Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - umbilical

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) perform a wide range of tasks in a variety of underwater scenarios ranging from research to offshore oil industry support, military operations and S&R. Technological developments, have greatly enhanced their scope of operation including harsh environment operations, such as deepwater and Arctic ops. As oil operations went to deeper waters, so did ROVs, which became a key asset in subsea operations such as pre-salt development and has also been increasingly substituting divers below 300 meters, although saturation diving is very much alive and will also continue to be an important asset. The ROVs of the future will have increased intelligent autonomous behavior and will use logic driven circuitry for routine tasks like turning valves…

Offshore Ocean Observatories, are composed of suites of surface and subsea instruments and sensors with long-term power supplies and permanent communications links that can feed data to scientific laboratories in real-time. Motivated by advances in computing, telecom, marine architecture and subsea sensor technology, researchers observe the oceans in real-time, for long periods of time, and sky around all the way to deepwater, including imaging and continuous sensor observation along the whole water column to the sea floor. Ocean observatories are designed to answer questions about how the seas and oceans work, their dynamics and peculiarities.

Accessing to the world’s deepest ocean trenches has always been challenging and these have only been reached sporadically, leaving these areas virtually unexplored. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s (WHOI) Nereus, a proof of concept Hybrid Remotely Operated Vehicle (HROV), now being used on Schmidt Ocean Institute’s (SOI) Falkor and other research vessels, offers unprecedented access to the deepest regions for scientists, enabling systematic exploration and studies of deep trenches. There are a number of deepsea trenches at hadal depths around the globe worth exploring, highlighting to WHOI and SOI that they would have an exceedingly large area to cover with a single HROV.

The umbilicals in the oil and gas industry are the lifelines of deepwater O&G fields, connecting wells to the offshore platform. The use of carbon fiber rods to replace some of the steel sheathing is an interesting development for use in deepwater umbilicals.Since the 1990s, subsea production systems have become increasingly important, specifically for deepwater plays. Some wells or well systems are located as far as 100 km from the production rig and may be up to 3,000 meters deep. As a result, umbilicals composed of steel tube conduit, thermoplastic hose, or a combination of the both, are critical for power, control, communication, and fluid injection to keep deepwater wells working efficiently and producing continuously.

Prysmian announces investmens of around $115 million to start flexible pipe production in its Vila Velha, Espírito Santo industrial plant.Prysmian Cabos e Sistemas do Brasil S. A., announced in november a $115 million investment for 2010, for the expansion of its industrial plant in Espirito Santo in order to produce flexible pipes along with umbilicals already produced at the plant. The event, had the presence of Prysmians’ Worldwide President, Valerio Battista, Prysmians’ South American President, Armando Comparato Jr., Petrobras management representatives and The Italian Minister of Economic Development, Claudio Scajola. “Petrobras and Prysmian have signed a technological cooperation agreenment in order to develop flexible pipes for Petrobras.