Surveyor Interceptor ROV: Gassco AS Employes Subsea Robot
MMT and Reach Subsea completed its first commercial project with Surveyor Interceptor ROV for Gassco AS at Knarr Gas pipeline in the North Sea.
The pipeline inspection was conducted from the vessel Edda Fonn. This first work was to verify that the rock berm on the pipeline was still intact prior to put a commissioning pig train and gas in the pipeline in near future.
“After the successful offshore tests on Europipe 2 last year we did some fine tuning on cameras and when we finally went to work – it was, once again, magic,” said Ola Oskarsson, MMT´s founder and project manager for SROV. “The new Launch and Recovery System which was reconstructed after measurements during the sea trials performed well in sea state up to 3.8 HS. The Knarr gas pipeline, which runs from ca 400m water depth up to 140m over a stretch of 106 km, was surveyed in one go with speeds up to 4.5 knots. The Interceptor SROV swam 4-5 m above pipe and multibeam with 0.1 m gridsize and full 3D photomosaic was collected. The velocity and quality of data was outstanding and the system really proved itself. The field report was delivered 18 hours after the 17 hour survey. The final draft report was delivered 8 days after leaving the vessel. The weather had been dreadful during February and we needed to work fast in the given weather window since the pipe was ready to put in use.”
On the March 1, 2015, Gassco became the operator for the Knarr Gas pipeline. This first survey with the SROV reached a speed of 4.5 knots, and according to MMT the SROV has potential to survey at a speed up to 6 knots.