations and optimize production,” says Opedal.

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Digital solutions include automated drilling, digital twin, field worker tools, and digitized logistics to support operational and field maintenance planning.

NEWS

GREEN-LIGHT FOR DUVA AND GJØA P1 Neptune Energy's development plans for the Duva (PL636) and Gjøa P1 (PL153) projects in the North Sea have been approved

by Norwegian authorities.

First production from the projects is expected in late 2020 with total recoverable resources estimated to be 120 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) (maximum production is expected to be respectively 30,000 boe from Duva and 24,000 boe from Gjøa P1).

The fields will be developed through subsea tie-backs connecting two templates to the nearby Gjøa platform, operated

by Neptune Energy Norge.

Duva’s recoverable resources are estimated to be 88 million boe and it’s expected to yield around 30,000 boe per day at maximum production. Developed with a four-slot subsea template, the Duva field will be tied back to the Gjøa platform for processing and export. The field will have three production wells, two oil producers and one gas producer, with the potential for an additional oil well.

P1’s recoverable resources are estimated to be 32 million boe and it is expected to yield around 24,000 boe per day at maximum production.

The subsea tie-backs will be delivered by TechnipFMC utilising the Neptune Subsea Alliance Agreement, the drilling operations will be undertaken by Odfjell and topside modifications completed by Rosenberg Worley.

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NEWS

BUCKSKIN LLOG has started production from the Buckskin Project in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

Buckskin is located on Keathley Canyon blocks 785, 828, 829, 830, 871 and 872 in approximately 6,800 feet of water. The initial phase of this large-scale, deepwater project consists of two wells in Keathley Canyon 829 and a six-mile subsea tieback to the Lucius platform at Keathley Canyon 875.

Drilling and completion of the initial two wells, which were drilled to approximately 29,000 feet, occurred in 2018.

Installation of subsea facilities to complete the tieback occurred in 2019. The drilling, completion, and subsea installation were completed ahead of schedule and on budget. Once fully established, the phase one production rate is anticipated to reach 30,000 gross barrels of oil per day.

Additional phases of development will be required to fully develop the field, which is estimated to contain nearly five billion barrels of oil in place.

Buckskin SPAR

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NEWS

TRESTAKK Production has commenced from the Trestakk subsea field on Haltenbanken in the Norwegian Sea started.

Tied back to the Åsgard A floating production vessel, the field has estimated recoverable resources of 76 million barrels of oil.

When the project was approved by the authorities in 2017, the investments were estimated at NOK 5.5 billion (current). On field start-up the final costs are expected to be NOK 5 billion.

Trestakk field development covers a subsea template with four well slots and one satellite well. A total of five wells will be drilled: three for production and two for gas injection. Trestakk is tied back to the Åsgard A floating production vessel, which has been modified to receive the production from Trestakk.

The original life time of Åsgard A was until 2019, however, last winter the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate approved the application for extending the life time of the installation to 2031.

Trestakk will produce around 22,000 barrels of oil per day (3,500 sm3).

Peak production will be around 44,000 barrels of oil per day (7,000 sm3).

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NEWS

SVERDRUP PHASE 2 PIPELINES Equinor has awarded Phase 2 of the Johan Sverdrup contract for subsea pipelines and associated marine operations to Subsea 7.

The first phase of the Johan Sverdrup development is nearly 90% completed, with expected production start in November.

In the second Subsea 7 will deliver and install 100km of infield pipelines and 25 spools, installation of umbilicals and marine operations associated with the subsea scope.

Phase 2 of the Johan Sverdrup development was approved by Norwegian authorities in May 2019.

Start-up of phase 2 is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2022.

The Johan Sverdrup licensees are Equinor (operator), Lundin Norway, Petoro, Aker BP and Total.

GREATER ENFIELD The US$1.9 billion Greater Enfield Project is targeting first oil in mid-2019.

Approved in 2016, the project will develop the Laverda Canyon, Norton over Laverda (WA-59-L) and Cimatti (WA-28-L) oil accumulations. These reserves will be produced via a 31 km subsea tie-back to the Ngujima-Yin floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility, located over the Vincent oil field.

Woodside has been producing from the Vincent field, located 50 km offshore Exmouth, Western Australia, since 2008. Vincent production is currently suspended while undertaking modifications on the Ngujima-Yin FPSO as part of the Greater Enfield Project. . Ngujima-Yin is a Thalanjyi word meaning “to dream�. Ngujima-Yin's production capacity is 120,000 barrels of oil a day.

Production is expected to resume in mid-2019.

Ngujima-Yin

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OCEANEERING WELLHEAD REMOVAL Oceaneering has secured a contract from Lundin Norway AS covering the removal of the Jorvik subsea well in Norway, with options for additional wells.

The removal project, which is part of an ongoing rig chase multi-client campaign, is expected to begin this fall and take 3-4 weeks to complete. Contract management is a cross border operation between Oceaneering’s Norway and U.K. teams.

To date Oceaneering has more than 10 wells in U.K. and Norway awarded to its 2019 Rig Chase multi-client campaign. l Oceaneering recently secured a contract to perform the first-ever deepwater Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) survey in Mexican waters. The geophysical survey will take place at the BHP-operated Trion block. Oceaneering will use the DP-2 Ocean Investigator, equipped with the OS-VI AUV and light geotechnical capabilities.

Work is currently underway and will continue for approximately 45 days. Oceaneering will also provide light geotechnical services by acquiring 6 m piston core soil samples.

Well removal

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PIPELINE PRECOMMISSIONING

SAFER PIPELINE PRECOMMI Pre-commissioning can be described as a series of processes carried out on the pipeline before the final product is introduced and the pipeline made ‘live’.

Traditionally this can be a costly process involving ROVs, wired sensors as well as cameras, divers, and the associated time required to monitor the project until completion, ultimately ensuring that the pipeline is ‘fit for purpose’. But what if this could be conducted more efficiently and at reduced cost, while improving safety and without interruption?

"Using edge computing with subsea wireless IP camera technology deployed on a pipeline construction project can enhance diver safety and generate significant cost savings by avoiding the need for additional subsea vessels or ROVs," said WFS Technologies Chief Marketing Officer, Theo Priestly.

Subsea wireless technology can contribute to reducing these costs and increase the efficiency in precommissioning operations.

There have been significant advances in recent years that create the possibility to monitor subsea equipment and production processes at very low cost. Typical savings in the range of 75%-90% can be achieved when compared to conventional technology and methods.

These technology developments are not only fast to install, low-cost solutions, they are also far simpler to deploy and often have battery lives that can be in excess of 30 years, depending on the required duty.

Traditionally, precommissioning starts with ‘pigging’, the process of sending either a gel or physical shunt through the pipeline via compressed air or nitrogen to clean it out and test for pressure leaks.

During pipeline installation and

inspection operations it is necessary to send a series of pigs to clean, scrape and inspect the inside of the pipe.

Operators not only need to know when the pig has left the pig launcher and when it has arrived in the pig trap, but it also be able to detect the pig if it becomes stuck inside the pipe.

The cost of interrupting production or commissioning a new line can be significant and identifying quickly and easily the lost pig saves time and money.

Several methods exist for tracking when the pig is launched and recovered, including radioactive isotopes which have specialist handling requirements. There is currently, however, no definitive universal method for identifying where in a pipe the pig has become stuck.

An ROV would normally monitor the ejection of the pig, while a diver might be sent to monitor pressure and temperature variations which would indicate the presence of a leak.

This process is extremely costly for one, the CAPEX in terms of rental of the ROV, operators, sensor devices, and diver resources, transportation, and time is prohibitive.

This is compounded by safety concerns for the diver having to be in the water for long periods of time to monitor the pipeline precommissioning process. " This is where the Subsea Internet of Things comes into play," said Priestly.

"An industry buzzword that’s been around for a while now, the Internet of Things (IOT) is gaining interest from the energy sector as it looks to harness data from an array of sensors whether for tidal, wind, or traditional oil and gas pipeline projects.

"The attraction of receiving real-time, operational data from devices and inaccessible infrastructure is huge as companies seek to minimise or predict failure, and maximise safety, efficiency and uptime."

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Subsea Internet of Things (SIoT) is a derrivative of IoT, a network of smart, wireless sensors and smart devices configured to provide actionable operational intelligence such as performance, condition and diagnostic information. It focuses on subsea communication through the water and the water-air boundary.

SIoT systems incorporate standard sensors including temperature, pressure, flow, vibration, corrosion and video. The processed information is shared among nearby wireless sensor nodes making these a true subsea edge computing network.

The data can then be logged locally, shared with any Seatooth enabled ROV or transmitted to the surface and shore.

"The real step forward with these sensors has been the use of radio to communicate through water," said Priestly. "Used as a communications technology through air since the late 1800’s, the ability of radio to transmit signal through water was first noticed in 1840 when a telegraph wire crossing the Hudson Bay broke yet signal continued. Since then a considerable effort, particularly concerted over the last 15 years has resulted in what we now know as ‘Seatooth’ radio.

"The benefits to this method of communication are clear. Uniquely among subsea communications methods, radio transmits through the seabed, enabling buried pipelines to be remotely monitored. Radio also communicates through metal, water, and even the water-air boundary which avoids the requirement for dunkers to harness data."

In the case of precommissioning, a wireless solution can provide a much safer, cost efficient and nonintrusive solution for the verification of pipeline pigging operations. The system works by transmitting a radio signal from each pig, through the pipe, to be recovered by a

SSIONING USING SIOT fixed position receiver mounted on the outside of the pipe and/or a moveable receiver mounted on an ROV. The same signal can be detected at up 5m outside the pipe – whether the pipe is buried, rock dumped, or concrete clad. Pig tracking can be greatly assisted by calculated pressure, flow and volume calculations which help to assess speed of progress of the pig travelling down the pipe, thus if the pig gets stuck a prediction can be made as to where the pig is likely to be.

Being able to detect when a pig passes a known location in the pipe is a challenge well known to the industry and regularly placed pig passing detection systems greatly assist on speed of progress assessments.

Using wireless SIOT technology, data can be transmitted through the pipe wall for location verification as the pig travels along, as well as providing immediate feedback from sensors (eg, temperature, pressure, corrosion, ovality, dry buckling etc) within the pipe rather than the traditional creation of a defect map post run.

Video equipment used for precommissioning In reality this is a real-time subsea wireless video streaming solution, designed to save costs and improve safety by removing the need for a second ROV during complex subsea interventions or precommissioning projects. A wireless subsea camera system such as this can provide realtime video data to surface operators enabling effective management of remote operations.

"The impact of SIoT is only now beginning to be felt through out our industry," said Priestly. " Having

Defects can be monitored at the earliest opportunity and proactive remedial tasks planned. Additionally two way communications can be enabled for commands to be sent to the pig to re-configure its tasks.

Using this method vastly reduces the costs involved through automation, reducing the time for divers and ROV operations required.

Additionally, with the deployment of wireless subsea camera equipment the need for a diver to be in the water is reduced even further. Using subsea HD cameras mounted on a standard subsea basket, these can be wirelessly controlled, capturing the entire operation in high definition.

Pipeline precommissioning project

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been proven during pipeline precommissioning operations in Azerbaijan, pipeline temperature monitoring across the North Sea and coiled tubing operations in Brazil, the technology is also now being harnessed for structural monitoring in the North Atlantic, and geothermal vent mining in Japan.

"SIoT may be a recent branch of the broader Internet of Things, but it seems that the benefits to our industry of safety, efficiency and cost are set to accelerate from here."

VEHICLES

SAILDRONE Saildrone, a seven-meter (23ft) long, wind-powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) has become the first of its type to circumnavigate Antarctica. The vehicle, known as SD 1020, survived freezing temperatures, 15m waves, 130 km/h winds, and collisions with giant icebergs to complete the 22 000km mission in 196 days.

Saildrone USVs are designed for long-term ocean deployments, up to 12 months, without burning fossil fuels and thus having a zero carbon footprint. They are powered exclusively by the wind for propulsion and solar energy to power the onboard instruments. Onboard, is a suite of science-grade sensors to collect meteorological and oceanographic data critical to understanding the changes taking place in the Antarctic ecosystem.

The standard sensor suite includes instruments to measure air and sea temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, and wave height and period, as well as sky, sea, and horizon cameras. In addition to the ASVCO2, SD 1020’s enhanced sensor package includes an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) to measure ocean currents.

The standard configuration of a Generation 5 saildrone includes a seven-meter (23ft) hull, a 2.5m (8ft) keel, and a five-meter (15ft) tall solid wing. This regular saildrone wing has an operational wind range up to 60kts; however, the massive waves of the Southern Ocean were too much for this tall and slender wing.

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On two previous occasions, in 2015 and 2017, saildrones were deployed into the Southern Ocean to attempt the circumnavigation. In each case, after a short period of time, the mission was compromised and the saildrones had to sail back for repairs.

The team learned from these failures and designed a new type of wing specifically for the Southern Ocean.

The lower aspect “square rig” is strong and designed to deal with the huge forces of being rolled and submerged by 15m (50ft) breaking waves THE SCIENCE The Southern Ocean plays a key role in regulating heat and carbon.

In terms of carbon and heat, the Southern Ocean is by far the most important ocean. Globally, the Southern Ocean takes up about half of all carbon and 75% of all heat that enters the ocean. This makes it

Circumnavigation path

disproportionately more important to place efforts and resources, such as those occurring by robotic platforms like Saildrone, into obtaining more scientific measurements in this polar region.

SD 1023 redeployed with square wings

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“One of our largest ‘blind spots’ in terms of our climate knowledge and its future prediction lies in the Southern Ocean,” said Sebastiaan Swart, co-chair of the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS).

VEHICLES

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VEHICLES

SAILDRONE "This is mostly due to the serious lack of observations, in particular in winter, in this remote and harsh environment.

"This leads to a poor understanding of how these polar oceans function.

“These high-resolution observations from Saildrone provide valuable ground-based datasets for scientists to understand the Southern Ocean better and evaluate the models we use to predict weather and climate.”

From the top of the wing to the bottom of the keel, saildrones carry numerous science sensors - indeed with an instrument developed by NOAA to measure carbon fluxes very precisely, the saildrone provided important new data on the rates of carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean.

“There’s a lot left to be learned about the ocean’s uptake of CO2 emissions, especially in the Southern Ocean. Up until a few years ago, the Southern Ocean was understood to be a large CO2 sink. Yet, that understanding was based primarily on observations made from ships that steer clear of the harshest weather in the Southern Ocean, leaving winter months undersampled,” said explained Dr. Adrienne Sutton, an oceanographer with the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) Carbon Group. The PMEL Carbon Group has been involved in all Saildrone missions related to CO2 to date.

According to Sutton, with the deployment of carbon sensors on profiling floats (part of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project), scientists have started to get a broader seasonal distribution of observations, and they found less of a CO2 sink than previously thought.

The SOCCOM floats measure seawater pH and use empirical relationships to calculate seawater partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), which introduces some uncertainty relative

to a direct measurement.

This has generated an active discussion centred on the uncertainty in the calculated pCO2 from the float measurements and whether the weakened CO2 sink, which was observed by the floats 2014 – 2017, was just natural variability.

Over the course of the mission, the saildrone rendezvoused with a few of the SOCCOM floats.

“Having another autonomous platform that can survive the Southern Ocean is both a technological feat and an

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opportunity to get us closer to solving the ocean CO2 sink puzzle! Preliminary results suggest that we also observed CO2 outgassing during winter months in the same region as the floats measured previously. CO2 outgassing from the ocean to the atmosphere occurs when ocean pCO2 levels are higher than atmospheric levels,” explained Sutton.

Occasionally, the saildrone onboard cameras capture images of the local wildlife. This bird is assumed to be some type of albatross.

saildrones had to sail back for repairs.

The team learned a huge amount from these failures and designed a new type of wing specifically for the Southern Ocean. The lower aspect “square rig” is incredibly strong and is designed to deal with the huge forces of being rolled and submerged by 15m (50ft) breaking waves.

“While the square rig has less performance range than the regular saildrone wing and struggles to sail upwind, it does a great job of sailing downwind and can still get you where you need to go in the Southern Ocean,” said Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins. “You inevitably sacrifice maneuverability for survivability, but we have created something that gets the job done and that the Southern Ocean just can’t destroy!”

SD 1022 and SD 1023 were released with “toughened” regular wings along with SD 1020 in January, but like their predecessors, both suffered storm damage in the first few days, while the square sail carried on despite stormy conditions.

“Our initial findings are that the SOCCOM floats match the Saildrone pCO2 to within their stated uncertainty,” said Nancy Williams, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science.

“These crossovers provide great opportunities for validation and context between two very different and complementary datasets.

Sustaining both of these types of observations will be extremely helpful for improving our understanding of the Southern Ocean’s role in the global

carbon budget and I can’t wait to dive into this new dataset.”

SAILDRONE The regular saildrone wing has an operational wind range up to 60 kts; however, the massive waves of the Southern Ocean were too much for this tall and slender wing.

On two previous occasions, in 2015 and 2017, saildrones were deployed into the Southern Ocean to attempt the circumnavigation. In each case, after a short period of time, the mission was compromised and the

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SD 1022 and SD 1023 navigated back to New Zealand for repair and were redeployed in May with square wings similar to SD 1020. These two saildrones have recently successfully navigated winter conditions through the Drake Passage and entered the South Atlantic Ocean. Unlike SD 1020, SD 1022 and SD 1023 are equipped with scientific echo sounders to study fish biomass in addition to the standard atmospheric and oceanographic standard instruments SD 1022 and SD 1023 were redeployed in May 2019 with square wings.

Future plans in the Southern Ocean Saildrone is building a global fleet of unmanned surface vehicles, targeting planetary coverage.

VIV SUPPRESSION

VIV SUPPRESSION AARON BEGLEY, CEO OF MATRIX COMPOSITES & ENGINEERING REPORTS

The cactus is well known for its ability to survive without much water,but drowning it in the ocean may prove to be a game changer for the oil and gas industry. The Matrix Composites & Engineering manufactured Longitudinally Grooved Suppression system, LGS* for short, is proving to do just that.

Inspired by the Saguaro cactus, LGS was originally designed by engineering consultants AMOG, after being approached by Matrix to help solve the long-standing issue of vortex induced vibration (VIV) and drag caused by currents on drilling risers. The success of the technology soon led to the expansion of LGS to free span correction of subsea pipelines in the form of retrofittable shrouds.

The remotely installed LGS shrouds wrap around unsupported sections of oil and gas pipelines, with their unique shape acting to reduce VIV caused by strong ocean currents on exposed pipelines.

This problem can occur when oil and gas pipelines running along seabeds develop unsupported (free span) sections due to an uneven seabed, failures in artificial pipeline supports, changes in seabed topology occurring due to sand waves, erosion or scouring. These free span sections damage the integrity of subsea pipelines and can shorten their life due to loading causing fatigue and

particular flow conditions creating VIV. Traditionally, strakes or fairings have been used in an effort to offset the likelihood and intensity, however, these have proven to be difficult to install on subsea pipelines. They also have durability issues because of moving parts. In addition, low seabed clearances and other obstacles can prevent fairings from rotating with changes in flow, rendering them ineffective, while strakes are susceptible to wear and impact damage to their distinctly prominent profile.

This is where AMOG turned to the cactus to find the answer – and it has already proved successful in real world operations. Matrix Chief Executive Officer Aaron Begley said the LGS️ design mimicked the grooved outer skin of the Saguaro cactus to provide protection against VIV. “Some great ideas come from the oddest places, and this is definitely one of them,” said Begley.

“The giant Saguaro cactus has a very small root system yet despite this can stand up to the strong desert winds because a grooved profile on its outer skin provides protection against the vortex formation process. AMOG thought ‘If it works against strong winds, maybe it will work against strong ocean currents’.

“The partnership with AMOG has proven very successful. After they conducted small scale testing at Monash University to optimise

the LGS️ profile, we completed rigorous large-scale testing at Canada’s National Resource Council in S️t.

John’s, Newfoundland, to ensure the technology would work in real world operations. We were delighted when field test data from offshore installations proved just that.”

Having success in the Gulf of Mexico on drilling risers, Matrix installed its first LGS️ shrouds on a free span section of pipe at an operation in the gas-rich north west coast of Western Australia in 2017. A key requirement of the project was for the pipeline to be fitted with a VIV mitigation device that had a low drag profile due to the prevailing strong currents in the area causing unacceptably large lateral load scenarios.

The project also involved several other challenges, including inconsistent and low clearances with the seabed, large dimensional tolerances and physical features of the pipe, and a 40-year design life.

The solution was to use the patented LGS️ drag and VIV reduction technology to create a wrap-based shroud for the pipeline. The LGS shrouds were designed to be installed by an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which considered a range of factors including the ROV’s angle of approach, the location of locking mechanisms, ease

of access for later removal if necessary and ROV pilot visibility, as well as compatibility with ROV tooling.

The low profile of the LGS️ shrouds Testing at the National Research Council Canada facility in St John’s, Newfoundland

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Matrix LGS️ shrouds – with greater coverage, a more robust and subtle profile with relative immunity to seabed interactions, low drag profile, and no moving parts – has opened up a viable solution for free span oil and gas pipelines that makes economic sense compared to traditional rectification methods.

Those traditional methods – such as helical strakes and fairings – cannot always be readily deployed on pipeline free spans due to access and seabed clearance limitations and durability concerns.

the LGS️ profile, providing controlled balance and sufficient grip force to maintain the shroud position on the pipe, while minimising the shroud inner diameter, which would not have been possible with a traditional VIV mitigation design.

LGS shroud fitted to pipe using an ROV ensured the solution worked within the project’s tight clearance levels and being less obtrusive, they were easily installed on pipe sections closer to the seabed than possible with traditional VIV strakes.

Interface points on the shroud were designed to have latching and alignment features compatible with VIV strake installation tooling to speed up the design process and increase the technological readiness level of the installation procedure, meaning no major design changes were required.

In addition to the rubber pads, ratcheted fasteners were incorporated into the shroud to allow it to be tightened around the pipe to accommodate pipe sections of varying size.

In all, Matrix was able to take the job from award to design and full completion in just six months, with the LGS shrouds installed using solely an ROV system that achieved a subsea installation rate of approximately two metres for every 10 minutes.

Even when strakes can be installed, their high aspect ratio of fin height compared to base width and overall pipeline diameter can prove to have drawbacks for operators. Protrusions from the strake’s fins can be subject to severe localised loading resulting in damage and in some cases, entire stripping of the strake, virtually eliminating their efficacy as a VIV suppression device.

Meanwhile, the low profile LGS️ geometry makes the product far less prone to damage from hang ups during deployment and in-service drag and wear damage as opposed to that of a high fin profile VIV strake application.

Matrix LGS️ is proof that solutions can come from the unlikeliest of sources, even the cactus.

After extensive third-party scrutiny, Matrix’s client and their review bodies predicted a substantial reduction in fatigue inducing VIV response.

The pipeline had large diametrical tolerance variations, due to its insulation and field joints, which presented additional challenges for the LGS️ shrouds’ installation and locking pin system. Matrix overcame this by inserting specially designed rubber button pads into the peaks of *LGS is a registered trademark of AMOG Technologies Pty Ltd

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VIV SUPPRESSION

Testing in Newfoundland

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OIL SPILL

OIL SPILL EXERCISE Oil spills can have significant consequences for society, economy and the environment.

As a result, oil spill accidents have focused attention on industry and governmental responses to oil spills, and what actions can best prevent them from happening and how best to manage them if they do occur.

Clean up and recovery from an oil spill is challenging, and dependent upon many factors, including the type and volume of oil spilled, meteorological/ oceanographic conditions, and local geography. Spills may take weeks, months or even years to clean up, so understanding how and where oil is moving through the water column is of critical importance to ensure the process of remediation is both efficient and effective.

In a recent offshore exercise conducted by Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL), Blue Ocean Monitoring (Blue Ocean) deployed a Teledyne Webb Research Slocum Glider with hydrocarbon sensory package, to test and validate the technology in the context of an oil spill event. The OSRL exercise was designed to understand how new remote sensing technologies can help detect and manage oil spills at sea more effectively.

Utilising the latest in satellite, airborne and in-water surveillance and communications equipment, the successful event demonstrated the value of the technology in identifying and monitoring spills and was conducted with full approval of the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) following a rigorous planning and stakeholder consultation process.

The main surveillance tools and providers involved in the exercise included: Radar and optical satellite imagery (MDA, Earth-I, Airbus, Telespazio) Infra-red and Ultraviolet sensors on the OSRL UKCS aircraft (2Excel Aviation) Airborne hyperspectral sensors (2Excel Aviation) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) (Sky Futures and Bristow Group) Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) (Blue Ocean Monitoring and Planet Ocean) A surveillance kite with COFDM link (Domo Tactical Communications (DTC)) IP Mesh Network on vessel and crew (Briggs Marine and DTC) The exercise took place on 13 June 2017 in open sea off the southern coast of England. A minimal amount of oil was released under carefully controlled conditions and with approval from the MMO. On hand was the full complement of oil spill response equipment and personnel, including a purpose-equipped vessel, containment and recovery equipment and UK approved dispersant.

Real-time data from the Blue Ocean glider was communicated through OSRL’s Southampton-based Visualisation Centre, which via a GIS platform, integrated data from each of the technology partner’s equipment as well as oil spill modelling platforms and satellite feeds.

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COMPOSITES

SEABED STORAGE the practical issues with the design of a steel and concrete subsea tank.

(At the time, Kongsberg also looked at composite, but steel or concrete solutions were the preferred solution as they were proven materials for subsea storage tanks).

NOV is introducing composites into its subsea storage prototype designs.

The resultant cost savings that this promises could make the underwater storage of hydrocarbons a feasible field development tool.

Subsea storage systems represent an imaginative solution for developing small pools of oil – possibly in remote locations – that cannot justify their own pipelines.

Inside the tank, a flexible bag was used to obviate the risk of an emulsion layer while the combination of the membrane and steel shell provided a double barrier against oil spill. The internal membrane meant that there was no need to design against seabed pressure.

At present, pipeline-less export demands are mainly satisfied by floating storage units (FSU) or floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) technology, however, these vessels are characterised by high CAPEX and OPEX, high fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

Making production viable, therefore, demands a relatively large hydrocarbon reserve base.

Employing subsea storage, however, could not only be a potentially much cheaper and less weather-sensitive alternative but also a safer solution due to not requiring human involvement or helicopter transfer.

A typical development scenario to economically produce relatively small volumes might be based on a small wellhead platform or small subsea tree/cluster connected to a subsea storage tank. The product could be offloaded periodically into a shuttle tanker for onward distribution to market.

Subsea storage, however, is not without its history, nor its problems.

In the past, oil has been stored in the base of concrete Condeep platforms and within steel storage tanks, however, this has been accompanied by instances of emulsion layer buildup and toxic settlement.

In 2012, Kongsberg began to look at

The original vessel had 25,000m3 of storage capacity. To install this vessel, two methods were chosen as a base case. One was to use a conventional vessel installation with subsurface tow out, including external buoyancy tanks and the other, a heavy lift vessel installation with tow out on a barge.

This, however, highlighted one of its main drawbacks. Being constructed of steel and concrete made the tank very heavy, and there were not that many vessels in the world that were able to lift it. This had an impact on installation costs.

INNER SKIN The flexible membrane is connected to a central pipe assembly and this in turn is connected to the protection structure. The seawater outside the structure surrounds the membrane through free-flow seawater openings in the structure, such that the hydrostatic pressure acts directly on the stored fluid.

The central pipe assembly is designed for in and outflow of the crude into the membrane. The membrane is filled and emptied from the bottom.

Differences in density between crude and seawater creates a horizontal interface where the membrane separates the two fluids.

The membrane continues to move downwards as the storage unit is filled.

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In 2016, Kongsberg sold the group involved with its development to NOV, about the time that the downturn was about to start. On the back of financial pressure, this encouraged a re-think.

"In order to confront the evolving shifting currents of the market, our technology development needed to focus on finding competitive advantages in the economic marketplace." said Julie Lund, Senior Engineer at NOV. "One design aspect NOV evaluated was the materials chosen for the different technology elements. By utilising composites as the structural material for the subsea storage unit, thermal insulation, high-strength,

Make no compromise between performance and ease-of-use.

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COMPOSITES

installation friendliness and corrosion protection could all be addressed by a single material."

In the new desgin, in order to evaluate wax deposition from the crude, the temperature of the fluids are evaluated as they pass through the system, from the platform to the shuttle tanker.

"Based on the critical parameter list and functional requirements established for the storage and export system, the storage unit size was reduced from 25 000m3 to 10 000m3.

Reducing the unit size, enabled a cluster unit configuration, connecting multiple units together in a frame and providing an even more flexible system."

"NOV has recently finished the parameter assessment of the system, including small-scale testing of the membrane behaviour and overpressure protection system in

realistic conditions. The small-scale testing was conducted together with Equinor. This included verifying filling and offloading cycles of a storage unit and a cluster unit, by confirming consistency in operation.

"NOV is now evaluating these small-scale parameter assessment testing results and together with previous results obtained, is planning a large-scale verification demonstration."

NOV (along with GustoMSC) also has experience with subsea storage tanks such as the YME and the Siri subsea storage tank.

The next and final step of the technology qualification programme includes a large scale verification, as well as some parallel activities. The large-scale verification is planned to start Q3 2019, and be completed Q3 2020.

The storage tanks can be grouped in multiples of 5 in a rack. All images: NOV

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"The protection structure fabrication has analogues with the fabrication of large floating fish farming tanks," said Lund.

"Fabrication of large composites has progressed drastically over the last couple of years. The large scale verification model will be built in composite, to represent the field version, qualifying the protection structure design and material." said Lund.

"For the different technology elements, we are currently screening multiple suppliers. Different protection structure design solutions are also being evaluated. One such design is a single skin wall structure with a thickness of typically 200 mm.

"The overall goal with this technology qualification program is to unlock a safe, profitable, economical and flexible product for the market, designed and built to suit field requirements."

MERMAC A

Foldable launch and recovery system NORSOK compliant

DNV certified

Low weight

Extensive telescopic reach

Fast and flexible deployment

Ultra compact for road transport

MacArtney global solutions Denmark Norway Sweden Netherlands

USA Canada

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United Kingdom Chile

Singapore

France

Germany

China

Australia

COMPOSITES

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The storage tanks. Images: NOV

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SUBSEA EQUIPMENT

C-KORE IN OZ C-Kore Systems has successfully completed another offshore campaign off the West Australian North West Shelf. C-Kore’s subsea testing tools quickly located the faulty subsea equipment, allowing it to be replaced to make the field operational again.

C-Kore’s subsea testing tools are used on fault-finding operations to quickly evaluate the health of the subsea equipment. Their Cable Monitor tool measures the insulation resistance and continuity of electrical lines. When used in conjunction with the Subsea TDR tool, faults can be localised with a precision of 10cm.

Stephen Leung, Subsea Controls Engineer said," We were able to quickly locate and replace the faulty equipment much quicker than traditional testing methods. With our tools being so small, we can quickly deploy our units to our customers no matter where they are located."

C-Kore Systems recently announced the recent deployment of its 200th Subsea Testing Unit. This landmark event occurred during an umbilical installation operation off the coast of Australia.

"C-Kore’s Subsea Testing units have gained worldwide acceptance with both oil and gas operators and contractors for construction campaigns, fault-finding operations, and with the release of the new Sensor Monitor unit, decommissioning projects," said Leung.

"The C-Kore Cable Monitor units save customers significant time and money by providing quick and accurate readings on the insulation resistance and continuity of electrical lines. The

Subsea TDR unit can localize a fault with an accuracy of 10cm, and the Sensor Monitor can read well-head sensors directly, without a controls package."

C-Kore recently received two awards. In February they won the Subsea UK 2019 Innovation and Technology award, and most recently they won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enter-prise 2019 in the Innovation category.

Greg continued, “To date we have found more than 55 faults in subsea networks and confirmed installation of more than 25 new umbilicals for customers world-wide" said Greg Smith, General Manager for C-Kore.

MACARTNEY UNMANNED WINCH SYSTEMS Unmanned Winch System ready for delivery

Supplying an autonomously controlled winch system for the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) platform on the Common Unmanned Surface Vessel (CUSVTM), MacArtney is continuing work with technology and innovation company, Raytheon.

This year will see MacArtney deliver the next autonomous winch systems for the deployment of synthetic aperture sonar. The custom-built unmanned winch systems are designed to military specification using aluminium alloy for low weight and durability.

Providing mechanical design and engineering drawings MacArtney manufactured and tested the Unmanned Winch Systems, and additionally provided the autonomous operation software and control.

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ECOSUB An ecoSUB underwater robotic vehicle owned and operated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science will go on an Arctic research mission deemed too dangerous for humans in a bid to help scientists understand the true extent of melting from Arctic glaciers.

The aim is to learn more about the effect of meltwater on a process called ‘calving’, which causes huge chunks of ice to break off the glacier edge.

Less than a metre in length and just four kilogrammes in weight, the ecoSUB will enter one of the most hostile environments on the planet to take measurements such as temperature and salinity as far down as 100 metres below Kronebreen glacier on Svalbard. The work will give researchers a clearer picture of how warming ocean properties affect the calving process.

Prof Inall said: “Given the importance of Arctic glacial ice melt in terms of

climate change and sea level rise, the interaction between melt water and sea water beneath glaciers is hugely understudied. We have satellite images and models that help to predict the extent of ice loss but it is extremely important to ‘ground-truth’ these predictions by investigating conditions in the field.

column, creating a plume that pulls in warmer Atlantic water. As it rises, it circulates and creates a sandpaper effect against the face of the glacier.

This process undermines the wall of ice, causing huge chunks to collapse into the sea.

“It would simply be too dangerous to go into such a hostile and remote environment with a boat. Not only is there a risk of falling ice, but largescale calving causes huge waves, so it is a dangerous environment. That is where the ecoSUB will come into its own, working at the front line of Arctic science.” ecoSUB’s readings will help researchers better understand the process of sub-glacial discharge, a term given to melt water that flows down through the glacier and out into the ocean. This water is fresher than the surrounding sea water, so starts to rise in the water

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Arctic glaciers

SERVICE CENTRE OPENS

Teledyne Marine has opened a Vehicles Service Centre at the Teledyne Reson office in Slangerup, Denmark.

The expanded facility in Slangerup

will support the large number of LBVs, vLBVs, and Z-Boats throughout Europe. Customers of Teledyne SeaBotix and Teledyne Oceanscience will now have the option to have their Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs)

SUBSEA INNOVATION CONTRACT

Subsea Innovation has announced a contract win with TechnipFMC in Norway, building the company’s market presence in the region.

In 2018 Subsea Innovation developed a next-generation seal for their Pipe in Pipe Waterstops.

Waterstop Seals provide a solution for isolating a section of flooded annulus in offshore risers or flowlines by preventing water passage to the adjacent Pipe-InPipe sections during installation and normal operation.

improve the sealing ability; whereas Subsea Innovation’s next-generation SIStop Waterstop Seal eliminates the need for this, sealing on pipes with greater surface defects and impurities.

The contract win demonstrates

The new design addresses potential challenges experienced with High Frequency Welded (HFW) pipes and seam welded pipes being introduced within the industry as part of cost-saving measures.

Subsea Innovation are one of the only suppliers in the world to have successfully tested Waterstop seals with a proven recorded on HFW and seam welded pipes.

HFW or seam welded pipes often require localised polishing to

Pipe in Pipe Waterstop

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and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) repaired, refurbished and tested within Europe. Local service will eliminate the need to ship vehicles back to the United States, saving significant time, effort, and money.

the global demand for the nextgeneration seal.

The product was designed and developed from Subsea Innovation’s head office in Darlington.

SUBSEA & SURF

SOLUTIONS

The power of advanced design technologies

At Matrix Composites & Engineering we believe that advanced material technologies have the power to transform industry. For the last 40 years, we have been doing just that. Our Matrix designed and manufactured buoyancy, pipeline protection and composite solutions are installed around the world and continue to deliver peace of mind in deep-water environments where reliability and safety are critical. Our dedicated team draws on this experience to continually innovate and ensure Matrix is ready, no matter the challenge.

» DISTRIBUTED BUOYANCY

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LGS is a registered trademark of AMOG Technologies Pty. Ltd.

COMPOSITES

COMPOSITE REPAIRS Maintenance accounts for a considerable proportion of OPEX budgets. As fields mature and platforms age, maintenance demands increase, and when work must be carried out subsea, it becomes even more challenging and expensive.

Solutions that can reduce maintenance costs and avoid shutting down production down, are, therefore, particularly attractive.

Particular problems in the offshore environment are corrosion, erosion and impact damage to tubulars, typically pipes carrying a gas or liquid product. Historically, repair has meant either welding or bolting a patch or steel sleeve to the weakened area if the wall thickness will support it or replacing the entire pipe section. In both cases, it is unsafe to continue production while the repair is being made, which dramatically increases repair costs.

Since it was formed in 1987, Houstonbased Clockspring|NRI has developed a wide range of composite based systems that can be applied to tubulars experiencing metal loss.

Some of these protective coverings, particularly those above surface, can

COMPOSITES Composites can be applied to a range of substrates, such as carbon and stainless steels and alloys as well as PVC and fibreglass. They can not only provide reinforcement and leak containment on straight runs of pipe but are effective on tees and elbows and can be applied in confined spaces and on irregular surfaces.

Although there still is a general lack of understanding about the value of this technology, composites have been used widely for structural repairs (decks), topsides, piping, subsea lines, flare lines, risers and caissons, and they have proven valuable during decommissioning.

be applied as a carbon fibre cloth and/or a solid epoxy. The cloth is wound around the pipe, with each successive wrap increasing the pressure rating and resulting in a composite system often stronger than the steel. Composites have been formulated for a range of applications, including repairs underwater using a range of products that includes preformed fibreglass split sleeves that can be installed by a diver.

The SnapWrap split sleeve can be placed over the damaged area ofthe pipe and permanently affixed without the need for cutting or welding.

This multi-layered high-strength, corrosion-resistant sleeve is coated internally with a high- performance adhesive and filler material combination designed to bond with the mother pipe. For underwater repairs, a diver can swim to the subsea pipe, place the prepared lightweight sleeve on the pipeline and secure it until it is properly cured for a durable repair.. The diver can return to the surface for the next section and continue the process until the damaged pipe is completely restored.

This was the solution to a challenging repair undertaken by an Alaskan pipe operator that needed to address damage to 20 girth weld joints on a 10in (254mm) gas pipeline in Cook Inlet. The line needed to be repaired without disrupting service, but that was only one of many considerations that had to be taken into account in the operation.

Another was difficulties posed by the subsurface conditions. There was zero underwater visibility at the repair site 100ft (30.5m) below the surface, and in addition, there was very little clearance between the lines. The pipeline had a 2in (5cm) thick concrete coating, which, in some cases, left only 2in of clearance.

The project execution was timed

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for the summer months - specifically late May to early June - when the water temperature in the inlet would be approximately 43°F (6°C), the minimum application temperature threshold for the composite repair.

The work also had to be conducted during slack tides before the direction of the tidal stream reversed. Tides occur every six hours, so the diver had a bottom-time window of approximately 25 to 40 minutes for each installation period.

Most importantly, the owner needed a solution that would not require the pipeline to be moved, but would be able to deliver long-term performance at the maximum operating pressure of 2,785 psi (192 bar).

Being able to meet these criteria required a reliable product and a capable installation crew. To be sure the project could be performed safely,

“DELIVERING INDUSTRY-LEADING SURVEY PERFORMANCE AND DATA RESOLUTION TO OUR CLIENTS.�

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extensive diver training preceded the project kickoff.

When work began at the Cook Inlet installation site, the team discovered that glacial silt deposits entrained within the water meant that the diver had to continually clean the pipeline before each step of the installation process to ensure the adhesive functioned as required and properly secured the Snap Wrap to the damaged area of the pipeline.

To ensure pipe integrity, they found that each sleeve installation had to be completed during a single operation.

This meant that the prep team on the barge and the diver had to coordinate their efforts to avoid ending a shift with partially installed sleeves, which would have to be retrieved and discarded.

As the first dives were carried out, it became apparent that placing the sleeves without help would be difficult for the diver. To simplify placement, the on-site team designed a frame specifically for this underwater installation.

To make sure each sleeve was in the correct location, the diver loosely preinstalled band clamps either side of the targeted repair area so it was easier to find the correct landing spot by touch to place the composite sleeves.

Because the frame allowed the sleeve to be opened to the proper extent before the diver entered the water, it improved the diver’s ability to secure the pipe on the damaged pipeline and significantly improved the efficiency of each dive, cutting the application time in half.

During the operation, the diver carried the Snap Wrap sleeve with the filler/adhesive from the barge to the pipeline and manoeuvred it into position, wiping the excess filler from the sides of sleeve and placing wrap ties around the finished repair to hold it firmly in place while it cured.

The zero-visibility work environment posed another considerable challenge for the lone diver.

Placing the composite solution with precision was vital to its effectiveness.

After moving the band clamps to the next repair area, the diver could return to the surface to pick up the next prepared sleeve and repeat the process, finding the right location for the next band by locating the preplaced clamps After the composite sleeves were installed, the diver applied a layer of Contour WA, an engineered, bi-axial stitched e-glass tape impregnated with a water-activated polyurethane resin, to the remainder of line for impact protection.

The composite solutions used on this project allowed all the damaged girth welds to be reinforced and restored the line to safe working order. The flexibility of the technology enabled the application process to be modified to expedite the installation, and the products delivered a durable repair.

Because of the narrow work window and the zero visibility conditions at depth, some dives were scheduled to take place at night

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The scope for application of composite technology is growing as more products are developed, providing alternatives to traditional repairs in a range of challenging environments.

UNDERWATER VEHICLES

FREEDOM Oceaneering is putting its nextgeneration resident vehicle, Freedom ROV, through an exhaustive regime of reliability and functionality testing. The vehicle, capable of operating in both autonomous and tethered modes, is supported by a subsea docking station in order to carry out a range of work from inspection and survey to intervention.

“Since the very first ROVs, the industry has relied on the ability to return a vehicle to the surface to fix issues – and this has resulted in a system with high uptime due to the ROV’s availability but not necessarily its reliability,” said Casey Glenn, a senior controls engineer on the Freedom project.

“Over the years, the industry has made great improvements in ROV availability, with the speed of maintenance becoming a top priority.

The challenge going forward for resident vehicles is maintaining high uptime with the low availability to address downtimecausing issues. This boils down to preventing issues as opposed to fixing them, or, put simply, having a proactive engineering approach rather than a reactive approach.

“Since the Freedom is designed to stay subsea for up to six months at a time, the vehicle’s components have been designed to not only be easily serviceable, but also to not fail in the first place – in other words, to be highly reliable.

Achieving this goal required taking our design process to the next level by incorporating our decades of subsea experience with extensive reliability engineering and testing.”

Oceaneering has committed itself to advance its industry-leading fleet of ROVs by bolstering its offerings with innovative vehicles

Rear of Freedom ROV

including its next-generation hydraulic NEXXUS ROV and its selfcontained, battery-powered Liberty ROV. The company used the same innovative philosophy with the design process for Freedom.

“For a 6000-metre-water-depth rated vehicle, minimizing weight is one of the main design criteria,” Glenn said. “Any unnecessary weight comes at the detriment of a reduced payload and requires extra buoyancy to offset it, which increases the size of the vehicle. We started, therefore, essentially with a foam core wrapped in, and supported by, a carbon fibre skin.

ROV showing tooling interface

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“We then considered the equipment we needed, and looked for ways to trim weight where we could, from major items right down to the electrical connectors,” he added.

“Wherever possible, we used composites rather than steel or titanium. The connectors we chose are common to the aerospace industry. These composites are just as strong and reliable as titanium but are a quarter of the weight. More importantly, they are engineered and proven to work in extreme conditions.

In our experience, subsea connectors are the biggest failure point on any system, and we had to develop rigorous test plans to qualify them for subsea use.”

The Oceaneering team worked to make the vehicle system as modular

as possible, with common components linked together and controlled over an Ethernet backbone. This provided the added benefit of reducing costs while improving reliability.

“We wanted to group items that are commonly used together,” Glenn said. “Instead of just having a thruster, for example, we grouped the thruster, motor drive, vehicle lights, and a compensator into a modular unit, where these items could all share power and control, enabling the vehicle to be smaller and more lightweight.”

EFFICIENT LAYOUT Freedom has been designed to complete a wide variety of dynamic missions. This was clearly a challenge since this modular design needed to be able to compete with tailor-made, application-specific vehicles.

The Oceaneering solution was to design an intrinsically modular vehicle with sections that could be added or removed to meet varied project demands. Freedom offers the adaptability users need to ensure operations are completed safely in a timely manner. Current configurations include modular solutions for infield inspection, light intervention, and long-range surveys.

The infield inspection vehicle, for example, includes advanced battery technology to support long-duration missions and the vehicle’s modular design enables swapping the front component section for a more hydrodynamic, streamlined shape.

INNOVATIVE TOOLING One particularly interesting aspect of the design is Freedom’s novel subsea-mateable tooling interface included on both the front and rear of the vehicle. These interfaces are capable of engaging a wide range of interchangeable, operation-specific tooling.

“For opening and closing valves, we have designed an innovative torque tool comprising a low-speed/hightorque outer ring and a high-speed/ low-torque inner component,” Glenn said. “These use Class 4 API fittings and can spin bidirectionally. This combination of two critical types of power outputs within a compact interface represents an innovation that we will also integrate into the design of our other remotely operated vehicles. We can also insert brush tools, cathodic protection probes, or mechanical gripping tools into the interfaces which enable Freedom to complete light intervention tasks.”

Uniquely, around the perimeter of the tooling interface, the designers have included inductive power that can provide 100W of energy. There is also a high-speed communications system that can transmit/receive at up to a gigabit per second.

Using optical communications, this system can send 10 Mb/sec of data at a 100-metre range. While the data still needs to be compressed, the connectivity is capable of sending video in real-time. If Freedom needs a longerrange option, it has the functionality to work via acoustic communications.

AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONS Lance Williams, a leading force behind the Oceaneering next-generation eNovus and NEXXUS ROVs, was also responsible for overseeing the Freedom project. His team gathered input from multiple customers and incorporated suggestions from the operations side of the company to ensure Freedom’s design met the users’ diverse needs.

“Freedom provides a new level of advantages over traditional ROVs,” Williams said. “While we have experience in controlling our ROVs remotely, either directly from the surface or via satellite from anywhere in the world, Freedom includes built-in supervised autonomy.

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When carrying out field inspections, we ideally want the vehicle to be as close to the target as possible, so it is efficient to make this operation fully autonomous.

For this reason, we’ve designed Freedom to have cognitive ability that enables it to make real-time mission adjustments.

“As is true with all of these vehicles, power availability is an issue,” he added. “A high-voltage DC bus distributes power across the Freedom vehicle. This is very similar to an electric car battery, with similar voltages, except that we have the challenge of being subsea, surrounded by a conductive medium. The design puts a lot of emphasis on power control, ground fault monitoring, and preventive isolation.”

Williams noted that a number of companies are currently developing novel ways of providing external subsea power options and that Oceaneering is consulting closely with these providers. Oceaneering has designed flexibility into Freedom to work with its own subsea power sources as well as new subsea power sources.

“We can equip our compact eNovus ROV with a large 500-kW battery pack and send it down to recharge Freedom,” Williams said.

“This power link can also be used to upload or download information.

In the North Sea, we are carrying out trials, using a buoy to provide 500 kW of power and connect a subsea asset with a much higher bandwidth.”

Freedom ROV is a lowmaintenance, field-configurable vehicle with ever-expanding flexibility. It can be optimized via interchangeable payload packages and sensor suites to meet work scopes in challenging subsea environments in order to best meet customers’ needs.

UNDERWATER POWER

S U B S E A

WHY SUBSEA POWER?

In recent years, a number of opportunities in the subsea sector have emerged that could benefit from the availability of localised and independent remote underwater power sources.

SURVEY Perhaps the most potentially disruptive innovation in subsea surveys is the recent evolution of seabed resident underwater vehicle systems. These have started to gain traction following heavy investment from vehicle and service suppliers such as Saab Seaeye, IKM, Oceaneering and Saipem.

Underwater vehicles have traditionally required a support vessel and depending levels of sophistication, location and availability, the cost of these may be around $100 000–250 000/day.

The rewards for reducing support vessel time on location (as well as minimsing offshore man hours, risk and weather dependency) are very measurable and this has led companies looking at avenues to reduce or totally obviate that expense.

One solution envisages installing the remote/autonomous vehicles at the offshore site in underwater garages, possibly near existing infrastructure. They can receive power and communications but not take up valuable platform real estate.

The vehicles can be housed underwater for anything up to 6 months.

An extension of this idea might relocate this garage to a remote location equidistant between a number of assets. This garage may require a dedicated power source.

Delivering and retrieving the vehicle at the end of a prescribed time would require a support vessel, however, an alternative strategy may be to accommodate the vehicle onshore and fly it to site on demand. Depending on its location, this may require placing recharging, possibly by power sources, stations en route.

MILITARY The armed forces are already investing heavily in subsea vehicles as part of both their battlefield systems and especially locating unexploded ordnance.

In a typical scenario, the numerous vehicles would be placed on the seabed, carry out surveillance and then return to the garage undetected.

A naval vessel could install a series of vehicles garages at locations on a single journey and return for them some time later.

OCEAN SCIENCES Many oceanographic projects involve installing apparatus at a selected location and measuring specific Underwater garages

parameters, often over time. These typically require a skid to house these instruments and a power source.

It may be that the site is so close to land, that power could be provided by cable. Running a power cable, however, may require a large financial outlay. Alternatively, the operator may want to test the viability of the subsea facility, to verify if it is the best site, before committing to a cabled version.

Long-term data gathering in locations such as under the arctic ice is technically challenging, to even a cabled system. A solution may be to use a temporary or permanent retrievable energy storage.

OIL & GAS Subsea production systems such as subsea trees are normally powered through hydraulic umbilicals, although more recently, companies have worked on all-electric fields.

Even in trees operated by hydraulic power, the control signals are electric.

If this control signal power is lost, then the subsea tree cannot operate.

One way of restoring power may be by a localised temporary power source.

One immediate solution is to use batteries. These have the advantage of being ubiquitous and the chemistry is well understood. Batteries can be divided into primary (unrechargable) and secondary (rechargeable).

Primary cells are often considered the most appropriate for seabed power due to their higher energy capacity.

Off all the battery types, Lithium Ion is probably the most common for industrial applications. They high commercial usage rate which minimises costs and are quite safe if handled correctly (although potentially unsafe if not).

When used underwater, the main drawback for batteries in general and lithium ion batteries specifically, is

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P O W E R HOW FUEL CELLS WORK Numerous types of fuel cell exist, but all incorporate an anode and cathode encased in an electrolyte.

The electrolyte allows only allows selected ions to pass between the anode and cathode. One of the most common electrolytes is a proton exchange membrane. A platinum catalyst on both sides of the membrane, facilitates the reaction of the hydrogen. eee-

O2

eH+

H2

H+ H+

Whilst it’s more of a problem during charge rather than discharge, the impact is not necessarily any bigger for Li ion when compared to other chemistries, particularly at seabed temperature (i.e. above freezing).

FUEL CELLS New research has led to the use of fuel cells without the need to deliver compressed gas subsea.

e- e-

e-

their temperature-sensitivity. Their performance degrades in the cold ocean waters ( although to be more accurate, the overall capacity is reduced, but the battery does not ‘degrade’ at low temperature (the impact is reversible when heated)).

The phenomenon is well understood and easily managed e.g. by increasing gross installed capacity.

H2O

The fuel cell splits the hydrogen into H+ and e-. The H+ crosses the membrane while the e- is taken off to provide the power. The two parts are then recombined and Oxygen is added to form water

At the anode, a chemical reaction strips introduced Hydrogen atoms of their electrons. The hydrogen become ionised and the positive charge is allowed to pass across the membrane.

The free electrons, however, are conducted away from the anode to an external circuit to provide the DC electric current. The free electrons then flow to the cathode where they recombine.

Oxygen is introduced, which attracts the Hydrogen atoms to form water.

As long as a fuel cell is supplied with hydrogen and oxygen, (also known as the reactants), it can generate electricity.

In recent years, many companies have begun to reappraise fuel cells. The first fuel cell dates from 1839, but it was only when they started being developed for space and submarine applications, that the devices began to be become commercially viable.

While both providing electricity, fuel cells and batteries are fundamentally different.

Batteries work by storing a charge.

They become the portable energy sources to power electric motors or instruments. The fuel cell, however, is not the energy source, but simply an engine that uses own stored reactants to produce electricity. The stored fuel has much more chemical energy per unit mass or volume than a battery.

The key to the technology is that it efficiently creates power electrochemically rather than by combustion like an internal combustion engine. It uses small amounts of hydrogen gas and oxygen as feedstock and produces

47

water as a waste by-product.

And unlike batteries,a fuel cell system can also operate effectively in cold water because the chemical reaction produces heat. A key advantage is a lower weight and volume for systems that operate in very cold environments.

"There are a number of factors to be considered when selecting subsea power systems," said Mitch Icard, Vice President and General Manager Teledyne Energy Systems.

"One important aspect for spacerestricted underwater vehicles is density of energy storage, as well as the ongoing operating costs.

"If a vehicle requires a given amount of power, this can be supplied by a battery of a given size. Say a 100kWh battery requires a payload volume of 1m3. Doubling this output from a battery requires double the space and weight.

"As the fuel cell is an energy conversion engine, so the weight and size of the engine does not change significantly when large amounts of energy are required..

You just increase the amount of fuel."

Teledyne Energy Systems, which also manufactures batteries specifically for Teledyne Marine's Gavia AUV, Icard freely recognises that there are circumstances where batteries would be preferable to fuel cells.

"It depends on the application," he said. "If the demand was relatively small – around 100kWh of energy, then a battery could make perfect sense. This may be to supply emergency backup or run an instrument once.

"This is true, however, if the demand is only 100 kWh of energy.

If it is to be used again, single use

UNDERWATER POWER

SUPERCHARGER Primary batteries would require another $300 000 investment.

Rechargeable secondary batteries may not be able to provide the required power.”

"The cost to provide a fuel cell with enough hydrogen and oxygen gas to provide 100 kWh of energy is around $150 or $200. Given that the cost of redeploying this, whether batteries or fuel sources subsea, are equal for batteries or fuel cell, so for a larger capital outlay of $500 000, it would be possible to run the cell for 30MW hours..

"Depending on the customer's needs it would also be possible to develop a hybrid system and recharge secondary batteries with the fuel cell, should the application demand it.

"Since we already had the engine, developed, we went from concept of the whole system to in water demonstrations in less than 8 months. The result was the Subsea Supercharger. We see it as a basic energy source that can be attached to a number of other products."

batteries, however, you sometimes have to guess the remaining amount of stored energy because there’s no active feedback once it gets below a certain level of charge. With fuel cells, however, as long as you have hydrogen and oxygen, you can generate power."

It incorporates Teledyne's ODI Wet Mate connectors to attach it to third party tools and Teledyne Benthos Acoustic Modems to control the times and levels of charge.

The hydrogen and oxygen reactants are taken to the Subsea Supercharger in steel or carbon fibre tanks that can either be negatively, neutrally or positively buoyant.

"The gas is these tanks is compressed and not in a liquid state," said Icard.

"There’s nothing to say that we

"You always know how much energy you have left based on the pressures in the tanks," said Icard. "With Subsea fuel cells

ROCKET SCIENCE Teledyne has a large experience in developing fuel cell technology particularly for the upper stage of the rocket ship to give orbital power.

"Weight and reliability are two extremely important factors in rocket design. Our fuel cells have only a few moving parts to increase reliability and we have performed durability tests, putting them under launch vibration stresses."

Understanding that there are just so many rocket launches a year, that Teledyne Energy looked for other applications of its technology.

It recognised the subsea industry and the space industry had many aspects in common and looked to its sister company, Teledyne Marine, to help evaluate future markets.

"We realised that the oil and gas market has several applications such as for resident ROVs, emergency backup power for umbilical failure, Fuel or disaster recovery, requiring Cell getting energy to places unsafe for ships.

Reactant (O2 H2) Storage

48

Acoustic modem

Fuel Cell

couldn’t use liquid – it has to do with market availability. You can go most places and get hydrogen and oxygen delivered relatively easily, however, it is far more difficult to get liquefied gas.

Reactant ( O2 H2) Storage

"One issue with a subsea fuel cell is discarding the waste water byproduct.

This may be relatively simple on land or even in space, but at the bottom of the sea, the water has to be expelled at a greater pressures. This could be as much as 500-600bar. We have developed an innovative but confidential way to get rid of that water.

REFUELLING So once the Supercharger is in position, how is it refuelled?

One layout envisages a separate fuel cell skid and gas skid.

An ROV could be sent down to disconnect the two and exchange the entire gas skid for new bottles. It is likely, however, that if the fuel cell was processing 30 MWh of energy, the operators might want to recover the fuel cell for maintenance as well for testing.

Teledyne is currently looking at a system that might obviate this problem totally. They has been collaborating on a solid reactor storage system called ALPS. General Atomics found a way of reacting seawater to create hydrogen, and in parallel, reacting water with potassium super oxide to make oxygen.This does not, therefore, require any pressurised gas and effectively works as a solid state system, which has considerable ramifications for underwater fuel cells.

A typical 600-700kWh power source can fit into a quarter of the space of a current pressurised gas system.

Wetmate Connectors Power Conditioning Module

Skid 1.6m x 1.6m by 1.5m 1300kg in air

ALPS General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems has successfully completed the first end-to-end demonstration of its Aluminium Power System (ALPS), powering an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) at a GA-EMS test tank facility in San Diego.

During the demonstration, a submerged ALPS provided hydrogen and oxygen to a Teledyne Energy Systems fuel cell, which provided electrical power to propel a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).

“This demonstration marks a major milestone, illustrating for the first

49

time that ALPS can be successfully integrated to supply hydrogen and oxygen to fuel cells to generate electrical power and drive an underwater vehicle,” said Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. “ALPS is a unique, high energy density system intended to provide up to 10 times the energy output of similar battery volume.

With its unlimited shelf life, safe handling, and high energy density, ALPS can truly enable underwater “refueling stations” to support long-term underwater vehicle operations.”

UNDERWATER POWER

EC-OG POWER HUB Over the past few years, EC-OG has been developing its Subsea Power Hub. This is ostensibly a modular tidal converter connected to a power storage device. Earlier this year, the company spun the storage device off as a standalone product "We saw potential for a subsea resident energy storage device that could be recharged from a range of sources, be it from the surface via a wave buoy, wind generator or boat generator, from our own subsea turbine or even from a shore based installation," said business development manager, Paul Slorach" EC-OG has based the device on Lithium Ion cells. These could be powerful enough to power a subsea wellhead for several months, possibly a year.

"It actually doesn’t take as much power as you might think to power a well," said Slorach. " The older systems could run on the same power as 100W light bulb. Over long time frames, however, that adds up to a large capacity.

"There are a number of factors that led us to Lithium Ion technology, It has a good energy density, relatively low cost and is being used

Subsea Power Hub

ubiquitously used in the commercial world, the energy storage technology is the most advanced and well understood. It is also very safe if managed properly.

"The technology is also scalable to up to several hundred kilowatt-hours of installed capacity.

"There are other technologies on the horizon that are a little further away from being commercially ready and we are keeping our eye on them. The next-generation systems could have different chemistries, cell formats and technologies " It is not only the dry cells that are housed within the protective skid.

Within that system, there also needs to be a controls and energy management technology as well as the electronics to ensure the system is safe, and provides reliable power output for the specified installation.

Subsea Batteries

The system has to be managed along with a communications conduit back to surface for health monitoring. All these overheads detract from the energy capacity, so it is crucial to ensure everything is as efficient as possible. EC-OG are currently looking to have a fully commercial system date towards the end of 2019. The company has been speaking with a North Sea operator to try out the system.

The tests will include running a it for six months then show and lowering a power umbilical over the side of a boat and recharging the seabed skid in situ.

The overall intention is to enable the subsea production system to be powered by battery power alone, with intermittent charging, for the remainder of its 4 to 5 years producing life.

"This means that we have to ensure that the systems can be charged as quickly as practically possible in order to minimise the high vessel costs," said Slorach.

"Quickly recharging a battery may generate heat in the cells, although we can manage that and dissipate excess heat to the environment.

It is this sort of thing we want to validate. We will be looking at both conductive and inductive charging methods.

The system will be the same for a subsea tree control module as for a subsea garage designs used for subsea-resident underwater vehicles.

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UNDERWATER POWER

OPT POWER BUOY 3 Ocean Power Technologies PB3 PowerBuoy is one of the industry's better known and tested wave energy converters. The company is now developing a new hydrocarbon - powered floating system to provide electricity at times of low wave energy or to supplement existing wave output.

New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is better known for its PowerBuoy technology which is in the early stages of commercialisation.

The buoy is normally moored in any ocean depth over 20 m and up to 3 km, but it is not the physical connection to the seabed that provides the energy.

The PB3 Power Buoy essentially consists of two components – a float section that rides the ocean waves and below that, the spar body.

At the base of the spar is a heave plate which helps the lower part to remain as motionless as possible in the waves. The relative movement between the float and the spar drives

an electric generator which charges onboard batteries.

The conversion of wave energy into electric power is carried out through a direct drive generator that continuously charges an on-board Energy Storage System. Power from the battery is delivered to meet application and end-user needs, especially for those with varying power requirements including continuous and larger occasional peaks.

The designers say that up to 150kWh of stored energy is available.

"The PB3 can essentially act as an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) which constantly recharges itself by harvesting energy from the waves," said David Marchetti, OPT Senior Director – Americas, Business Development.

"One application of this technology is in supplying underwater oil and gas facilities with power."

coastal security networks. It survived rigorous sea trials, including operation off the New Jersey coast through Hurricane Irene in 2011.

An advantage of a buoy over rival seabed-based power systems is that it is surface-piercing and this gives it one of its principal advantages.

The antennae can be used to transmit and receive data. As such, the power source doubles as a communications hub, allowing connected vehicles to output stored data before having to return to base, and also receive new operational instructions, all while charging. It can relay data to and from a remote location via WiFi, 4G or satellite.

"We originally designed the PB3 to Hybrid Power Buoy concept

The PB3 technology was demonstrated for a US Navy project to provide power to

Power Buoy

52

minimize operational costs (OPEX) by being able to be deployed and recovered using a wide number of vessels employed in offshore marine sector," said Marchetti. "The PB3 is sized to be either towed to site or deployed from a vessel’s deck.”

Maintenance intervals, by design, are every 3 years.

The control and management system includes self-monitoring data collection, processing and transmittal to allow pro-active maintenance strategies, thus increasing availability and operational effectiveness.

HYBRID POWER BUOY A disadvantage of any floating wave energy converter is that its’ capacity to produce power is limited in low wave environments. This prompted OPT to launch its hybrid Power Buoy concept.

communications and surveillance, with the capability of being tethered either by a combined mooring-umbilical (for subsea payloads and battery packs), or by a conventional anchor mooring system (for topside payload applications).

Saab Seaeye and Ocean Power Technologies has recently announced a Joint Development and Marketing Agreement for Resident Robotics.

Under this non-exclusive agreement, the companies will pursue mutual opportunities through joint system solution development and marketing. The agreement anticipates a preliminary focus on autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) charging and communications systems.

This lightweight, boat-shaped, floating, tethered vessel is more suited to lowwave environments. It is towed to site and is quickly-deployable.

“We see a strong potential in this cooperation, where Saab Seaeye’s marketleading underwater solutions become even more capable by the addition of OPT charging solutions for resident vehicle systems” said Matt Bates, Head of Marketing & Sales at Saab Seaeye.

Instead of harvesting wave energy, it houses a Sterling engine that burns liquid fuel and stores the energy produced in lithium ion batteries.

It can be easily refuelled at sea and, as such, supports extended use.

"We believe the combined OPT and Saab system can revolutionize offshore subsea operations by allowing the vehicles to recharge on the sea floor and thus remain in the water longer and reduce the reliance on support from manned vessels,” said George Kirby, OPT President and Chief Executive Officer.

"It is capable of generating more than 1 megawatt hour of energy, independent of waves, although the idea is scalable," said Marchetti. "Additional energy can be obtained using optional solar panels."

"The hybrid is primarily intended for short term deployment applications such as providing subsea power for eROV and AUV inspection and maintenance activities, or to power topside payloads for surveillance and communications."

“The unmanned system can increase the range of the vehicle, increase operational weather windows for the operators, while improving safety for the crew,” added Mr Kirby.

According to a Markets and Research report, the AUV/UUV market generated $2.6 billion in 2016.

The designers say that it will have a high payload capacity for

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UNDERWATER POWER

OPT POWER BUOY 3

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UNDERWATER POWER

WAVE CAPTURING DEVICES Winds blowing over the water's surface create waves.

The size of these waves depends upon a number of factors such as wind speed and duration, as well as the fetch (the distance of water over which it blows).

Other considerations are the currents and even the seafloor bathymetry (that focus/disperse wave energy.

This moving water carries kinetic energy and this can be harvested by wave energy devices.

The Centre (EMEC) has categorised wave energy converters into eight categories.

A) ATTENUATOR These consist of two floating arms oriented to the direction of the waves. The passing waves move the arms and the devices capture energy from their relative movement.

The optimum location to concentrate these devices is where strong winds have travelled over long distances at the end of a long fetch. In Europe, this corresponds to the Atlantic coast.

With its 30-40 kW/m wave front, the European Atlantic coast has an average power density of 2000-3000 W/ m2, which is at least 10 times higher than typical solar density (100-300W/m2) and five times higher than wind (500W/m2). This offers the physical conditions for effective harvesting using relatively small devices.

Worldwide wave power has an annual total resource of 32.000 TWh out of which 2000-4000TWh is considered economically exploitable. This is enough to potentially provide 10-20% of the global electricity consumption.

An Attenuator. All images by Aquaret B) POINT ABSORBER This typically consists of a floating structure and a stationary base. The absorber converts the movement of these two parts into electrical power.

Furthermore, wave levels can be forecasted 1-2 days in advance which is particularly beneficial for grid balancing.

So far, technical challenges have resulted in slow progress of the sector, especially when compared with wind power. The systems have to absorb energy in both multiple directions and highly fluctuating instantaneous power levels of a given sea state.

Waves in deeper, well exposed waters have the greatest energy and this harsh ocean environment requiring structures to withstand extreme storm loading. As a result Wave Energy Converters (WEC) have so far been large and costly compared to their energy output.

Nevertheless, the sector has seen a number of promising designs.

A point absorber C) OSCILLATING SURGE CONVERTER A resistant structure is connected to a pendulum mounted on a pivoted joint. This moves with the passing waves.

EMEC Since it was founded in 2003, Orkney-based European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) stands as the only centre of its kind in the world to provide developers of both wave and tidal energy converters. It has a combination of strong tidal currents, an oceanic wave regime and sheltered harbour facilities.

Oscillating Surge Converter

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AS CATEGORIED BY EMEC D) OSCILLATING WATER COLUMN

G) BULGE WAVE

This is a hollow structure enclosing a column of air on top of a column of water. Waves cause the water column to rise and fall, compressing and

A rubber water-filled tube filled with water, is moored heading into the waves. Water enters through the stern and pressure variations along the length of the tube, creating a ‘bulge’ drives a low-head turbine at the bow, where the water then returns to the sea.

Oscillating Water Column decompressing the air. This can be linked to a turbine.

E) OVERTOPPING DEVICE Waves pass over the overtopping device, sometimes called collectors, and pass into a low-head turbine which generates power.

Bulge Wave H) ROTATING MASS This motion drives either an internal eccentric weight or a gyroscope causes precession. This movement is attached to an electric generator inside the device.

Overtopping device Rotating Mass

F) SUBMERGED PRESSURE DIFFERENTIAL Resident on the seabed, the a buoyant component raises and falls from the motion of the waves. This induces a pressure differential alternating pressure pumps fluid through a system to generate electricity.

I) OTHER This covers those devices with a unique and very different design to the more well-established types of technology or if information on the device’s characteristics could not be determined.

For example the Wave Rotor, is a form of turbine turned directly by the waves. Flexible structures have also been suggested, whereby a structure that changes shape/ volume is part of the power take-off system.

Submerged Pressure Differential

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UNDERWATER POWER

EMEC The Orkney-based European Marine Energy Centre is EMEC is the only accredited wave and tidal test centre for marine renewable energy in the world, suitable for testing multiple grid-connected devices simultaneously.

It has two grid-connected sites – one for tidal and the other for wave converters.

The tidal test site lies at the Fall of Warness in a narrow channel between the Westray Firth and Stronsay Firth where tides from the North Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea, funnel through the islands. The site was chosen for its high velocity marine currents which reach almost 4m/ sec (7.8 knots) at spring tides.

Billia Croo wave test site consists of 6 grid-connected test berths in up to 70m of water. It has 14.3km installed subsea cables and an average significant wave height of 2-3m, but extreme waves can reach up to 18m.

EMEC also operates two non-grid test sites where smaller scale devices, or those at an earlier stage in their development, can gain real sea experience in less challenging conditions than those experienced at the grid-connected wave and tidal test sites.

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Magallanes Renovables ATIR installation Image: Colin Keldie

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UNDERWATER POWER

CORPOWER OCEAN The CorPower point absorber incorporates pneumatic modules inspired by the pumping principles of the human heart. This enables robust operations in storms combined with strongly amplified power production in regular sea conditions

natural period of oscillation, providing a period of oscillation much shorter than ocean waves. It de-tunes the converter and ensures the device has minimal response to incoming waves in storm conditions, making it virtually transparent to waves

Developed by the Swedish company CorPower Ocean, it consists of a surface buoy connected to the seabed by tensioned mooring line.

It converts the rise and fall (heave) as well as the back and forth (surge) motion of waves into electricity through a the power take off train located inside the buoy.

2. WaveSpring phase control technology WaveSpring is a pneumatic module which provides a negative spring function between the PTO and the buoy. This phase control technology makes the buoy oscillate in resonance with the incoming wave. This strongly amplifies the motion and therefore, the power capture.

The key feature of the design is that it can move in resonance with incoming waves, enabling a large amount of energy to be harvested with a small low cost device. This is enabled through three novel technologies.

1. Pneumatic pre-tensioning technology Air pressure acting in a pneumatic cylinder provides downward force on the buoy. This replaces mass that would otherwise be needed to balance the buoyancy at midpoint.

The lightweight design reduces the

Optimised phase control is provided without information on incoming waves, and without any active control.

Since the WaveSpring function is dynamic, it can be disabled in storms, detuning the device to give reduced loading and improved survivability.

3. Cascade gear technology The linear motion of the buoy is converted into electricity by the mechanical drive train located inside the buoy. A key component is the Cascade gearbox.

It works by converting linear motion into rotating motion in a manner similar to a planetary gearbox. It divides a large load onto a multiple of small gears. This has significant advantages in making the system smaller, but in the past, it has been difficult to ensure an equal load distribution to all gear wheels.

The cascade system allows this by using compliant brushings which are compacted before full load is applied.

This gives a secondary advantage that it makes the system more shock resistant.

"Common problems with many preceding designs have been failures in storm conditions and large and expensive machinery compared to

The footprint of wave devices can be more power dense than wind

Wavespring Technology

60

their power output," said CorPower CEO, Patrik Moller. Conversely, these small lightweight buoys have high power output and a low CAPEX per megawatt. The size allows maintenance using low cost vessels.

"A 9m diameter buoy can generate 300kW of electricity. It can compete with wind and solar as volumes increase. " CorPower’s product development follows a structured five-stage verification process, involving a step-wise validation of survivability, performance, reliability and economics starting with small scale prototypes in Stage 1, up to array demonstration in Stage 5.

The recently completed Stage 3 programme in Orkney and current Stage 4-5 array pilot follows the prior testing of multiple prototypes in smaller scales performed in Portugal, France and Sweden since 2012 mode verified. The transparent storm protection mode was found very effective in minimizing motion and loads on the device in storm waves.

CorPower point absorber

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UNDERWATER POWER

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Corpower being installed Image; Colin Keldie

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UNDERWATER POWER

BOLT LIFESAVER Fred. Olsen Ltd has been designing and developing point absorber wave energy converters for 16 years. The latest and largest iteration is the BOLT Lifesaver. This has most recently been engaged with two deployments at the US Navy test site in Hawaii between 2016 and 2019.

The system is based on a flotation body weighting 56 tons and spanning 16m diameter. This torus-shaped flotation assembly, composed of five hull sections, is connected to seabed via a high cycle winch line. Through a gear box, a generator provides a torque that results in a controlled winch line tension.

The Bolt rides the waves, the updown movement winds and unwinds the tether line around a drum, generating energy.

"The winch line is moored to the seabed at one end and wound around a drum at the other," said Even Hjetland, Engineering Manager at

BOLT Lifesaver to wind the winch line back in with a controlled tension. Horizontal drift as well as pitch and roll motion of the floating structure, gives rise to a constantly changing angle between winch line and drum. A guiding system is used compensate for this angle,

ensuring good alignment as the winch line is guided onto the drum.

"Back in 2010, we initiated collaboration with a manufacturer of transmission components, to develop a winch line with increased capacity for bend over sheave load," said Hjetland.

Power generated as waves pass Bolt Sea Power. "As the Bolt rises with the wave, the winch line is tensioned and inflicts a torque on the drum.

"As the wave passes, the PTO travels back down from a wave crest, where the generator operates as a motor

Power take off

Foundations

64

Find a marked object anywhere in the ocean

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"Following six years of extensive rig- and in-sea testing, a patent pending winch has been developed with lifetime of several million bend cycles."

Regular, off-the-shelf gear boxes requires routinely lubrication, are compact and inaccessible for maintenance and have poor resistance to offshore marine environment. Fred. Olsen collaborated with Gates Corp to develop a high ratio, belt based gear box with low maintenance requirements, good accessibility for maintenance and high resistance to corrosion.

The drum is geared and connected to a generator. The generated power charges an onboard battery bank, or exports to a client system directly.

The system has the option of on and off grid connection.

power components, and ensures a natural balance in the power flow.

It can accommodate a total of five power take-off units, outputting a total average of 50kW at the nominal wave state.

This means that peaks of several hundred kW actually passes through the drive train instantaneously, but due to the varying power of the waves and a certain consume by auxiliary systems, the average power is what is available for export to a client.

At present, only three PTOs have been built. The PTO units are fully electric, and provides actively controlled

Electrically, all PTOs are connected to a common DC-bus that serves as the backbone of the power system. This allows for natural power exchange between the PTOs and the

mooring line tension through winch drum torque control.

During the second US Navy deployment, a large subsea sensor package was installed onboard to demonstrate operation on wave power alone. The sensor package continuously draws 0.5-1kW of power from this battery bank.

During the 106 day long demonstration, BOLT Lifesaver was able to accommodate the draw 82% of the time. In it’s press release, the US Navy called this the first such demonstration in the world.

Fred. Olsen is now working on configuring the Lifesaver technology to a small, single winch version at 5m diameter, 10 ton weight, that can be quickly installed and recovered, and export the generated power through the winch line down to seabed to power systems on the seabed, as well as provide communication to shore.

This system is especially developed as a standalone power and

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UNDERWATER POWER

communication solution for the subsea oil & gas sector, applied as supplementary power capacity and

broad band communication at old and depleted brown fields, subsea drone docking station, and backup

66

power for power failures.

It can provide a floating

offshore platform for stand-alone communication masts, for aerial inspection drones in offshore wind

farms, and provide off-grid power to remote demands like fish farms.

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UNDERWATER POWER UNDERWATER POWER

ARRECIFE

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Arrecife

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UNDERWATER POWER

ARRECIFE Floating buoy-based energy converters work by partially absorbing the vertical movement of the waves.

Bilbao-based Arrecife Energy Systems, however, has developed a novel wave energy device that generates electricity by capturing both the vertical and the horizontal movement of waves. This also makes it useful in capturing tidal currents.

“The device consists of a horizontal floating platform incorporating multiple cross-flow turbines,” said

Iñigo Doria, Arrecife Systems CEO & Co-founder. The waves pass across the turbines, spinning them and creating energy. The turbines are strategically placed to oppose and break the waves, absorbing both their potential and kinetic energy.”

In most wave conditions -typically 1 to 5m wave heights- the device can operate around the clock and at full capacity; however, the design will also harvest smaller waves. In high waves, many buoy-based systems are designed to resist extreme wave loading. The Arrecife system,

Scale model under test

70

however, can submerge to avoid the high surface forces.

Many floating systems are anchored using numerous mooring lines. An important aspect of the Arrecife design is that it uses only a single line, which reduces the installation cost.

The Arrecife design has been tested on 1:10th scale prototypes, both in the laboratory and in real open-sea conditions. The company is currently manufacturing a 75 kW system that is going to be launched this summer.

TIDAL DEVICES

ENCLOSED TIPS (VENTURI) Venturi Effect devices are surrounded by a funnel duct to concentrate the flow of water towards the turbine.

Unlike Wave energy, tidal stream flows are more predictable. They form by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun on the world’s oceans, and since their relative positions of are predictable, so is the resultant tide.

When the sun, moon and earth are aligned, the combined gravitational pull results in the highest (spring) tidal ranges while conversely, the lowest (neap) tidal ranges are generated when the sun, moon and earth are positioned at 90deg.

They require a different type of energy collection device to capture the kinetic energy of the ebbing and flowing of the currents.

Topographical features such as straits and headlands can magnify the fast sea currents. Seabed bathymetry may concentrate the water flow through narrow channels. The optimum location for tidal stream resources emanate from a good tidal range exists and where the current velocity is amplified by the funnelling.

Some companies incorporate shrounds of concentrators around the blades. These may streamline and flow towards the rotors increase the flow and power output from the turbine.

There are a number of tidal stream designs, may of which employ underwater propellers. The higher density of water, however, means that this means that the blades can be smaller and turn more slowly, while still delivering high amount of power.

As explained by EMEC

Horizontal axis turbine.

All images : Aquaret.

VERTICAL AXIS TURBINE These extract tidal energy by rotating blades in a similar manner to that above, however the turbine is mounted on a vertical axis. The tidal stream causes the rotors to rotate around the vertical axis and generate power.

ARCHIMEDES SCREW The Archimedes screw consists a helical blade surrounding a rotating cylindrical shaft. As the water moves up through the spiral , it turns the turbine.

Vertical axis turbine.

Archimedes Screw

OSCILLATING HYDROFOIL A hydrofoil wing is connected to an oscillating arm. The uplift from the current flowing either side pumps hydraulic fluid that is converted into electricity.

TIDAL KITE A tidal kite with a turbine below the wing is tethered to the sea bed. It moves in the tidal stream in a figureof-eight pattern which increase the speed through water.

Oscillating Hydrofoil

Tidal Kite

Venturi

EMEC has identified a number of main categories of Tidal Device HORIZONTAL AXIS TURBINE These are analogous to wind turbines in air where the flow causes the blades to rotate around a horizontal axis.

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UNDERWATER POWER

SUBHUB QED Naval has proven the effectiveness of its Subhub’s ballast system with numerous installations and retrieval trials of tidal platform over a range of conditions and water depths.

Subhub is a self-installing platform designed for the installation and recovery of tidal turbines. It also selfaligns to the flow.

In a single, quick offshore operation an array of tidal turbines can be installed and operational within the hour. No other moorings are required which reduces the environmental impact on the seabed given the simplicity of the tripod, gravity based design.

Once installed, the Subhub is completely invisible with navigational clearance of at least 3m from which allows most leisure craft users to pass over the top of the device.

It maintains the seascape and installation and retrieval process doesn’t appear to disturb the fish in the area or cause lasting impacts on the seabed.

Subhub has already proved itself in the transit condition having been deployed from Belfast to Strangford Lough which involved a passage ranging 50nm offshore in near gale conditions experiencing a sea state in excess of 2m in significant wave height.

Subhub

MAKO IDEMO N JAPAN Earlier this year, Elemental Energy Technologies and its partners in Japan concluded a successful test of the MAKO tidal turbine in the constantly flowing Kurushio Current off southern Japan.

MAKO tidal turbine

Over a 3 month period at sea a during winter storms and freezing temperatures it still showed a 100% availability on all ballast systems and instrumentation QED Naval have planned maintenance two times a year (April and October) to deal with the marine fouling issue.

This may be reduced to once a year as the company learns more about the O&M requirements.

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ORBITAL O2 The Orbital O2 from Orbital Marine Power is a low cost solution that builds on the features of the SR2000 turbine.

The designers say that this will unlock global tidal markets at a competitive price point.

The Orbital O2 will comprise of a 73m long floating superstructure, supporting two 1 MW turbines at either side for a nameplate power output of 2MW, at a tidal current speed of 2.5 m/s.

With rotor diameters of 20m, it will have a 600sq metre rotor area, the largest ever on a single tidal generating platform to date. Orbital Marine believes that, when launched in 2020, it will be the most powerful tidal generating platform in the world.

This first production unit will be funded with support from a live public debenture offer through the Abundance Investment platform along with the European Horizon 2020 FloTEC project, Interreg North West Europe ITEG project, and the OCEANERA-NET COFUND.

For the first time, Orbital Marine Power’s system will feature 360 degree blade pitching control. This will allow safe, dynamic control of the machine’s 20m rotors and will enable power to be captured from both tidal directions without need to yaw the entire platform. These controllers will support the installation of even larger blades in the future.

In 2002 Orbital Marine Power, then known as Scotrenewables Tidal Power, was founded in Orkney, Scotland with a view to developing an innovative floating tidal stream turbine technology.

Following an incremental research and development programme, the company launched the SR250, a 250 kilowatt prototype turbine. This was the first, large-scale floating tidal

The Orbital O2 has been designed for low cost access to all systems and components, the vast majority of which are located within the floating superstructure for simple onsite maintenance.

turbine grid connected in the world.

The success of that first prototype enabled the company to raise further equity financing and in 2014 it began work on its first full scale system, the SR2000, a two-megawatt turbine.

The SR2000 was launched from the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast in 2016. In one continuous grid connected installation from August 2017 to September 2018 the SR2000 generated over 3.25 gigawatt hours of electricity.

The SR2000 in testing

The machine will also feature new ‘gull wing’ style retractable legs that raise the nacelles, pitch hubs and blades to the water surface for easy access without the need for any specialist heavy lift vessels.

The steel structure of the turbine has been simplified to reduce fabrication costs and future-proof the product for volume manufacturing. The new configuration also reduces the draught of the unit to less than 3m to ensure this utility scale machine can be towed and installed with modest sized workboats.

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UNDERWATER POWER

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Orbital O2 in live testing

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UNDERWATER POWER

CF2T Co-funded by the Ocean Energy ERA-NET Cofund and four European regions (Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Spain and Sweden), the CF2T project aims to develop a cost-competitive foundation for tidal turbines and immerse it to validate the concept in real sea environment.

Led by SABELLA, this project brings together ALLIA, SAITEC, RISE and ALKIT and will run until 2021.

The innovative gravity-based foundation will be designed to decrease construction and

deployment costs, with modular interfaces to allow an offshore installation in several packages in order to limit the required crane capacity on ships.

The project will also develop a dedicated monitoring system to have a better understanding of loads applied on the structure for future foundations developments.

Some alternatives to reduce the structure construction costs and modularity will be evaluated including the design of a hybrid foundation combining different materials.

l The D10-1000 turbine was recently lifted from its gravitybased foundation after being redeplyed in October 2018. It was installed as part of the European ICE project led by Bretagne DĂŠveloppement Innovation and its partners,

The innovative foundation will also integrate an adaptive interface with the seabed in order to limit seabed preparation.

SABELLA thus seized the opportunity of the nearby presence of Olympic Zeus and chose to retrieve its turbine for a short maintenance operation of approximately 3 months at the port of Brest.

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SABELLA's team focused on testing new control methods at the beginning of 2019 in order to significantly improve the efficiency of the turbine and contribute to the competitiveness of this emerging sector.

In parallel, a defect was detected in the nacelle’s cooling system that allows the various components integrated into the nacelle to be cooled.

This defect did not prevent the

operation of the turbine but limited its operating conditions due to the possible rise in temperature of the components, which could cause greater damage on the electrical chain.

PHARES AKUO Energy and SABELLA have signed a partnership agreement for the PHARES multi-energy project.

The project is to develop on Ushant Island and will produce a huge part of the needed energy for the Island thanks to a renewable energy mix of solar photovoltaic, wind and tidal energy, coupled with an energy storage system.

In addition, PHARES will prove the relevance of such an energetic mix in insular conditions and help design a renewable energy model tailored for remote and off-grid territories with the help of energy storage.

It will use a combination of two tidal turbines Sabella D12 of 500

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kW each, one wind turbine of 900 kW, 500 kW of solar photovoltaic solutions and a storage capacity of 2MWh giving a total power of 2.4 MW. It will enable to reach 70% of renewable energy integration in the energy production of Ushant by 2023.

UNDERWATER POWER

CETO Carnegie Clean Energy Ltd is the owner and developer of the CETO wave energy technology, developed over the past 15 years, to convert water movement to zero-emission electricity.

When in operation, CETO is fully submerged, away from breaking waves and storms, with minimal visual impact.

"In total, the CETO designs have had over 15,000 hours of inoperation testing," said Alex Pichard, System Team Leader. " In the early days, Carnegie designed and built a number of small-scale prototypes and using Carnegie’s wave energy research facility in North Fremantle, Western Australia.

Carnegie was able to rapidly deploy and test these prototypes offshore while monitoring from its workshop onshore. Then, in 2011, Carnegie deployed its first large scale CETO unit (CETO 3), a 7m

diameter by 5m high unit with a rated capacity of 80kW which was installed off the coast of Garden Island, Western Australia.

Next, using lessons learnt from the previous prototypes, Carnegie then delivered its flagship Perth Wave Energy Project in which three CETO 5 units were deployed off the coast of Garden Island.

The CETO 5 Units were larger and more powerful than the previous generations of the technology; CETO 5 was 11m by 7m and had a rated capacity of 240 kW. The CETO 5 technology used a closed loop hydraulic system, in which the fluid was pumped onshore where the hydraulic power was used to drive an electrical generator . The system also powered a reverse osmosis desalination system producing freshwater from seawater.

"By the year 2030, it is estimated that about two thirds of the entire world will be water-scarce. Only

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0.01% of all the water in the world is accessible without seawater desalination," said Pichard.

"Conventional desalination, however, is very energy intensive and a significant greenhouse gas emitter. A 500kL/day desalination plant emits the equivalent of nearly a million tonnes of CO2 per year.

Carnegie was the first wave energy company to generate both power and freshwater onshore as part of its Perth Wave Energy Project."

During the operational phase of the Perth Wave Energy Project, Carnegie retrieved the first and second CETO 5 unit on the first attempt by disconnecting the unit from the seabed foundation, using the hydraulic “quick connect” technology. The first unit was inspected, overhauled and reinstalled in the former position of Unit 2.

This operation was deliberately carried out in the higher sea

state conditions that tend to prevail off the Western Australian coast between July and September. It demonstrated the ease at which the CETO system can be installed and retrieved and its interchangeability across multiple unit locations. Both of these factors are important for future operation and maintenance activities.

BUOYANT ACTUATOR

The learnings from these operation and maintenance activities have been fed into the design phase of the CETO 6 Technology.

CONNECTOR

"CETO 6 has a targeted 1MW (1000kW) power rated capacity, some four times of the previous CETO 5 generation," said Pichard. "CETO 6 incorporates a number of key design innovations which will deliver a superior efficiency, lower capital and maintenance costs than any CETO product generation developed to date. CETO 6 produces power offshore, replacing the closed hydraulic loop with an export cable."

TETHER

"At the moment we are working to significantly improve the CETO technology by utilising a low-cost, virtual development pathway before deploying the next unit, leveraging new computational techniques to disrupt the way we have been conventionally developing the technology," said Pichard.

"The large-scale projects we have deployed gave us invaluable experience with offshore operations and maintenance and also a wealth of data useful to optimise the performance of the device and to assess accurately costs. However these projects are very capital intensive and we believe the new development strategy will lead to the commercialisation of the CETO technology faster and more efficiently.

CONNECTOR PUMP

"One of the first things we plan to do is to develop an intelligent control system based on a machine learning approach (a subset of artificial intelligence).

This controller will be able to predict into the future the waves impacting the unit. Using this information, the controller will ensure optimum power is extracted from those waves but will also prevent extreme loads from occurring during large storms.�

Carnegie is also moving from a conventional hydraulic Power Take Off (PTO) system to an electric PTO, significantly improving the system efficiency and reliability. This development will leverage new technologies developed by the rapidly expanding electric vehicle industry.

ATTACHMENT

Artist's impression of CETO 5

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SUBSEA NEWS

MINESTO RESUMES DG500 KITE SYSTEM OPERATIONS

Marine energy developer Minesto has resumed testing of its commercial-scale DG500 kite system at the company’s Holyhead Deep site off North Wales.

Following the recent re-installation of some of the offshore site infrastructure in the Holyhead Deep, the DG500 kite system was towed to site where the kite was re-connected to the seabed foundation. The operations this year build on last year’s commissioning program, especially looking at long-term operations.

This will be used for optimisation and cost reduction of Minesto’s unique Deep Green technology.

Bernt Erik Westre, Chief Technology Officer at Minesto commented: “It was great to see the upgraded DG500 start up and fly right away, as the current system is different from last year’s version in several key areas. The new method of installing the kite by towing and connecting it to the infrastructure at the foundation rather than on the surface worked really well. By eliminating offshore kite lifts, we have expanded our operational ability and capacity, while lowering the total cost level at the same time.”

Minesto’s marine energy technology called Deep Green consists of a subsea kite carrying a turbine. The kite flies across the underwater current, significantly enhancing the water flow speed through the turbine. This makes Minesto’s product commercially viable in globally extensive sea areas where no other known, verified technologies can operate cost effectively.

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MMT AT TEN NOORDEN Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO) has awarded MMT a contract to perform a geophysical soil investigation of the Ten Noorden van de Waddeneilanden Wind Farm Zone.

The objective of the investigation is to contribute to the bathymetrical, morphological and geological understanding of the area. Ultimately the data will be used by offshore wind farm developers to prepare bids for this site. A high resolution and accuracy ground model ensures that developers can prepare their bids with the least amount of uncertainty, which helps lower the price on developing these OWFs. Project preparations are currently underway, with the fieldwork planned to be performed in July and August from MMT’s survey vessel Franklin. The geophysical survey comprises of the collection of high resolution bathymetry and seabed imagery, in addition to determining the exact, current position of existing (in service & out of service) cables and pipelines. A geological ground model of the site will be established by using both a parametric echosounder and a 2D/3D UHRS system.

MMT’s survey vessel Franklin

CODA OCTOPUS 4G USE BETA Coda Octopus has released the new and re-developed fourth generation (4G) of its Underwater Survey Explorer (USE) application software for beta trials.

The 4G USE beta version, provides immediate powerful multi-viewpoint imaging. The ability to view real-time 3D sonar imagery from multiple, independent viewpoints allows much greater and more effective decisionmaking in nearly all applications. Additionally, 4G USE simplifies real-time 3D measurements, patch test and provides independent data views tailored to each user requirement.

A major advance in 4G USE is the capability to support multiple devices simultaneously.

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SUBSEA NEWS

MODULUS ADDS TO ITS SUBMERSIBLE GPS RECEIVER Applied Acoustics’ sister company Modulus Technology, based in Great Yarmouth, UK, has recently introduced further options to extend the flexibility of its 101G submersible GPS receiver that transmits positioning data back to a vessel or the shoreline.

The lightweight, rugged product with integrated antenna provides wired or wireless streamer head and tail positioning, source positioning for 3D UHR seismic operations and is ideal for the positioning of subsea excavation vehicles, or towed sensors such as magnetometers, that operate in shallow waters.

The extra features now available

include a MiniPod with AHRS sensor and a version with the GPS and AHRS sensor combined. In addition, the system now provides integration of external GPS corrections from the vessel to the MiniPod for increased positional accuracy. The wireless operating range of all units can also be increased from 800m to 2000m with the addition of a further external antenna.

external submersible battery pack for up to 10 days operation.

Though designed for operation on a floating catamaran, hydrophone or trencher etc., the MiniPod range will survive immersion to 50m. Each is only 170mm in length and 115mm diameter, and can be cabled linked to the host equipment for its power supply or powered by an optional

The Modulus MiniPod Series is easy to deploy due to its small size and innovative design. It provides accurate positional information to facilitate increased operational efficiency making it a unique asset to the offshore industry for multiple applications.

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The vessel based, compact, easily integrated wireless receiver unit can receive data from up to four MiniPods supplying a single GPS string at 10Hz refresh rate. Its custom software allows for easy configuration of the received data to merge with standard third party survey packages.

NEXANS VIGDIS CABLES When Equinor’s Vigdis field in the North Sea came on stream in 1997 it was believed that it might produce 200 million barrels of oil. Over 20 years later it has already produced twice that amount, and the recoverable resources from Vigdis are now estimated at 455 million barrels of oil (boe). The key to maximizing the oil recovery from Vigdis will be a new all-electric actuated multiphase subsea boosting station powered by a Nexans state-of-the-art power umbilical.

Vigdis produces oil through the Snorre field, and OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company, has been awarded the contract to provide a boosting station that will be connected to the pipeline to enhance the capacity between Vigdis and Snorre A, helping bring the well stream from the subsea field up to the platform. The boosting station will also enable wellhead pressure to be reduced, which further increases production. It is expected that the boosting station will increase the recovery rate from Vigids from the current 45 percent to 54 percent, adding around 11 million extra boe at a highly competitive price.

The boosting station will be provided with a high voltage (HV) supply from Snorre B platform, via the Nexans power umbilical that combines electric power, control and communications functions in a single cable cross-section.

The two-year contract for the power umbilical is valued at around 10 million Euros. The complete umbilical system will be developed, manufactured and tested at Nexans Norway plant in Halden, Norway with loadout anticipated for Spring 2020 ready for installation in Summer 2020

RESCUE SERVICES ADOPT SEATOOTH WFS Technologies, developer of the Subsea Internet of Things (SIOT) devices, has revealed that its patented, wireless technology is now available for integration with consumer and industrial products designed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

Seatooth allows devices to communicate through water and through the water-air boundary, removing the need for wired implementation. The solution is especially flexible since other wireless methods of device connectivity such as Bluetooth or WiFi are not effective through this medium, opening up the opportunity for OEM hardware manufacturers to expand their range of offshore product capabilities.

The first company to successfully integrate Seatooth into its products is WaveJet Propulsion, manufacturers of the jet-powered, remotely controlled surfboard and kayak used across the U.S. and Australia rescue services.

Using Seatooth technology, it allows a customised wrist controller to communicate and remotely control the surfboard or kayak through saltwater instead of the traditional tethered system. If the wearer falls off the board, the propulsion system will automatically shut off when the distance between it and the wrist controller is greater than 10 feet.

The system is now being used on surfboards and kayaks boards around the world including beaches at North Carolina, Rhode Island, Florida, and Santa Barbara in the United States, and in parts of South Africa, Europe and Australia.

“WaveJet is a great example of our technology being used in a completely different industry and context,” said Theo Priestley, chief marketing officer at WFS Technologies.

“This is especially powerful given it is used and trusted

by U.S. and Australian emergency services for rescue operations. We’re looking forward to working with other innovative companies who service the offshore energy industries and want to enable their products to communicate through water.”

WaveJet Propulsion Wrist Controller with integrated Seatooth

Nexans Halden facility

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SUBSEA NEWS

DEEP-SEA OBSERVATORY PROJECT MacArtney France continues to supply Teledyne Oil & Gas connectivity solutions to the pioneering MEUST-NUMerEnv observatory project located 40 km offshore from Toulon, France.

Over the last two decades, MacArtney France has provided market-leading connectors to ANTARES (Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch) and the MEUST (Mediterranean Eurocentre for Underwater Sciences and Technologies) – a permanent deep-sea observatory deployed at a depth of 2500 meters below the sea surface.

The NUMerEnv (Neutrino Mer Environnement) project, the second phase of the MEUST project is a technologically advanced cabled infrastructure hosting the neutrino telescope of the KM3NeT Collaboration and deep-sea observatory, EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory).

Cabled observatories, connected to land by electro-optical cables provide continuous data transmission and offer unique opportunities for the study of the neutrino - the most mysterious of the elementary particles - and to Ocean Science for the monitoring of deep-sea phenomena.

MacArtney’s scope of supply to this ongoing project includes an ongoing tender for Teledyne Oil & Gas connectors, Interlinks, Y cables, Jumpers, Battery and Sensor Links.

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SUBSEA NEWS

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IXBLUE SELECTED TO CONDUCT FUTURE GROIX & BELLE-ÎLE PILOT WIND FARM GEOPHYSICAL SURVEY La Ciotat (France), 13/06/2019 – iXblue’s Sea Operations division has been selected by EOLFI, the “Ferme Eolienne Flottante de Groix & Belle-Île” delegated project contactor, to conduct the geophysical survey of the future Groix & Belle-Île pilot wind farm located in the South of Brittany, off the West coast of France.

The survey, that began earlier this week, will last for about five days and will be conducted by a dedicated crew of 5 iXblue hydrographic surveyors and geophysicist engineers onboard the company’s own Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) hydrographic research vessel, FeliX. « Our vessel has been designed and manufactured by our own shipyard and survey division, which means it has been specifically tailored for the particular requirements of MRE operations,” explains Simon Ichstchenko, Survey Business Developer at iXblue. “Thanks to FeliX’ versatility, our crew of highly qualified surveyors have been able to efficiently conduct various types of geophysical surveys that required multiple instruments to be deployed.”

For this particular survey, and in order to precisely measure and characterize the site of the future Groix & Belle-Île pilot wind farm, iXblue is thus using an MBES for high resolution bathymetry, a towed side-scan-sonar for seafloor nature identification, a magnetometer for object detection, a sparker for sediment thickness, as well as iXblue’s own sub bottom profilers, the Echoes 3500 and 10 000, and Gaps pre-calibrated USBL system to get precise positioning of the collected data from towed sensors.

“We needed a detailed mapping of the seafloor and sub-seafloor properties over the future wind farm area in order to optimize design and plan future installation,” states Skander Hili, Geosciences Lead at EOLFI. “iXblue is a reference service provider for the offshore wind sector. Its geophysical surveying experience in French waters is important, and the fact the vessel but also some key geophysical equipment are developed within the iXblue group is an advantage.”

This new contract awarded by EOLFI keeps strengthening the solid reputation earned by iXblue in the field of geophysical surveys, environmental monitoring, as well as unexploded ordnance (UXO) campaigns. With over 100,000 line miles already surveyed worldwide, iXblue’s Sea Operations division has indeed conducted many MRE operations including most of the MRE sites under development in France between Noirmoutier and Dunkerque and also in the Mediterranean sea between Leucate and Marseille

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NEWS

JW FISHERS' SONAR SYSTEMS IN HISTORIC BRIDGE DEMOLITION AND RECOVERY What happens when a bridge or other structure is no longer in use and needs to be removed? There are several options, the most exciting of which is demolition!

These jobs require caution and careful planning to guarantee safety and ensure that debris does not cause damage to the local waterways or roads. Four of the most common methods are bursting, hydraulic breakers, dismantling, and explosives.

The Historic 1936 Highway 47 Bridge over the Missouri River was demolished this past spring. The old bridge was located 12’ from the new bridge that was built over the past several years.

Being as close as it was, the demolition had to be precise, accurate, and safe. On April 11, 2019 the bridge was demolished via strategically placed explosives.

According to the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), officials were “very pleased with the demolition of the old Highway 47 bridge.”

The blast dropped the roughly 2,000ft span using 145 pounds of explosives, 750 individual charges, and 8,000 feet of detonation cord. Once the demolition

was complete, the underwater recovery tasks began and modern technology was needed to locate the pieces for safe and efficient removal.

Three Rivers Diving, Inc. was tasked with locating the pieces of the Highway 47 Bridge from the Missouri River waterway after demolition.

Modern technology provided Three Rivers with the right tool for the job – a JW Fishers Side Scan Sonar System.

The sonar system “removes the water,” permitting the operator to see all debris and allowing safe removal via mechanical cranes and heavy lifting devices. Steve Philips of 3 rivers diving states “we mount the side scan on a fixed beam to the bow of the boat.

We then adjust the depth to approximately 10ft underwater and begin our search” The side scan was used to locate the bridge section and help position a crane barge. The

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NEWS

crane operator was shown the relative positions of the barge and the bridge section using the side scan.

The operator easily located the section and hooked it via retrieval equipment and removed the section.

Philips also stated “We located the bridge sections in a matter of minutes.

Positioning the barges in the high current and flood waters took longer than actually finding the sections!�

This is not the only job where the side scan sonar has come in handy for Three Rivers Diving. The company was also tasked with another removal project.

This time a pier that was secured to a bridge had taken so much abuse that it fell into the water.

Three Rivers Diving was asked to identify the remains and remove the debris from the water.

Be;ow and RIght: Sidescan Images

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UNMANNED VEHICLES

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

EDGETECH SIDE SCAN FOR CANAL MAPPING

James Fisher Marine Services (JFMS) has completed a deeptowed subsea survey project for LUKOIL, in waters proven to preserve treasures dating back to Venetian golden era of centuries ago.

EdgeTech was recently involved in an intriguing demonstration of the effective use of high-resolution side scan sonar imaging for the important work of canal inspection and mapping.

Conducted offshore Romania, in the Black Sea at 1000m water depth, the deep-towed subsea survey covered an 8 x 6.13km grid over three planned exploration wells in the Ex30 Trident Block, mobilising out of the port of Constanta.

The Welland Canal connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and is key to the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes Waterway System.

The 27-mile waterway allows ocean going ships access to the Midwest which would not be possible without the Welland Canal.

Being the site of a recent discovery of 60 shipwrecks that brought artefacts dating back to the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods to the surface for the first time in centuries, the Black Sea is a region of significant scientific interest globally.

The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation manages and maintains the canal and recently invited EdgeTech to demonstrate a method to quickly survey canal crib wall structures as well as map the canal bottom for obstructions.

A survey was performed with an

JFMS procured the multipurpose support vessel Ievoli Cobalt, mobilised with a towed side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiler solution, together with a work-class remotely operated vehicle, Triton XLX WROV, for visual inspection of targets identified in the sonar data.

Edgetech 4125 sidescan

The survey required JFMS to identify any anomalies with dimensions exceeding one metre in all axes – using the side-scan sonar to search for surface targets and the sub-bottom profiler to detect sub-surface targets down to a depth of 6m.

Post-analysis of data revealed no targets of potential archaeological interest, meaning the Romanian authorities are now free to issue an Archaeological Discharge Certificate and LUKOIL may now proceed with drilling and construction operations.

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Subsea Awareness Course Aberdeen Do you want to know about Subsea?

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This course provides the complete underpinning for new entrants and a refresher for experienced personnel wishing to update their knowledge within the oil and gas subsea sector.

Visit our website for more information and the next available course dates: https://www.sut.org/branch/aberdeen/ssac/ or email events@sut.org

EdgeTech 4125 system operating at 600 & 1600 kHz. The 1600 kHz frequency was used to image the Crib Walls and the resulting

images were of extremely high resolution allowing full viewing of timbers, missing or damaged timbers, concrete capping deterioration as well as any other features.

The second requirement was general imaging of the canal

Cribbing Wall

bottom to look for obstructions and debris that could be a hazard to transiting ships.

In one area over a highway tunnel crossing several abandoned vehicles were located.

Tunnel Survey Location

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UNDERWATER NEWS

MINING IMPACT STUDY A new study shows that the impacts of seabed mining on deep-sea ecosystems can persist for decades. Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) revisited a site exposed to simulated deep-sea mining activity nearly 30 years previously to assess seabed and ecosystem recovery.

They used a robot submarine to map and photograph much of the seafloor in the disturbed area in unprecedented detail.

The images were combined into a seafloor photo-mosaic completely covering 11 hectares of seabed, the largest ever photo-mosaic obtained in the abyssal ocean. Tracks on the seafloor caused by the simulated mining were still clearly visible, and the impacts on marine life initially observed in 1989 persist.

The study was able to pinpoint individual animals over a wide area and relate their abundance and distribution to the tracks.

While mobile species, such as sea cucumbers and sea stars, were able to recolonise impacted areas, many animals, such as sponges and sea anemones, live attached to the seafloor and remain virtually absent from directly disturbed seabed, instead being restricted to undisturbed areas. Given the important role of these animals in abyssal ecosystems, the results of the study suggest that impacts of large-scale commercial mining could potentially lead to an irreversible loss of key ecosystem functions.

The impacts of mining may be further exacerbated by removing the home for many animals. The target of this type of deep-sea mining is polymetallic nodules, potato-shaped rocks rich in copper and manganese. These nodules provide a stable anchoring point for the development of anemones, soft corals, and sponges, and promote the development of surprisingly diverse communities on otherwise muddy seabed.

The nodules take millions of years to form. Removal or burial of nodules from mining activities will remove the home of many of these filter-feeding animals, constraining their capacity to recolonise impacted zones and further delaying ecosystem recovery processes.

The site investigated is known as the “DISturbance and reCOLonization experiment� (DISCOL), and lies in the deep Pacific Ocean off Peru at around 4000 metres water depth.

It was disturbed as an experiment in 1989 by a team of German researchers. This is still to date the largest disturbance experiment carried out in an abyssal environment. With mining activities potentially on the horizon, long-term experiments such as this are critical to providing the body of knowledge needed to improve the sustainability of the developing deep-sea mining industry.

The study is the result of a collaboration between the NOC and the GEOMAR institute in Kiel (Germany) funded by the European Union Joint Programming Initiative (JPI-Oceans), an international project aiming to assess the ecological aspects of deep-sea mining.

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The 'mosaic' seafloor map showing marks from simulated mining activity

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UNDERWATER NEWS

SAAB SEAEYE REVEALS SUBSEA FUTURE In a world first, Saab Seaeye successfully docked an autonomous vehicle to an Equinor subsea docking station to recharge its batteries and download data, demonstrating that a new future in underwater technology has arrived.

It is a breakthrough that positions Saab Seaeye as leader in subsea resident robotics.

Representatives from across the offshore energy industries gathered at Sweden’s Lake Vättern to witness the successful docking of the Saab Seaeye Sabertooth autonomous vehicle, at Norwegian energy firm, Equinor’s, open-standard subsea docking station (SDS).

From the docking station the Sabertooth was sent on various

autonomous transits to undertake mock inspection tasks that included returning to the station for recharging and video data download.

Commenting on this pioneering achievement, Jon Robertson, managing director of Saab Seaeye Ltd, said: “For 30 years we have been in the forefront of developments and it’s brilliant to see a major advance in the future of the industry come to fruition.”

He adds that residency is now a deliverable option that will reduce operational expenditure and remove humans from offshore, and reduce environmental impact.

Representatives at the event saw a clear business case for safe operations, lower cost and lower carbon, by

Control panel view with Sabertooth in pioneering docking manoeuvre

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reducing the need for humans and vessels offshore and allowing fields to be designed in different ways to increase production efficiency and be profitable in remote areas.

The docking station at the demonstration was produced by Blue Logic and includes their inductive power and data connectors. Whilst docked the vehicle was charged and data uploaded and downloaded via the connectors.

Live video and vehicle control were made possible with Sonardyne’s BlueComm free-space optical modem.

Much of the demonstration was run with pre-programmed autonomous route plans. Also advanced motion controls via the BlueComm system, enabled operators to move the vehicle

from an automatically held position by set amounts using a touchscreen user interface. The mating of a TMT electric torque tool to a valve panel was also performed with control and video relayed via the BlueComm system.

3D simulation was on show, providing a real-time software interface for custom-development and viewing of Sabertooth functionality, including debugging new operations and algorithms.

Also demonstrated was an underwater simultaneous localisation and mapping (UWSLAM) that allows a pilot to ‘see’ the environment as a 3D map in real time whilst flying around – and by leaving a ‘snail trail’ the system can determine precise vehicle positioning relative to the map and provide effective station-keeping and augmented navigation functions.

In addition to Equinor, who has driven the open-standard SDS and is working with industry via the Subsea Wireless Interest Group (SWIG), other representatives from major operators were at the event, along with other companies who may use SDS, including Saipem, Oceaneering, IKM Subsea and Eelume.

As the 3D point cloud generated by the system has a resolution of one millimetre, precise measurement of the size and position of objects is possible.

Also present were those who could supply power to these vehicles, such as Ocean Power Technologies, along with service suppliers like Modus, ROVOP and DeepOcean.

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The potential revealed at the demonstration would not be possible but for Equinor’s development of the open-standard subsea docking station concept and Saab Seaeye’s Sabertooth which is the only hovering autonomous system that can operate in both AUV and ROV modes and handle connections in both the horizontal and vertical plane - and the only vehicle currently on the market capable of undertaking long-term residency in difficult to access locations.

Saab Seaeye Sabertooth ready for world’s first demonstration of subsea docking

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UNDERWATER NEWS

BIRNS 65TH ANNIVERSARY

DEEPWATER RESIDENCY AWARD

In 1954, exploration in the subsea industry was in its relative infancy. In fact, some of the very first unmanned submersibles were introduced in the 1950s. Nearly seven decades later, depth ratings for subsea systems have exponentially changed, and connectivity solutions for today's subsea systems are extremely advanced and complex. BIRNS has been proud to have played a role in the advancement of high-performance lighting and connector systems for the subsea market for the last 65 years.

Winner of this years’ annual Underwater Technology Foundation’s UTC Subsea Award for outstanding achievements within the subsea industry, is Saab Seaeye.

They achieved a world first by proving the potential for marine autonomous systems to take a greater role in underwater inspection, repair and maintenance methodologies.

The company was born in Los Angeles, California, and quickly became known for contributing key technology to the marine and nuclear industries. Early marine market contributions included building specialty lights for the Sea Lab projects and illuminating the excavation of the Titanic.

Expanding into the nuclear field in the 1980s, BIRNS soon introduced pivotal products to enhance the safety and capability of the nuclear field, like the world’s most advanced seismically-qualified, nuclear-grade emergency light, and the BIRNS Corona™ floodlight with 130,000 lumens.

“Throughout our 65 year history, we have been honored to help advance technology in these important and competitive markets,” says Eric Birns, President and CEO. “Our products have always allowed faster communication and brighter illumination, both inside containment and at great oceanic depths, and we are excited about what advancements the future will bring!”

Using their 3000m-rated Sabertooth autonomous underwater vehicle, Saab Seaeye created a field resident system for offshore oil and gas fields in a programme that took 10 years of development.

The 2019 award was presented to representatives of the Swedish team at Saab Seaeye, Jan Siesjö, Chief Engineer, and Peter Erkers, Sales Director, at the Underwater Technology Conference (UTC) in Bergen.

“It has been a long journey,” said Siesjö. “Ten years ago, no one was listening and the market was not mature enough. One of the biggest drivers has been ENI, who have been pursuing technologies with autonomous behaviour characteristics around subsea infrastructure on the seafloor with wireless communication.”

More availability with less cost, risk and emissions Jan Siesjö explains that having a subsea vehicle based at a subsea docking station ready to be launched on pre-programmed or man-controlled missions, including inspection, repair and maintenance, research tasks and environmental monitoring, no matter what the weather and without the need for surface vessel support, reduces costs,

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carbon emissions and risk to humans and increases operational availability.

Now, thanks to development projects with Italian operator ENI, he says, as well as parallel developments in inductive underwater charging and data transmission technology, along with 4G connectivity across the North Sea and other basins, and the development of standardised docking stations, the market is catching up with the concept.

Peter Erkers further explains that the advance is only possible because of the advanced technological capability of the Sabertooth and its manoeuvrability, stability and ability to work in tough and challenging environments.

Only hovering, multi-purpose vehicle “It is the only hovering autonomous system that can operate in both AUV and ROV modes and handle

connections in both the horizontal and vertical plane,” he says, “and the only vehicle currently on the market capable of undertaking longterm residency in difficult to access locations.”

Separately, Saab Seaeye is working with Ocean Power Technologies to jointly develop and market solutions for AUV and ROV charging and communications systems, using a buoy-based wave energy generator for power and communications.

Their Sabertooth is also being used

by ENI to trial a wave power buoy and demonstrate the ability to charge subsea vehicles.

Later this year, a Sabertooth, adapted

by Modus Seabed Intervention, based in England, will also be demonstrated as a resident vehicle on a UK offshore wind farm.

Hans-Erik Berge, chair of the

Underwater Technology Foundation (UTF) board says, “Subsea resident vehicles able to remain on the seabed for long periods, available for inspection and maintenance operations 24/7, aligns with industry efforts to reduce costs, risk and carbon emissions.

We congratulate Saab Seaeye for their achievement and we also recognise the work being done

by Equinor and NTNU, to create a vehicle agnostic standardised docking stations available at a test facility for all vehicle vendors to use for testing.”

This is the fifth UTC Subsea Award.

The Underwater Technology Foundation is an independent entity aspiring to provide more insight into the subsea industry in our region. The UTF is the driving force behind the Underwater Technology Conference, with partners GCE Subsea and SPE Bergen Section.

Peter Erkers, Sales Director and Jan Siesjö, Chief Engineer, receiving the UTC Award on behalf of Saab Seaeye.

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FRIDAY PHOTOS Join our community of 13 000 professionals on the UT2Subsea Linked-In page every Friday, where we publish old archive photos and invite people to describe their recollections (All comments unedited)

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ATLANTIC LABRADOR Odd Friday Photos this week because they have all been sent in by viewers.

Has anyone been on the Labrador? Is it still around?

Atlantic Labrador My old rig Hello chief. Doing okay thanks. I'm onshore now and in an as steady a job as you can get these days. Money is nothing close to offshore but I'm home every night and not covered in hydraulic oil and mud. My socks and pants don't appear 3 doors down from my house every time I get up either. No fish head soup for breakfast. Are you still on land rigs or back taking a chopper to work?

I spent a while on the Labrador and worked with some amazing people there - Marc and Clive included 2002 - 2008. When she was the GSF Labrador I was rig welder on the Lab for around 18 years, miss the old tub

Oh, just realised you're with Odfjell.

Decent rig? https://www.alewijnse.com/en/ maritime/projects/conversionatlantic-labrador

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DP1 JACKET 1975 Elf's 6500t DP1 jacket on its way to Frigg. This was one of the heaviest jackets ever barge-launched. The Intermac 600 is preparing to ballast down for a 10deg stern trip for tip off.

Instead of floating vertically when the righting was complete, however, the jacket kept on going down, eventually settling in water 10m deeper than it was designed for. It later transpired that all 16 upper floatation tanks crumpled supporting part of the jacket.

It was never in any of the Blurb photos, always photo shopped out Was this the one that was never used? It was removed by the Saipem7000 during the Frigg Decommissioning in 2009 Yes Euan, we removed the top part with S7000 in 2005, very interesting and unique job. DP1 remained in water inclined (like the Pisa tower) due to hydrostatic collapse of one of the legs for 34 years.

If it is , it just became a giant roost for Seabirds.

Someone once told me, I don't know if it's true, that there was once upon a time a jacket in the Beryl Field that got put in over the wrong spot and never got used. Can anyone shed any light on that?

Yup. Think so. I remember seeing it on a press trip. It seemed really odd.

There was one in North Sea but I think it was Total not Mobil/Beryl. I

Was this the Frigg jacket that was positioned in the wrong place ?

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also recall one having the topside put on the wrong way round. Others may recall specifics Andrew Towler we did that one the other week. It was Northwest Hutton. The module support frame (MSF) got put on 180 degrees out, leading to some jokers renaming the platform SOUTHEAST Hutton :-) I recall another jacket sank around the same time , I believe it was McDermott’s.

I’m pretty sure that the DP1 was a McDermott effort. At the time it was rumoured that someone miscalculated the flotation tank wall thickness. Seems likely.

Ian Johnson C.Eng, FIMechE Thanks Ian for the clarification, it must have been the same one.

STADIVE The jacket was wrecked on impact with the seabed , the MSF found a home on the Stavanger Dusavik base for years and Brown and Root made a rush job of converting the intended mid pipeline Manifold platform into CDP1 drilling platform.

I think your right Derek the Frigg Bird sanctuary!!

I worked on the Frigg field doing inspection using a Challenger ROV many years ago. We were told the first jacket went down in the wrong place. I worked for Sonat Willsub a joint company to carry out the node inspection My understanding is that it sat in place un-piled for many years ......

The removal of this structure was a significant challenge and at SAIPEM it took us a large number of iterations to arrive at the final Safe removal solution.

Although the Jacket never capsized it had both “walked “ on the sea floor and embedded itself at one end giving a significant slope across its length.

The diving support vessel was built for Shell in 1982 Designed and installed the 16 m air dive boom that deployed air divers right on jacket faces. Remember Mario, myself and others hammering the life out of the old hinge pins to remove the small triangular boom.

Stadive was in Fetler sound One horrendously archaic diver HRC - couldn’t call it an HRV as it was a floating monster We put the Gannet B wellhead protection structures in with Stadive in 1991. Not only did we manage to overlap Stadive over the top of the transportation barge far enough to stove in the top of one of the any light gas bottles when it got a bit choppy, but we also managed to rust proof the entire topside when the hydraulic supply hose to the ICE 1412 vibrohammer burst. OIM wasn't too happy with the vibrohammer either.

Every time we landed it back on deck (right above his cabin) we bounced him out of bed. Happy days :D

(as well as Stadrill) '84-'88 working on Shell's UMC. The divers out there were a great bunch of guys - I was always amazed by their ability to live and work under those conditions...

Beast!

Good ideas

Remember it fishing Brent bravo crane boom from the sea One man at the end of a hose had to make this business case work Good old Comex days Happy days on the Stadive as relief crane operator......cracking crew on the vessel. Laughs all the way but great work done at the same time Worked beside her in the late 80s when i was on the Uncle John on the Brent Spar helicopter recovery.

Brilliant vessel and accommodation, great crew back in the day before the PC crowd came to offshore, Mario the OM a real force to reckon with.

Happy days Had a couple of trips out to Stadive

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Stadive

HIGHLAND 1 JACKET AROUND 1975 The 30 000t jacket was upended by the controlled flooding of valves within the floatation raft. Each raft had 20 buoyancy compartments.

Pitch and stability were ensured by outrigger spheres at the foot of the jacket and sponson tanks to the bow of the floatation raft

I was working there at HiFab in the offices when it was being built and floated out

Now a concept for jacket removal based on the flotation raft would be good....watch this space

I was one of the youngest on this job...

Now I’m the oldest on jobs... lol

Taken from the B&R Hercules Proudly built by HiFab at Nigg Bay

I started working on the next Jacket late 1974- more than a lifetime ago!

Remember the float out well from the dock at Nigg must have been about 76 There was an issue with the spheres in test, if my memory serves me, and one or more ruptured!

Motherwell Bridge Engineering fabricated the replacements. Unsure if it was H1 or H2? Takes me back. đ&#x;˜Ž This became the Forties Charlie I believe. I did my first trip there (thanks to Global Energy) as I'm sure many people had before me.

Started work at Nigg Bay on this jacket on 10th March 1973, at the tender age of 19.

Back in 73, I was a young trainee at Lincoln and had the opportunity to work with some of the guys from HiFab who were over to qualify with some new Innershield wires.

We had a some good times once I learned to understand English with a heavy highland brogue.

The good old days lots off work then 76 year ago min!! Ah yes, I remember it well. I'd never seen so many UT guys in one Portacabin..... until the TLP of course

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(FORTIES)

Images: Alan Cattell

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ROCKWATER SEMI 1 Looks like it is picking up a subsea module.. but what and where?

What is the structure on the top?

Are the spikes designed to annoy fishermen?

Looks like locator guides for the top half of the structure??

Worked on that vessel when it was Smit Semi 1 plough support for NOS Plough with a Scorpio along with Roger Brill Edwards and Doug Davis and a few others.

I remember Rodger Brill worked with him in NS and Baku I have just remembered one of the Sat Divers just a young guy was doing his first Sat Dive on the Smit Semi 1 and asked if we could video him coming out off the bell to show his family. We said how will we know you, so he painted a sign or number on the helmet for ID we gave him the VHS video tape

to go home with him. He gave us a tin of sweets from the bond. He was so happy, we used a UFO I think for the filming.

The spikes are there so that ROV tethers can get snagged!

Your a bit of a wag

that is nominally placed over a subsea tree, pipeline junction (PLEM, PLET, etc), or other subsea Installtion, so as to avoid snagging on fishing gear. The ‘spiky bits’ are exactly the OPPOSITE of what you’d want, so no idea, although “anodes” was my first guess.

I wonder what happened to the Uncle John: Comex's semi-sub DSV. A real ground breaker at the time.

Probably temporary "davits" to open the hinged panels on the sides giving divers access to the interior. The following spring most of those hinged panels ended up, um, "somewhere else" :-)

It was over in the Gulf of Mexico until fairly recently. Not sure if it is still there

Looks like a ESDV.

Ahhhh Rockwater....happy days!

Spent many trips in both the Semi 1 & 2 and not the most aerodynamic vessels!! to be fair Andy your not the most aerodynamic yourself The structure looks like a “net guard”

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Comex and 2W had a lot of work installing ESDV’s after Piper Alpha.

EVERYONE had a load of work installing Asics after Piper Alpha. Happy days (all be it for completely the wrong reasons of course).

Looks Offshore Mexico with the old Safe Offshore accommodation vessel in the background.

Looks Offshore Mexico with the old Safe Offshore accommodation vessel in the background.

The blue vessel is the Arbol Grande

by Diavaz which I believe never worked in Brunei.

Negative it Is Pol-A oilfield in Mexico Beautiful vessel

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ROCKWATER SEMI 1

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Previous layout after blowout

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ROCKWATER SEMI 1 CONTD. Is it Mobile?

Not mobile, unfortunately New orleans, see the riverboat in background Circa 2000 after Halliburton sold her into a Mexican Joint Venture company (MMM) Remember having an ice cream and tour onboard about 1994 while in Stavanger! is it New Orleans almost inMobile , Alabama in 2008,after that in Tampico, tamaulipas 2011 and 2013.

I was on its very first job - cable lay Leman field , many moons ago Where? Under the bridge Definetly New Orleans Probably when she went down to gulf of Mexico Would that of been after it was sold or maybe new Yes it was sent down to the Gulf of Mexico and her sister vessel, Semi 2 was sent down too Yes worked on them both in the early days rockwater This was a superb vessel as was its sister semi 2 diving systems were good as was their Hausmann cranes i spent many yrs on these till Halliburton bought rockwater then they sold them off ended up in Mexico yep, see it now !

Had a good time on there, learnt Dutch for free too!

Photo taken in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

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NW HUTTON NW Hutton was famous for the module support frame being accidentally installed 180 deg out.

North was South! It wasn't easily fixed. My first DSV trip was on the Wilchief checking the seafloor leg clamps of the NWH The platform and the vessel long gone now.

I was at Technip when it was sold to India. By then it was renamed the Alliance.

I was Slb Wireline crew 84-86. Some good memories!

Did a few visits to the NWH 98-99. On learning a crew member was leaving the rig, the radio op played the full version of ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra over the platform PA. Never heard a boot room laugh so hard..

First platform / rig I ever set foot on - 1984

First time i met this vessel was on the.Thames field in 86 then again on working on the North Sea Producer in 98/99

Best platform I've ever worked on!

I remember being involved in some well abandonments in the 90s before they started the alliance with SLB

I remember fire watching on the pipe deck whilst they welded the supports for the frac hoses from the vessel!

Worked on the construction of the Jacket at McDermott Scotland,Ardersier,by Inverness.

Quite a lot of oil left in the ground between NW Hutton, Hutton CBF’S Kenny along with 1 11/16” puncher guns. The CBF was one of the firing heads that SLB didn’t want to develop as they saw no market in it, only for the Dowel guys to push for its development. The CBF’S ended up being a bread winner in some locations with the ever increasing CT market. There was not much left of them after the cement jobs on NW Hutton if you can recall, all washed out and junk. I can also recall working on two of the derricks at the same time, pulling TCP from one well, Eline rigged up on the other and way down on the production deck with another unit and PLT’S.

I was on the NWH then with Smedvig Drilling (rig 1) - this would have been circa 1991-1993.

Not entirely accurate, I was the Wells team leader for the amoco / Schlumberger alliance put together as a profit sharing deal based on increased production. NWH was producing 3000 bpd on average but with selective reperf and chemical treatment we increased production to around 12,000bpd. The fracjob was a mitigated failure in terms of increased production. Great platform and people to work on right through to final P&A in 2003. (edited) Brings back memories both good and bad. best Stimulation vessel ever ...... creating billions of incremental dollars for the operators

Your going back a few years there Gary, I remember being on the Hutton when they cemented the coil in one of the wells, Kenny Mac came out the run a small cutter and cut the coil, good old days.

It felt like I lived on the NW Hutton.

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Stimulation vessel

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ROWAN GORILLA II 1985 Even as the Rowan Gorilla 2 was being lauded as one of the latest new generation jackups , the Rowan Gorilla IV was under construction. All were capable of operating in 100m of water, in 27.8m wave heights and and 80 knot winds.

My goodness. You are following my career! I was Business Development Manager at SB Offshore when we negotiated the deal to mobilise the RG2 from Peterhead.

I have numerous shots of the rig alongside the North Breakwater. Interestingly, Rowan Drilling's Finance Manager in the UK at the time was my old chum, the late Neil Nivet.

We were both on the leadership.team iof Wood Offshore which developed the supply base at Great Yarmouth, managed by hashtag#GlennHurren, and the rig servicing base at Invergordon with the manager hashtag#jamieson. Happy days.

Was the Rig Manager Double Eagle Jones ?

My first offshore rig experience, 1998 of Nova Scotia Canada. Great rig and great people.

Spent 6 years on that monkey.

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CONSTRUCTOR The Rhum manifold installation from the Constructor, taken by the BP rep from a helicopter. 2005 I'm not sure, but that looks like a photo taken after the (sorry if I don't use the correct vernacular here) sidewalls and stern A-frame were taken off and a new crane fitted.

The original configuration had high sidewalls down each side of the main deck, which was kept blissfully clear of obstructions so the class could also be used as supply boats (!) if required.

There was an A-frame on the back as well, I believe. Below decks on the Seaspread at least there were also huge refractory-lined tanks for cement and acid.

When Stena sold the Seaspread off to AT&T for conversion into a cable layer in 93 or 94, Derek "Sticky" Leach dispatched Bob Landsman (sp) down to Leith to supervise gas-axing jagged holes in the sides of those and the sat chambers lest AT&T be tempted to put her back into service as a DSV. Landsman said he and the crew were heartbroken but orders is orders.

Bar Protector still in her Stena colours One of the Stena Offshore's finest workhorses. Used, abused and modified a great number of times over the years. She had three sister ships: Seaspread - which was the first built, commandeered by the Royal Navy and sent off with the Falklands task force almost as soon as the paint was dry, Protector (better known as the BAR Protector) and Inspector, which was bought by the Royal Navy and renamed RFA Diligence.

Seaspread with a Chinook in the background And to complete the set RFA Diligence It’s good to see these old ladies are still on the go!

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Constructor sister ships

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JACK UP TRANSPORTATION, 1977 Not sure which this jack up is, but I didn't realise it was transported with its derrick flat. The things you learn!

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In those those days a land rig mast was used, hence it was folded down via mast foot pins. As the industry developed a fixed derrick was designed and applied for both a greater hook load and rack back capability.

A "fold down" mast (or derrick), wow, that is a new one! How can one "unfold" it?

Bear in mind that for the Semi's of this design, typical hook load capability where at 1,3 M lbs, setback around half of that!

Some of the older Jack-Ups (as this SeaFox rig) had the Mast (Derrick) configured this way for stability issues during transit. Also, quite a few Semisubmersibles had this feature, to lay down their "mast" (Atwood's Southern Cross, early Sedco 700 series and the like). The key issue for the semis was to get underneath bridges to work in the Black Sea, for example.

Same aged with heron 1976....the picture was unloading in 2006 from submersible barge at Fort Dauphin Madagascar for piling work Rio Tinto jetty.

Looks alot like Seafox4 to me.

Some of the early 700 series semi subs also had a mast rather than derrick I believe 700 did Good point Donald, not really a derrick, more a “mast” Paul Basey .... a blast from the past I worked with you on P85 back in 1984 , I was on Robby “ Piggy “ Lear’s crew with Paul Fingers Cockerill, Dave Welsh sure you were derrickman in them days with Jonny Hardbattle

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CHAS

Early offshore construction equipment was traditionally heavy , however, the newer, lighter, cheaper DSVs had limited lift capacity. In 1985, this prompted 2W to launch the lightweight Combined Habitat and Alignment System (CHAS). Typical lift weights were 40t. This new range of equipment and methods was geared to the skills and sometimes limitations of manned

looks like the Rocky 1 (or 2)...

on the back deck of a boat again.

Takes you back to the good old days eh?

I remember it well. We bid it on several jobs when I was at 2W.

Actually I'm going offshore in Gabon in a few weeks as a bit of a nostalgic break from what I normally do these days. I'm looking forward to standing

Worked on Rocky2 years ago with a Scorpio it was owned by a Dutch Bank and they had there own rep. with us

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we were going to Gravesend to pick up a Carousel.

Looks like the grey MacKenzie to me Spent many a day onboard those ships with that habitat . Great times and people Great days indeed & that’s where I started with Rockwater in 1999..

Believe the DSV is Deepwater 2 or

CHAS, 1990 We had something about CHAS a few weeks ago. Here is the subsea pipe welding habitat being launched by Rockwater from a semisubmersible support vessel possibly Deepwater 1?

Gray Mackenzie 100Te SWL single line pull crane.... great piece of lifting equipment in its day.... spent a few weeks in Newcastle at Shepherds Walker Quay changing out the crane slew bearing, think it was 89?

Quite a poignant time on board though as the divers were all coming out of Sat having spent a few weeks prior recovering the bodies of some of the lads that were lost in Piper A. GRTS Was on board DW2 again in Abu Dhabi a few years back...she was showing her age a bit, but had some

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new cranes added onto her... think it was before she headed to Egypt.... cracking DSV.

DP6 PLATFORM, MORECAMBE BAY

The second stage of British Gas' Morecambe Bay development consisted of 2 drilling platforms, DP6 and 8. The jackets were built by McDermotts at Ardersier with the Topsides at Wallsend.

The reservoir was only 1000m below the seabed and before the days of horizontal drilling, this meant numerous vertical wells. British Gas decided to use a novel slant drilling system to enter the reservoir A 500t skid base was lifted on to the desk to install the slant drill rig, 1440t in operating conditions.

The first Morecambe Bay platform (s) was installed with DB Odin remember the high sea currents and total lack of visibilty for the divers during tie in of the subsea pipelines - I may still have some photographs from that time in an old file - if I find them I will publish them here Visibility is still very challenging in this area.

I hope you can find the old photos. It would be interesting to see them DB Odin was alongside DP3, Morecambe Flame and Bay Driller were the two British Gas jack-ups with the slant drill rigs on them.

If only we’d kept one now that we’re decommissioning DP3 & 4 ... The Flame is now the Douglas accommodation and the Driller was sold to Noble. I thought the drilling was done by Houlder Marine unless that was the completions, they were on board in 83 when I turned up Examples of innovation structure in the water I had a great time on the hook ups of the platforms there working with AMEC. Love this type of info. Please keep it flowing.

DP6 & DP8 were the first ever loadouts I was involved with great experience and before the days of SPMTs Nice info. Beautiful illustration before CAD-time it required real skill Wasn’t the Irish Sea Pioneer (ISP) utilised around this time?

No DP 6 & 8 was completed by the M Flame and Bay Driller crewed by Bawden drilling. I was with Bawden at the time and worked on both jack ups FMC (now TechnipFMC) delivered surface wellheads and xmas trees on this project - 28 systems for the 3 platforms on the South Field in total. There was one subsea well, later to be renamed Bains after John

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Bains who discovered the field. The slanted structure in the illustration is the concept sketch for a light will intervention skid to allow rig-up of wireline equipment.

I believe the original slanted wells were drilled and completed using a jack-up with a slantable derrick.(not shown on the sketch) The platforms were so close to the beach that you

MORECAMBE BAY SLANT DRILLING

Last week, we talked about slant drilling derrick being skidded from a jack up to drill a shallow reservoir. We showed a line-drawing, but this is what it looked like on the field.

could almost hear the nightlife in Blackpool along the promenade might have just been my imagination though...

DP6 still going strong following a conversion to be remotely monitored and controlled using Servelec Controls innovative approach to achieving minimum manning levels. Plenty of life in the ol'girl yet!

I worked on these DP1 / DP3 / DP4 were the first to use slant drilling, I worked on the HUC Management of these and CCP / AP 1984 to 1986 and again in 1998 including First Gas and DP6 / 8 tie ins.

Made some life long friends who I am still in contact with to this day. Great memories.

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I was involved in designing a CT system to work on these deviated wells at Surface on each of the DP assets 7 years ago!

That brings back memories of 29 years ago on the Flame and Bay Driller - DP6 & 8

OCEANEERING ARMS, 1979

The Oceaneering International's Ocean ARMS II two-man work bell. It was installed on the then new Pacnorse 1 drillship. These had the capability of working in 1000m of water.

We had the ARMS onboard the Robert F. Bauer working in Australia and S.E. Asia. Jim Blair, Dan Coats, Mike Jordan, Rod Starr, and others.

Reached my deepest dive of 1550 few off Bali where the bottom temp was higher than the surface! Great piece of gear, but NOT for over the side ops in Bass Strait; made me ‘old’.

Sub Sea Systems (SSS) cameras and mercury vapour lights.

The whole project was pioneering and way ahead of its time.

yes I made the first test dive in this one to almost 3000 feet. We ended up with 5 of them oceaneering had a couple and ocean systems had a couple I remember the first one Solus Ocean Systems had, mobbed from Singapore for Western Australia - Tom Pado, Bruce Masson, Lindsey Lavity, Forbes Rae, Bobby Rogers, me and one other trainee. Good days with good people.....

Tony Webb eventually joined us!

Hi Robert K, good to see you again

mate, it has been a longtime. I am now into Trenching and Ploughing. Currently on UT 1 in Mexico. Do you know where Tim Gillingham is these days??? Best regards Mike Jordan Yes - Mike Jordan / l served on the Arms Bells for 5 years in Australia ( 2 projects ) and Indonesia for 4 years. Where is Bob Brown these days??

As an Oceaneering diver, I "babysat" one of these systems on the Glomar "Atlantic" in the GOM in 1984. The rig was under contract by Amerada Hess, but not the Arms bell, so she sat unused during the drilling campaign that summer. Having just arrived from Santa Barbara, the Atlantic was in drydock in Mobile, AL being readied for drilling the hole out in Green Canyon 66. The

Yes, I know. Not acceptable nowadays but this is an archive ed.

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Glomar "Explorer" was docked next door, rotting away, as its missions for the CIA were completed. see https://www.washingtonpost. com/archive/politics/1977/05/22/ glomar-roots-go-back-to-1962scheme/485b1be7-c90f-4270-85cd82b2db92fbca/?noredirect=on&utm_ term=.c0271e9ed8fd (Glomar eventually merged with Sante Fe, which eventually merged to become Transocean.) While drilling in Green Canyon with the California crew, I didn't have much to do. An OI guy from Seattle came out during my 64-days onboard; we did some battery maintenance, etc. and I made a moon-pool dive to check the BOP tensioning cables. Ironically, my immediately-previous offshore gig, which ended 4 days before I boarded the Atlantic in Mobile, had been aboard the Zapata Lexington (with ties to the Bush family) as a stand-by diver for Oceaneering's Wasp system, in GreenCanyon 61.

DAVID VEHICLE, 1987

Dont know much about this Im afraid. It isn't so much an ROV as a platform that can be used by divers to provide power, winch tools, illumination and facilities. It could be clamped to a structure at any angle. Everything was controlled locally by the diver.

Additional NDT, water jetting and puts could be powered by DAVID.

(2of2) The Lexington was just 4 miles from our location when she experienced a blowout, 14 Sept. '84, killing 4 and injuring 3. All the OI personnel evacuated safely, with most personnel ending up on the Zapata Saratoga. Very humbling experience to witness first-hand and to know the vessel and some of the hands onboard. see https://www.upi.com/ Archives/1984/09/14/A-gaswell-burst-into-flames-on-arig/2099463982400/ (edited) Dove this model myself a number of times to about 1,600 ft and also dove and worked from the old Can-Ocean (Lockheed) 1ATA bell in the GOM. Interesting., thanks

Yes I have always said that any medium size ROV should also be capable of acting as a flying Diver's tool bench for access to power tools and providing safety cover and rescue capability if required

Knew a kiwi dude who worked these systems to U probably know him Woody Murry Jepson wonder were he is now days

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MCP01 According to the excellent web site 'Capturing-the-Energy' MCP-01 sat in 94m of water 173km offshore. ‘MCP’ is usually regarded as an acronym of its function - ‘manifold compression platform’ - , earlier documents occasionally described it as a ‘midline compression platform’, The numeral was to distinguish it from up to five other compression platforms that were planned, but never built.

Above only sky when standing on the bottom level inside the leg! The lift was broken on my only visit so it was ladders all the way down and back.

We always new it as the MCP 01 booster station Good times Daryl Pink seagulls ,Roper Worked on the MCP01 for about 2 years during the platform conversion project.

Great platform and great crew!

Yes Daryl, the Centre-Core bypass Project was a great job.

Some top lads on that job

I remember it well. It was my first job as a piping engineer with Total.

We installed two 9m long 32” dia bends at the bottom of the leg, one to each of the incoming and outgoing pipelines. It required an 11m long pig catcher on the beach to retrieve the isolation pigs. Learned a lot on that project. (edited) Way back many moons ago, think when working for Heerama we lifted a package onto MCP-01, them days it was just an additional package lift for Total on a flyby, nowadays it’s a Brownfield module installation.

One of the best jobs I was ever on

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CROMARTY FIRTH 1986

An aerial photo showing the Support vessel Sulair, the MSSV Iolair and the Sea Explorer

The Sulair (was built for BP as a platform support/DP dive vessel?

She was taken over by Sealion and renamed the TNT Puma then the Toisa Puma.

think hashtag#decommissioning Iolair. Now there was a strange motion. A little like the TLP. Figure of 8.

Iolair currently working in the GoM, owned by Cotemar.

Sedco 700 series built in Scott Lithgow

Ocean Guardian now with Well Safe I

Is that an Aker H3 on the barge?

Terry, I toured the Iolair in Scott's during mechanical completion, (a cold

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wet windy Port Glasgow day with the wind coming off the hills to the north, freezing), just as we started to build the Sovereign Explorer at Cammel Laird in 1981. Were you on board at that time.

B P Sea Explorer, Global Sea Explorer, Now the Ocean Guardian

RIG LEGS

I don't know what this jack up is, but the legs do not go vertically downwards. Instead, they have batter -ie, - they are sloped at a slight angle that gives the structure more stability due to its wider footprint.

Layout and derrick is different from the Scorpion (Zapata), though this is.

Y.O.B 1955, design by LeTourneau

Layout and derrick is different from the Scorpion (Zapata), though this is. Y.O.B 1955, design by LeTourneau

Scorpion had closed leg well if I remember old photo from LeTourneau brochures...

Yer I worked on her in the North Sea Zappa’s one any way good days

Wow, this is stunning, a much more effective design for shallow water

underwater connection between the legs?

Understood, always an issue with any JU. Spud can design seems to get better but it’s a costly upgrade

I think it was the scorpion

This does seem to be very vulnerable with the legs external, or she has an

Could it be the Reading and Bates Rig Mr Jack it worked in Italy for many years in the 1970’s Not sure about the Scorpion, I think

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Jacking on 2 instead of three corners, more vulnerable overside legs and overside maintenance work, higher lateral forces on legs when jacking, higher stress at barge connection, torsional stress on spud cans barge stability issues pulling deep pen cans. Cannot imagine why they don’t build them like this anymore.

Scorpion had enclosed legs. Check this interesting link https https://www.netwasgroup.us/offshore/ chronology-of-submersible-rigs.html

STANISLAV YUDIN 1994

In its Stolt paintwork but I was told it was still going strongly someone that knows these things. Here, it is installing Clyde Petroleum's Q8-B platform in 17m water, Dutch sector

Now the 'Seven Yudin' and installing wind farms, plus the usual conventional heavylift work. it is Seaway Yudin John and currently working in Taiwan Was on it in 90s couple of times massive sauna Worked on there with Stolt Seaway, Alex Dick, Darrell Walters, Ivor McKensie, Ben Palmer, Billy REID and Frank the crane driver fun times all round we were told we had to learn Russian. What s hoot Was on it in 1998 then again in 2015 Still going under seaway heavy lift, was used in the Moray Firth to install Beatrice offshore wind turbine jackets.

Looks a bit different to last year

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PIPER

At the time of the DP1 incident, the 12,500t Piper jacket was still under construction at Ardersier. The 12,5000 jacket had a virtually identical flotation system. Piper's floatation tanks were longer at 71.5m and there were 4 groups of 6, but the diameter and plate thickness were almost the same. Occidental eventually doubled the number of stiffeners and angle steel was placed longitudinally in all of the tanks.

Do you have a time machine The Wombles would give him a great welcome.

Looks like the Amelia yard near Morgan City, back in the day! Any pictures of Bullwinkle or those other "deep water" rigs?

When hook ups were a years work. đ&#x;‘? đ&#x;‘?đ&#x;’Ż Great memories Look no sacrificial anodes.

Who else can tell the story?

Remember the project well, how time flys by...

Great photo, I worked on the topsides , any photos of that Thoroughly enjoyed climbing all over that baby during construction at sadly long gone Ardersier yard .

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SPAR 1978 As part of its research, Taylor Diving and Brown and Root welded two sections of 36in line at a depth of 316m in a dry hyperbaric chamber, in the sound of Raasay, NW Scotland. The photo shows Taylor's Submersible Pipe Alignment System (SPAR) lowered to the seabed from the Brown and Root 423. This housed the Underwater Welding Habitat (UWH).

Remember working on one of the last SPAR projects in Malaysia (early 80's).

Now you be shown' your age Bro..

Sure I had Something to do with that Job. I was working with Joey around that time for EPMI Prior to execution of that project we had a workgroup in holland studying the extended use of habitats for underwater welding and pipeline or any other subsea structure repairs.were exiting times BAR 423 aka Choctaw II After they killed a diver in Norway Phenomenal feat even by today’s standards My father worked on the 423 as a welder around that time... to be honest looks like him standing on the right with no hard hat on đ&#x;˜‚ (edited) Like father like son....

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BULLWINKLE 1988

One for our American cousins celebrating independence, or as it is called now, USExit. At the time, Shell's Bullwinkle jacket the world's tallest steel offshore structure in 1353ft of water. 75,000t of steel was used including 26 000t in piling and conductors.Fabrication and installation cost $250million. Shell broke its own deepwater record, previously held by Cognac (1265ft).

Installed the pipelines into J-Tubes with Sonsub for Global, deepest ever at the time. Best part of the job was working with Global rep Don Nelson; the first client I ever met who understood that the ROV was an essential part of the project and should be used intelligently.

H851 built just for this jacket. Last big on was Walter Coelacanth 1186 fsw Was part of the ROV team onboard the Oden (Heermac - Herma / McDermott JV) working for Taylor Diving. Still have a VHS tape of topside activities. Will need to look at sometime.

Does anyone remember the labor

strike and the mutiny? A little unnerving at the time

And all pre the advent of ‘subsea engineering’ and ‘subsea engineers

I was standing on the Jettie in Port Aransas when it was towed out. What a sight!

Yes, and the jacket was WAY overdesigned. Nobody knew what forces would be involved, so they just added steel. It also provided the data to design other large bottomsupported structures in the GOM. Good job, Shell.

Outstanding photo...when look at fhose rinky dink.renewable 200t jackets.....bares into.significane.

Worked on the Santa Unis Project, installing the Harmony and Heritage jackets, up to the crown plates God they were big.

Brings back memories. I was on location working as a deck hand on one of the several boats that towed this beast to location! Seems like yesterday. It was an incredible feat.

Cognac not that deep. A little over 1000' Not nowadays. But 40 years it sure was.

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Awesome to see how far we have come in less than 30 years.

I am looking forward to the new challenges we face, and the advances we make in the next 30!

IVANHOE ROB ROY

Work started by Amerada Hess in 1985 to tie in two small fields to a central manifold and up to the AH001 semisubmersible. It was the first time in the North Sea, gas had been exported from a floating facility. EMC's Semac laid the lines, supported by the Smit 1.

Balder set the manifold on the bottom and Semi1 disconnected the slings and did the 4 piles and hydrolok swaging.

Aye, I was on the SEMAC during the construction of the submarine pipeline 1988.

Good memories. Also Sad memories as it was the same year as the Piper Alpha disaster !!

Thanks for your post,,đ&#x;˜€đ&#x;˜€ very fond memories of my early Employment day's,, back on the bank's of the River Tyne,, was working for Hall Russell Offshore Ltd and the AH 001 was tied up at McNulty Yardđ&#x;˜€đ&#x;˜€đ&#x;˜€ Kind Regards Ronnie High đ&#x;˜€đ&#x;˜ đ&#x;˜€

Just looked at my old CV. Bluewaters FPSO Blueholm. How time flies.

I was too directly involved with the final hook up using the WASP ADS system.

Achieved both the start and finish of this development

I worked on the AH001 when it was called the Phillips SS working in Ekofisk for Phillips. A great place had many enjoyable times

Flashback to my time as a Survey Part Chief on SEmac1 in 80's and latterly as Offshore Construction Rep for Amerada Hess on the CSO Apache during flowline installation also inspection rep on Annual ROV pipelines Inspection Surveys happy days

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Changed out 2 damaged risers on the AH001 with Rockys in 90, well actually I was the Asst. Eng Manager sorting the Design & procedures...

The pioneers Oldies but Goldies.Lots of hic-cups with the stinger LoLThank you for the post Dave Yes they were. Did many Subsea interventions and Tree changes on IVRR. Best company I was ever an employee of, by a country mile!

One of the top companies, certainly in the “90’s, to be a supplier to......đ&#x;‘?

Long ago. Long Memories.

NARWHAL 1978

The Narwhal was the worlds first Semisubmersible derrick barge ( I believe). Working for Netherlands Offshore, the crane had a lifting capacity of 2000t. Its first contract was on Statfjord. Well when I say 'barge; it was self-propelled with a propulsion power of 10 000hp. It had a draught of 7-23m.

could also lay pipe .

The Narwhal had a unique counter ballast system for the crane, during extreme heavy lift you filled it with water ballast ) . The crane was NOT at the stern, but close to the vessel tipping center , in order to reduce hook load motions . But you compromised crane reach , it would be better if crane was located at the stern, which eventually was done.

Yes NOC was a company located on Delft Holland Thoss Interesting vessel for workability.

Terrible dynamics in head seas due to the wave pressure gradient along the top of the barge like hull. Most lifts were conducted in beam or quartering seas. The vessels motion characteristics were better in that orientation. Only "semi" I know of with

a barge hull. (edited) Long memory Nico. How times have changed Great vessel where I performed offshore structural assurance and where I learned from the best welders and riggers I ever knownđ&#x;˜ƒ Thanks Pieter Koning for mentioning she became DB101 later. I was on DB101 for many days while we worked for Pemex in late 1990s and early 2000s.

True workhorse. got scrapped in 2015, pretty good history. I was PM on her last job in Myanmar Worked on the DB 191 for Macs 1980 if memory serves, Supt was Garth Dance, Brian Homes( the prince of darkness ,when men were men and sheep were carful Narwal was working NOC and later for McDermott and become the DB101 where the crane was repositioned to the stern of the vessel with 3500t lifting capacity Diving on Shell Leman Alpha in 1978 when Narwhal appeared over the

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horizon to lift a Platform crane into place. Got some great pics, biggest floating asset I had ever seen at that time. Tim Griffiths, Mick Slack, Frank MacArthey.....

Yes, a great a vessel. We set all x 8 Conoco UK SBGD V field jackets in 87 & 88 with the 101. Piles driven with steam hammers except for the Accommodation jacket with the MH2100......real O&G offshore installation....

Built in Japan. A bit earlier than the Hermod and Balder, semi-subs also built in Japan. 5 heavy lift offshore crane designed by Gusto.

Offshore Sabah for KPOC jacket installation 2013 by DB101 McDermott 4 million manhours without LTI 2010 Chevron Thailand field DB101 Working for Netherlands Offshore Co I did many great jobs with Narwhal ( Brent and others). Many years later .. as McDermott's DB 101..she came to work for SSB on one of my projects in Malaysia. My last visit onboard was in Batam ( Ind.). This was not long before

DB 101 ( Narwhal) was sadly scrapped Hi Pieter Jan Sweet memories Nico for sure..we are getting old Yes that narwhal was the 1 semi sub barge I worked on the maiden voyage We went through the sues canal and performed tests off the coast near Brest France After that we worked on it’s 1 at job the statfjord NOC had other crane barge vessels such as the Blue Whale ( worked on that one in New Zealand Maui A platform). Vessel SeaLion and Orca, they

BALMORAL While we are talking about Balmoral, Apache laid the flow lines

Awesome vessel .... double triple awesome team ...

Brilliant vessel

it is flexlay, do you buy flexible pipelines from technip or you fabricate in terms of api17j on your own?

Great picture of former Technip's Apache vessel in action. She delivered great and key projects and seeing her retire from our fleet a few years ago drew some emotion. Thank you for sharing this picture.

My very first offshore job as on the Santa Fe Apache. Ninian 1980.

Mobilsed in Leith The old Santa Fe Apache And we did the tie ins for KD marine

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Oh no there not you can spoil rigid pipelines , check your facts Jun Wang Is going to be open to new opportunities for quite some time me thinks ?

NARWHAL 1978

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BRENT SPAR While many remember the debacle of the Brent Spar removal, many ( not UT2 readers) for the first time learned what it was for - going back to a time when the North Sea didn't have a pipeline infrastructure and all oil had to be loaded on tankers.

Left a Sub Sea Trek ROV wrapped around one of its anchor chains.

Nobody was really bothered!

Did the cut with a grit entrained cutting machine set and operated remotely , also did all the pre cut trials at Aberdeen Hyperbaric centre test tank

Iv also got a few stories to tell ,re the time the tanker missed its mooring and hit us and we broke an anchor,I thought we were done that day .

The main hinge connecting the Spar to the seabed base was cut using grit cutting this released is to be towed away for scrap It was Technip or whatever they called themselves at the time

They left one at Ixtoc the year before; came up with BOP.

I have great memories of the spar,I was on there for 5 years and met a lot of top guy I did my first sat, after completing my sat course at Fort William, on the Brent SPAR in 1980, working from the Capalonga.

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Got stuck on the Brent Spar for almost a week in late 80’s - bad weather - ate sea quells for breakfast, lunch & Dinner - I was ill!!

Didn’t realise how much it used to move ...

I did my first sat on the Brent Spar in 1980 working from the DSV Capalonga.

Did the removal from the Stadive and towed out for dumping int resting times Remember stadive fishing out Brent bravo crane boom from sea bed and removal of Brent spar with green peace protesters on it I spent a couple of weeks on the

Spar during Decom it was the best food I ever had offshore, the catering staff would take orders for all 3 meals the day before 5* treatment. I remember leaving my Tools outside the door to go for a break and when I returned they were gone! I didn’t realise the Spat constantly turns so my Tools were actually on the other side of the installation a few laughs were had at my expense.

School boy error pal.

When Shell.wanted to dump this oil storage tank in the Atlantic .There were objections from many areas regarding the oil contaminated sludge inside.

At this present time Shell intend to just leave more than 10 times the amount of the same LSA contaminated sludge in the bases of their 3 condeep installations Brent B C & D to eventually spill out into the marine environment a few miles north of Lerwick .

Eventually this radio active material will enter the human food chain via the marine route and cause major health problems for future generations.

This must not be allowed to happen and it should be removed irrespective of the costs involved .

What price are WE prepared to put on our own future generations health .

I have attached pictures of the sludge being removed from the bottom of the Spar Was on the Cormorant Alpha night shift and watched them tow it away in the early morning around 3am many moons ago. he's the main man to tell you all about the decommissioning and cutting up of the Spar.

I used to shuttle from Brent Bravo to Spar in 80’s to do ATEX work.

Was a different place to work indeed.

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BRENT SPAR

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TEXACO THREE-PHASE METER The Highlander field was tied back to Tartan via a 13km long multiphase line installed in 1984. Tartan was seen in many ways as a prototype for future multiphase production and separation with its slug catcher.

As part of the development, a three-phase meter system was installed on Tartan. Actually, it is difficult to find out more much about this meter. Any ideas?

Everything you ever wanted to know but was afraid đ&#x;˜Ś to ask : https://nfogm.no/wp-content/ uploads/2019/02/1990-09-TheTexaco-Subsea-Three-PhaseMetering-System-Dean-TexacoLtd.pdf Terry Dean....remember him well. The late and great James E Castle head of Quality (aka Jim Castle) was heavily involved. A quality and golfing guru much involved with LOGA. Safety PPE seems a bit non existent there Look mum, no hands The structural & piping design of the metering system was by Cameron Atkins Technology (CAT) a JV between Atkins Oil & Gas (Epsom) and Cameron Engineering (Woking). If I remember the main Texaco guy was Tim Dean.

Neil you’re quite right. Not only that but I did the pipe stress analysis on this meter. Hardly a pipe on the horizontal or vertical axis, with offsets everywhere.

Not an easy task. As a result I got AutoPIPE modified to ease the modelling input to make life simpler for future analyses.

Texaco’s Leo McGill led on this programme, based out of our 90 Brompton Road office. A joint industry project Robert Jiskoot of Jiskoots led the design, testing

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HIGHLANDER TEMPLATE

Late 1985, and Texaco's subsea template and slug catcher were ready to be installed.It was the first remote multi well template to feature gas lift and water injection, and of course the first slug catcher on the seabed.

The 1100t template was built by Lewis Offshore on Stornoway. Because of the weight restrictions, the 612t slug catcher could not be installed on the platform and that is why it was placed on the seabed.

Texaco put the cost at around ÂŁ85 million

Didn't the UMC (Central Cormorant) also feature gas lift and water injection? Also TFL tubing? And that robot that was supposed to be able to change out the insert valves and chokes (but couldn't because it kept

breaking down) which was I believe sold to Statoil who tried to use it in on another template with much the same results? Last I heard (in about 2009) UMC was still producing from one or two wells through the TFL

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tubing.

Some cite the Highlander slug catcher as the first subsea separator too.

UMC beat Highlander by a year - it

went in in Summer 1984. Hereema used the Hermod to place the structure and Smit/Kestrel towed out pipe-in-pipe flowline bundles from what is now the Subsea7 site at Wick.

Yes it had TFL and water injection but no gas lift

Them were the days 2nd year of my apprenticeship, great days đ&#x;‘?

EGLO Engineering in South Australia built a similar subsea assembly in the late 80s.

Remember when it was built

It is still on production but not through any of the TFL completions. All bar one of the wells left on the field have been converted to conventional dual bore trees/completions. A single TFL Tree and completion is in situ but has been offline for some time. (A TFL tree/completion well abandonment was presented at the recent SPE conference in Aberdeen - a Murchison well) As for the maintenance tooling unit Shell must have disposed of it before they disposed of the asset to TAQA......

The TFL system did get used - I used to work with an OTIS wireline supervisor who had used it for real (not just in trials) How do I know all this - I've been raking through the archive at TAQA looking at how to remove it.......

As for Highlander I always thought the slug catcher was added later after Texaco had problems with the flowline system. The catcher worked in conjunction with a shallow set ESP installed in a platform well slot to pump the liquids up onto Tartan.

Last time I had any involvement with the UMC was briefly when Shell were selling in off in the late 2000s. The robot got sold off in the 80s I think.

Main lesson learned from the UMC was "KISS" (keep it simple, stupid) I believe.

I was one of the divers who place it and unhooked the Rigging whilst diving from the Herrema Balder crane barge

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MAGNUS The combination of the severe weather and platform size meant that it was uneconomic to use dive support vessels.

For getting the diver to the worksite BP's Magnus platform used a seabed lift comprising a rail-guided launch frame descending through the centre of the platform to the seabed 800ft below.

I seem to recall Magnus water depth was around 180m - 600ft ish not 800.

Very good memory John, 182 m!

Some brain cells apparently still functioning Quan! Magnus was my first subsea project and was considered ‘pioneering deep water’ back then.

Good old days!

I just came back from a 3 week trip on the magnus, seeing stories like this is incredibly fascinating Magnus is the UK’s most northerly field, located 160 kilometers NE of the Shetland Islands, mainly in Block 211/12a. The oil field was discovered in March 1974 in acreage licensed to BP in the 4th licensing round.

Oil was found 2,709 meters below the seabed in a water depth of 186 meters.

My first sat there in 1989 scary lots of big beasties Worked there for 11 years, last time I saw that deployment system used it was for deploying a huge creek Hell of a place to get to - 2 x heli fuel stops if the wind blowing from the wrong direction !!!

I used to provide water side cover for Magnus back in the day on the now historic ARRCS

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BRUKER SEAHORSE II Developed in 1986, this was the first non-military, autonomous inspection submarine. The Seahorse was built for pipe routing and pipeline inspection, anchor surveys, debris clearance, salvage of lost equipment and cable protection.

With the introduction of the diver lockout submersible, it could carry out pipeline repair , NDT work and exchanging sacrificial anodes.

P&O Subsea had the Bruker subs in leith docks, on one of there ships Auch U-Boote werden allerdings in der Zukunft mit der Mode gehen und Plattform/Skateboarddesign haben eine große Strahlkraft in die Zukunft: zu Luft, zu Lande und wahrscheinlich auch zu Wasser bzw. zu Tiefe. Luft und Wasser sind dreidimensionale Räume. Die „Skateboard-Varianten“ werden Funktionseinheiten tragen und somit Reichweite erheblich vergrößern. In der Luft geht es bereits in Studien spannend unterwegs: https://m.youtube.com/ watch?v=n4UT_DeYF0Y https://m.youtube.com/ however, submarines will also go with fashion in the future and platform/skateboard design will have

a great radiance into the future: air, land and probably also water or depth.

Air and water are three-dimensional spaces. The "skateboard variants" will carry functional units and thus significantly increase range. Studies are already exciting in the air: https://m. youtube.com/watch?v=n4UT_ DeYF0Y https://m.youtube.com/ watch?v=2LggHhR2kFk More and more actors are coming to the country who want to live the new design (even small take-off UPs): https://m.youtube. com/watch?v=iko2g1PZza0 In the automotive sector, for example, the VW decision on the MEB is the first farreaching platform decision. An exciting development. watch?v=2LggHhR2kFk Zu Lande kommen immer mehr Akteure, die das neue Design leben wollen (auch kleine Start-UPs): https://m.youtube.com/ watch?v=iko2g1PZza0

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Im Autobereich ist z.B. die VWEntscheidung zur MEB eine erste weitreichende Plattformentscheidung.

Eine spannende Entwicklung.

Also very interesting is the work and the attempt to make this world accessible in this special way: https://learningenglish.voanews. com/a/1979239.html 1 km deep in pure water is 100 bars pressure and for salty water around 110 bars pressure. For 11 km deep in the ocean which means around 1210 bars pressure.

So, if a submarine (cylinder shape for maximum pressure resistance), with a diameter of 5 meter and length 10 meter, what is the thickness needed (for single wall calculation), and material be 304 sus stainless steel ?

NINIAN The Dock Express 20 - a self-propelled dock ship with twin 2 x 300 tonne gantry cranes – being used to install the Subsea Emergency Shutdown Valves (SSESVs) in the Ninian Field. For SSESVs were installed, one at each end of the Ninian Southern to Ninian Central pipelines, the other two at each end of the Ninian Northern to Central pipelines. Each SSESV (from memory) included a 24-inch class 900 ball valve (hydraulic open, spring shut) for the oil line and a 12-inch class 1500 valve for each gas line.

The SSESVs were designed by JP Kenny in Aberdeen and built by THC in Hartlepool. Each weighed about 180 tonnes in air, but when submerged the dynamic hook loads went over 300 tonnes due to the large mudmat foundations. Stena Offshore was the installation contractor and Stena hired Dock Express to install the structures: four large SSESVs, a smaller subsea structure I can’t remember what for, and a riser caisson. at the time. Bob Miklas, Pet Shop George and other good Lads.

Summer of 1990. I didn't join Stena until April 1990. In 1989 I was working for FUEL Subsea Engineering in Woking.

Credit for the photo goes to Allen "I was in my bunk at the time" Duffin who was watching events from the Wellservicer across our stern.

Not "legendary" just "notorious" :-) How could I have been in my bunk at the time Darren if credited for the photo? - Anyway, I was night shift :-) .....

Andy Brady was day shift - definitely installed in the summer of 1990, jeez what an introduction to offshore installation.....

What year was that?

Would have been 1989 if I recall correctly.

Just out of interest how was it lowered to the seabed? I'd assume the gantry hoists wouldn't of had a lot of length on them? Was it transferred on to deck winches or something?

141 metres give or take.

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I was on bottom cutting all the crap away after it was all put on the seabed I recall helping you get that sat young Man.....

Derek Beddows, yes you did indeed, I still remember the day, I've always been grateful to you. They were good days and have in many ways led me right up to where I am tiday.

RDM Rapid deployment method ... n never seen again Never seen again until the Schiehallion riser.... Sshhhh! đ&#x;¤­ DE20 is now is diamond recovery/ mining vessel called PIA - Peace in Africa, if I recall corrctkt. Big crawler on on her.

Dutch Shipbuilding eh !

Well remember delivering the tender submission to Chevron with minutes to spare!!

Other two submissions were at least double the volume but still came through - unfortunate that didn’t initially go to plan with an innovative solution!!

Impressive I remember that very well, was onboard DE20 as engineer during that project, those days digital camera’s let alone smartphone were a distance future, I wonder if anyone else have pictures of DE20 performing on the North Sea ?

Flashback 1980 one of my first offshore platforms as a Laser Surveyor working for Oilfield Hydrographic Projects 1980 spotting anchors for Ninian Mariam anchors for Ninian Marine Captain Bob Jolly I was onboard The DE20 at that time a lot of experiance at The end of The project!

I remember the Orelia’s initial abortive attempt to instal the caisson mentioned. Being one of the two men brave or was it stupid enough to go under-deck to disconnect the platform rigging to allow the reverse crosshaul back to the vessel, trying to get that shackle undone with the caisson bouncing and thunderous shock load impacts each time the air filled caisson slammed the rigging bar tight.

As well as the noise the rigging made when it eventually was released and it smashed against the Orelia hull. Then we were unfortunate to be back on rotation when Stena sailed back into the field to recover the wet stored caisson and attempt the instal for a second time.

Where they had the Orelia’s crane so close to the platform the jib was punching holes in the module windwall, and we were told to go hang on our ropes and grit blast the caisson’s clamp area as it bounced up and down on the vessels crane. I puked my guts up in the blast helmet that day bouncing around trying to grip the caisson between my legs.

Never liked the idea of a open bottom pipe caisson connected to a compressor to make it buoyant and bring its in water weight to near / supposedly below the SWL of the platform rigging. (edited Derek Beddows It would only have been a small cow pie back then, when I was a fit racing snake (all be it python sized) rope access rigger. I am loving the Bison ribs over in Canada, but paying a flying visit to Scotland next month so perhaps we could get the a curry with some off the other grumpy old men group!

Kenneth Shaw im sure we can get the band back together for a curry Big Man. Must have been a Python that had just eaten a Goat then.

Darren

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Were these the ones that were dropped ?

Allen Duffin All the fun started once the first skid got below the waterline.

Just swinging in the breeze it was just fine but someone turned the ship slightly to damp out heave so we picked up roll instead. And it was the roll wot did for us, Guv. yep, its all coming back..............

Thanks Darren that’s the detail I had forgotten about but remembered the generic nature of the heave comp issue. This is the sort of detail our young engineers need to know about as it’s great learning as opposed to just looking at impressive pictures (edited) Lesson 1 - elastic ropes + sheaves = bad idea Lesson 2 - tandem hook lifts - do not assume both hooks will go up and down together - account for almost certain vessel roll in your assumptions Lesson 3 - tank tests, more tank tests and even more tank tests!

I wonder how old the Dock Express 20 is. I guess it most be close to 40 years!

I was 2nd mate at the time on board the Dock Express 20. It was quite an experience! Learned some things about heave compensation.....

BALMORAL MANIFOLDS

In mid-1985, Sun Oil had completed the installation of subsea equipment prior to the float out of the floating production vessel. The three manifolds (template riser manifold, satellite well manifold and satellite water injection manifold) were built by Vetco. These were fully retrievable so that changing pipes could be done on deck and without divers. Controls supplied by TRW Ferranti Offshore Oil & Gas was and is so very much diverse. Where as Ofshore renewables is so boring...tripod, post, propellers...next one please..

I'll have 500 of those and stick em in a right eyesore place just offshore, so when licking my ice cream on the

beach I can see em oh sorry and some subsea cables. Oh and nick all the O&G technology as well...Uhmmm Not much to nick in truth Ian. Bit of Vortex shedding, scour protection and piling.

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Unlike extreme water depths, two phase flow, sour gas, sub sea separation and water disposal, gas lift, water injection, subsea control systems etc, etc, etc.

And that’s just for starters John,

haven’t started on 55,000 tonne platforms and 20,000 tonne launch jackets.....đ&#x;¤Ł Many of us learned a lot about Subsea through involvement in Balmoral "back in the day"; sometimes I wonder whether some of the learnings have been forgotten... a shoebox in’t middle o’t road?

Luxury!! Try a brown paper bag for size...

Globebrown paper bag? Luxury! All sixty of us lived in an old condom me dad found down by t'railway sidings..

Think I was involved with the subsea template fabrication at Kestrel Marine, Dundee in the early 80's.

SUPERSKULD 1987 We have had Superskuld on these pages before but this is a better picture.

Skuld was developed by Elf to demonstrate that subsea installations could be remotely operated over distances of up to 20 kilometres by a totally diverless system. Following the success, Elf launched a new Superskuld research project in 1 1987. This was to demonstrate that the same hardware was reliable down to a water depth of 300m of water.

A bit like Shell Expro’s TFL (Through Flowline) setup for Central Cormorant UMC that had access to run tools into the well from Cormorant Alpha Shell Expro started with TFL on Brent7 UWC, tied back into Brent Bravo in 1976. Followed by P1, prior to Central Cormorant UMC project

Note the casual approach to PPE back then :-) A massive amount of work went into these. Back when Vetco was Vetco.

Rigserv did the drilling & mud computers/instrumentation on this project (Mr Chan) Ian you are showing your age here

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UNCLE JOHN

I thought she was bean cans a long time ago ! Some history there

floating black hole.

More than likely lol in his smoke filled hide out

Not yet apparently

I had many a good year working on the Uncle John

Still got Ken Duall's derrick onboard

Is Gordon the ETO still on her?đ&#x;˜‰

Cold stack MARS facility Pascagoula

Who owns her now... Any contact information

Ghosts of bell runs past ! Last time i was on UJ was on Emerald for 68 ton manifold lift and then laying manuli for BP Machar extended test from 707

Been there done that

Don’t do it Scott! That is a (partially)

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I was a part of that history. Good days

The Uncle John (Comex) worked in the Brent field same time 1980 when

I worked as a sat diver on the DSV Capalonga.

diver from the DSV Capalonga. Brings back very good memories.

Worked aboard her in GOM from 1999 till 2002.

Was Dive Supv on her in 78/9 for hyperbaric welded tie ins on Brent & Cormorant , state of the art at that time with amazing performance compared to any of the competition.

Happy Days!

History is the key word. Time to go to scrap At the time I worked for Italian company Subsea Oil Services as Sat

Hi Peter. hope you ok? Great happy

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days but so long ago now.

Comex was kicking some ass with the vessel !

Original posting Steve Smith

FILIPPO 02. 1979 We have had this one before, but this is a better picture. It was built for underwater inspection, observation and photography and could work at 1000ft Cost? US$56,000 to you, or $1000/day.

Anyone see the resemblance?

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POLAR PIONEER

One of the first rigs built to drill in the Norwegian winter. In 1985, it was ordered by With. Wilhelmsen and Sonat Offshore Drilling to work under contract for Norsk Hydro

PP was one of the first fully enclosed all weather rigs, she had awesome facilities compared to other semi subs we had worked on. I worked for Oceaneering on the initial mobilisation in Norway and on the first wells at sea in 1985 (I think) where we deployed a ISE Hydra which was built deep into the superstructure of the rig. If I remember correctly she was built by Hitachi and many of the Japanese build team remained onboard through the first deployments, fond memories.

Thank you for posting. I worked onboard PPI from I was 19 years old, from January 1993 until 1996. First real

work experience offshore. Learned to work the manual tongs as roughneck, calculate riser margins with the driller, duty as heli guard, deck man and more. Great rig and excellent crews. Lot of characters as I can recall.

Company running the rig back in early 90s was Polar Frontier Drilling in Bergen. Work at Troll project for Hydro commenced first at 93-94.

Name Sonat came later, perhaps 1995.

At last it became part of Transocean.

We used PP on Nordland Was on PP from jan 2011-2013 for BP Skarv in BNN . Good memories

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That was some great time’s Lewis!:) Took the Polar Pioneer to the Arctic with Transocean & Shell and then escorted her back to Norway from Port Angeles on the back of the Dockwise Vessel Vanguard through the Strait of Magellan.

It was upgraded in Singapore some years ago before she went to Canada but I understand it did not really drill the well?

Yes, it came out with the Henry Goodrich, just about the same time...first of a new series of rigs for Sonat....tt I've been on top of that derrick ;-)

BAR 347 In 1976, Fred Olsen Offshore, Aker and Brown and Root announced an agreement to offer a rental pool for deep water/rough weather work, particularly north of the 62deg N. It included two H3 rigs (including the Borgila Dolphin) and the BAR 347.

Borgilia Dolphin. That stirs a few memories.

Was on the same type of rig the great Atlantic 2 where good days and good crews frank Cuffe and John nailer and flo and myself and many more some have past like my brother frank he’s missed John not too good but I remember them in there prime looking up at them it was hard work and wet and cold but a great time oh yer and good old bob smith Lololol he told me your just like your brother not right in the head Great rig, worked as driller with a great crew remember them with fond memories (edited) Is this the same Fred Olsen who closed the Timex factory in Dundee (Wretch) Awesome pic

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OSEBERG In 1986, Norwegian Contractors started casting the Oserberg A concrete GBS. The foundation covered 30 cells, each 25m in diameter. At the time, Statfjord B the world’s largest concrete GBS only had 24 base cells.

It developed a giant slipforming yoke called Offshore 30, which was bigger than that used on previous Condeep models. It allowed installing more rods per metre of wall than previously possible. The slipform panels were galvanised to prevent corrosion.

Live only a few hundred metres from NC. But I was slipforming on Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station construction in 1969 before involved in GBS. Great photo.

Super structures.

https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wz4BLojWNso

I used to see these when I was a kid. Living on an island a few k away I enjoyed my time working for NC mechanical outfitting on this project.

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KITTIWAKE north pulled a dirty trick on the rest of the yards Can’t remember much about that one but there will definitely be some of our handy work in the node sections hashtag#shop2 Im sure we done the piles at Methil also The 102... those were good times, big Ken Hutchings, Johno Nicolas The 102... those were good times, big Ken Hutchings, Johno Nicolas sorry to hear that. Was a fella that I worked with 83/84 in Norway.

A gentle giant, who you could always rely on Ha ha, memories, STS Rigworkers 1 and 2 and the Super Rigworker, half of the Dragonfly, happy busy days indeed.

Remember Kittiwake project very well.

Topside light burning and music played during pre load- out celebration Those are some impressive lifts.

I remember staying on the DB 102 while Ekofisk 2/4-K (water-injection and completion, dual derricks jacket type) was assembled back in 1986. She was massive. Great memories, hard work and fun there... (edited) In 1990, Shell installed Kittiwake.

The jacket was lifted into place rather than being barge launched and two weeks later, the 7000t integrated deck was lifted into place – the heaviest topsides lift at the time. This was carried out by the Heeremac DB102. Such was the level of precommissoning (carried out by Press Offshore) that the lights were on within 4 hours of lifting. Everything was running except the process systems.

Within the next two days, the living quarters and the drilling substructure were added

Remember it like it was yesterday, Was onboard at the time with STS we had 3 ROV,s onboard, Rigworker between the 2 aft cranes, Super Rigworker (Dragonfly) Port side and UFO on Starboard Side Happy days back the with dodgy Bill That’s some quality vehicles you had to work with Gary! I hope Bill did a full inventory of cable ties before he sent them out (and you could account for any you used) Go STS Jacket built in Methil.Should have got the topside to but Union leader from

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1989 worked on the kittiwake loading bouy built in middle of Loch Kishorn, working and living on the CB 250 towed up from West Africa with some wildlife still on-board.... Remember the radio opp telling me that we only had 8 anchors and no engine, had to get coastguard tug in when anchors started to fail, amazing job for a young man to be on, the weather was spectacular, views, scenery, and teams of men from all corners of the UK...

How about a photo of the Kittiwake subsea storage tanks going in...... they are still there after Venture installed a SAL for a few years operations before

the Unity export line went in......

I was on the hook-up for AOC. Good set of lads. Supervision were shitbags mind you.

Press Offshore needed the lights on to write out timesheets, overtime requests and variation orders đ&#x;˜€ - they were commercially smart, from memory.

Was on this hook-up with AOC . I remember shell kindly giving us time off to watch some of the world cup games. There were a great bunch of guys on the job good memories.

First ever offshore lift of a jacket in the North Sea. Lift and up-ending analyses done using Ansys by yours truly working at Earl & Wright. Yes, the computer time was fiercely expensive..a mainframe running all night wasn’t cheap!

The jacket was built at the RGC yard at Methil, like many of the big North Sea assets of the era. Probably the last job I worked on ‘on the board’ before CAD systems took over. (edited) Was on the DB102 during the Installation of topside had some good times during the hook-up

Shell very smart the way they ran capital projects

Last time on Kittiwake .. removed the drilling Derrick

Sitting on this right now

I was on it a good few years back on a service job.

Phenomenal photo. My thoughts are with the late “Mal Hunter� one of the finest OIMs in the North Sea R.I.P. A fantastic example of minimizing carry over to offshore of commissioning work in the yard. 4 hours and the lights were on. That is “plug and play� at its best. I hope the project and ops teams got a rewarded as that is world class hook up and commissioning performance.

Many modules left the Hadrian yard 100% mechanically complete with extensive punch lists. MC1 but still a ton of work offshore and mega long HUC as a result.

Wasn't that McDermott DB102, before the barge was sold on Heerema.

I joined it in Norway From McDermott db102 -> HeereMac db102 -> Heerema Thialf Was on this for the first well completion BRV Design and Procurement. Good outfit.

During our induction tour a poor fella had a massive heart attack. He fell against me, I thought he was taking the piss! Medic was doing the induction luckily, a guy called Liam! Did a fantastic job. Took an hour and a half for the Sea King to arrive.

I think from memory the lad died and was resuscitated a number of times before he got ashore, but all ended well for him.

I was only there to change two Marshall Sea pumps, he made it home before me!!

I feel old now just like the rest of us Remember it well Frankie I remember working at Stromferry meeting the guys going offshore & coming onshore. They came & went by train, then boat to/from barge..

Had to go to Kyle of Lochalash to pick up materials as they would not let it off at Stromferry.

Also went and got daily papers to send out to barge. Was only there for a week as holiday cover, but what a

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week đ&#x;˜ đ&#x;˜ đ&#x;˜ Thats cos you are !

First trip offshore back in 2001 was on the Kittiwake. Cracking rig The KLB Was also part of the build Great experience working on the Kittiwake field, subsea storage tanks and SAL ...

I remember this well as I was on the Maersk Highlander as a rig electrician under tow to the Magnus field on a beautiful summers evening and admiring the absolute scale of the project at the time little did I know I would be an integral part of the ETAP which was a 6 week install and hook up - those were the days of innovation and imagination rather than repeat My dad Iain Buchan (buckets) was rigger on Kittwake for over 20 years and just had to take retirement this month due to ill health. Always talks fondly of the crew onboard. I'll be sure to show him this photo thanks for posting Had some good years work working at Press Offshore/Amec gangway was scary it wasn't landed on the jacket Was offshore with the project when it was lifted and from the yard Amec wallsend were it was built Mal will live forever in my mind after having to explain I was going to shut down production during the fire and gas upgrade I won't forget the look I received when I refused to do a simulation instead - the man is and always will be a legend Drilling derrick was designed and fabricated at Great Yarmouth by Turmeric Ltd. One of the last projects before I left in 1989. It was the first of its type, uprighted by a hydraulic ram.

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