ECA Hytec Subsea Systems in Brazil

The French subsea systems manufacturer has been introducing its range of subsea products in Brazil, including the AUV Alistar 3000 and ROV systems.

Since 1981 ECA Hytec has been specializing in the design and manufacture of remote controlled systems for intervention in "hostile" environments. This activities include four main sectors: Subsea (offshore oil & gas, defence, oceanography), Nuclear, Pipes and sewers, boreholes and large bore pipe works (main ducts, galleries...), Environment with Explosive risks.

They supply a wide range of o products such as remote controlled vehicles, video systems, robotics systems and remote controlled tools. Some of those are also available for rental. Another important aspect of their business is that they also design and manufacture special custom systems for customer's specific requirement.

They have been introducing innovative subsea systems to the already competitive and growing Brazilian subsea and deepwater market.

One of their main products, the ALISTAR 3000, is an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) capable of carrying out a variety of inspection tasks on ultra deep water plays, such as those found in the Santos, Campos and Espirito Santo Basins in Brazil. This AUV was displayed at the last Rio O&G conference, attracting a lot of attention from the public and industry.
Equipped with video, sonar as well as its hovering capacities, gives the vehicle unique capabilities to inspect underwater equipment and offers its operators greater flexibility and overall faster operations. Inspections of pipelines, risers or mooring lines as well as Touch Down Monitoring and post-lay surveys are the typical tasks that it will achieve.
ALISTAR 3000 offers the possibility of collecting video and sonar data during the inspection of subsea equipment and stocks the information for post processing data analysis.

It is undoubtedly important to have new subsea systems manufacturers in the Brazilian market as it brings new technologies and different design and engineering concepts to the market, while also increasing the option for subsea equipments available to companies making E&P efforts in Brazil.

Claudio Paschoa