Aquatec Hydrotest Instrumentation for IKM in Norway

12 February 2013

Aquatec are pleased to announce that they have been awarded a 1.6M NOK contract to supply hydrotest instrumentation and spares for the rental arm of Norwegian subsea company, IKM. Following several years of successful deployments, IKM have upgraded to Aquatec’s latest HYDROlog,AQUAmodemand subsea switch technology to equip their subsea hydrotest data logger spreads.

When new pipelines and subsea infrastructure are installed, they must be tested to ensure that they hold pressure for a period of time. Aquatec’s HYDROlog instruments are designed to monitor and record ambient temperature and test pressures up to 1000 bar or 15 kpsi down to 4000 m water depth.The temperature and pressure record can be downloaded when the data logger is recovered to the surface as proof of a successful hydrotest procedure.

For deep water operations, logger recovery becomes a time-consuming and therefore costly operation, so the ability to verify the pressure test subsea, without recovering the instrumentation, is a significant benefit. Aquatec’s equipment supply includes ROV-readable displays that show the current pressure reading. The displays can be activated by an ROV light, or switched on using Aquatec’s subsea AQUAswitch. In addition, their recently developed AQUAmodemOp1 optical modems are also included in the equipment bundle. The AQUAmodem Op1 provides a connectorless short range data link between the subsea instrument and the user at the surface, via an ROV umbilical. A full pressure test record can therefore be downloaded and verified before depressurising the system under test.