A growing battalion of small, compact systems is marching in on the subsea world, in some ways making it a bigger space for more to enter. Elaine Maslin reports.Smaller remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and smaller autonomous underwater vehicles…
Decommissioning activity in the UK North Sea in 2019 has seen a significant ramp up, with 23 projects approved in the basin so far this year, and another eight likely to come.But, while costs continue to fall, more still needs to be done to reduce spending…
Gro Stakkestad, manager of subsea intervention and pipeline repair, Equinor, weighs in on her company’s thoughts on subsea resident vehicles.Why are subsea resident vehicles attractive now?The recent downturn in the oil price combined with ever…
Sean Halpin, Director, Product Management and Marketing, at relatively new entrant Houston Mechatronics, says that cost is driving a willingness to innovate. “Financial efficiency is a significant priority for the world’s oil companies in this…
Steffan Lindsø, Director of Emerging Technology, Europe, at Oceaneering, discusses resident subsea systems and why uptake today looks more likely than in the 2000s.What was missing in the early 2000s?The primary missing component for this to make any operational sense has been communications…
It’s long been a vision to have underwater vehicles able to support subsea operations without reliance on a surface vessel. We’re closer to this vision than ever before, but what’s new that wasn’t in place before to make this happen?Earlier…
Shallow gas reservoirs drilled into at a 60-degree angle from the surface in the 1980s have posed a unique decommissioning challenge – resulting in a new design modular plug and abandonment (P&A) unit.When it comes to decommissioning, many operators…
The North Sea oil and gas industry’s 50-plus year heritage now means that history is being revisited as facilities – including subsea wells – installed decades ago are decommissioned.One is the first early production system tieback, which included…
The P&A scope is large and the challenges diverse. It’s also an activity that’s increasing. In 2017, for the first time, more wells were abandoned in the UK North Sea (approximately 160) than new wells were drilled (less than 100), as fields reach the end of their productive lives…
The starting gun on a subsea space race has now officially been fired with the first ever award of a contract that includes services from a subsea resident drone.But, what is less known is that the award, made by Equinor to Saipem for operations on the Njord field…
One of the missing links for some fully subsea production systems has been subsea storage, either for production fluids, later periodic offtake or production chemicals.NOV has been working on a gravity-based subsea storage unit (SSU), based on a design initially developed by Kongsberg…
Imagine a kind of app store for subsea xmas trees; a plug-in platform into which a myriad of functionality can be added and changed to suit. It’s a concept being pitched by UK subsea technology firm Enpro, except it’s calling it a “process USB” port…
Fred. Olsen has been working on a wave energy design called BOLT. It’s based on a floating platform attached to the seabed via moorings that are in turn attached to a specialized winch line product, which wind in and out of winches (one to three…
In June, the Hydrone R started a six-month trial in Saipem’s underwater “play park” near Trieste, northeast Italy. Later in the year, or early next year, its FlatFish design is also expected to enter the water, ahead of deep-water trials in 2021…
In some cases, resident underwater vehicles may not have access to power, so alternative power sources may be needed.New Jersey, US, based Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has been a leading company in this area, working with Italian oil company Eni…
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