Subsea 7's AUV Presentation is 'Best in Show' at DOT

25 February 2009

A technical presentation from Subsea 7, one of the world's leading subsea engineering and construction companies, was honoured with the “Best Presentation Award” at the recent Deep Offshore Technology (DOT) Conference in New Orleans, USA.

The award winning presentation was titled "Autonomous Vehicle Meets New Challenges" and was given by James Jamieson of Subsea 7's Remote Technology Group on 4 February 2009. It described how Subsea 7 and software specialist SeeByte have joined forces to develop the first truly Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) capable of both inspection and light intervention operations in an offshore environment, with funding from BP and Chevron.

This innovation will significantly change the way in which offshore inspection and intervention activities are deployed, thereby significantly reducing cost by removing the need for a dedicated support vessel.

Paul Booth from Subsea 7's Specialist Technical Services group received a good response from conference delegates to his paper on the “Development of Subsea Grouted TeeTM”, a Joint Industry Project between Subsea 7 and Advantica. This paper described the process of converting onshore Grouted Hot Tap technology into a system suitable for subsea applications, which enables pipeline intervention activities to be carried out without shutting down production.

Meanwhile, Subsea 7's Bruno Bouric will present “Installation of Suction Piles, Flowlines and PLETs*” at Subsea Tieback Forum in San Antonio, Texas on March 4, 2009. Relating to the deepwater Kizomba C development, offshore Angola in West Africa, the paper will provide insight into how an excellent safety record was achieved during repetitive installation tasks during the construction engineering phase of the project.