Survey and mapping service provider for the land and offshore oil and gas industry, Houston's C&C Technologies, says it has bought the iXBlue fourth-generation GAPS USBL acoustic positioning system for the company's Mexico division. This will be the first time the system is directly available to customers in Mexico.

The new system, which was launched by iXBlue early in 2014, will be used to track subsea systems in shallow and deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico and to support a range of other subsea applications such as ROVs, subsea equipment placement, and diver operations.

As part of the formal qualification program, C&C staff put the new GAPS system through a number of challenging test scenarios. The results were extremely positive. For example, C&C Technologies was able to track and position a transponder, moving through very shallow waters (2–3m depth) to a range of 1,300 m. This is a level of performance that other commercially available equipment would struggle to achieve, say C&C.

Dan Andersen, responsible for offshore sales and business development at iXBlue Inc. Houston, TX, said, "GAPS combines a USBL, inertial navigation system, real-time positioning, and GPS within the same unit, which makes the units stand-alone and compact. Pre-calibration and the simplicity of deployment provide significant operational cost and time-saving advantages."

"Critically for C&C's requirements in Mexico, the unit is suitable for deep water (greater than 4000 m) and very shallow water (less than 10 m) environments. The system can also be deployed from noisy vessels and in reflective environments such as harbors: these performance benefits have been demonstrated in many demanding environments and commercial applications."

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