Offshore staff

GLASGOW, Scotland --The UK Department of Trade and Industry is reported by the Sunday Herald to be planning a £1.1 million ($2.17 million) award to a consortium for studies into how to work for longer periods at less cost in turbulent seas or at great depth.

One part of the two-year program involves developing a digital radio frequency line to allow a vessel to remain in contact with a wellhead in turbulent seas.

Another part of the program involves an underwater docking system for autonomous unmanned vehicles (AUVs) to make them more applicable to North Sea operations. In this scheme, a wireless radio frequency system would transmit broadband data to and from AUVs at the subsea dock to reduce the need for surfacing to download data gathered on the seabed or by seismic monitors.

The last part of the study is aimed at developing better subsea pipeline leak tracking.

"Many pipelines in the North Sea are getting quite old. They were designed for a 30- to 40-year lifetime. Pipeline monitoring is becoming increasingly important. But one of the challenges is getting sensor data up and down the pipe and back up to the surface," said Brendan Hyland, founder of Wireless Fibre Systems, one of the consortium members. Tritech and Insensys, both of Aberdeen, are the other two members.

"At the moment, you have to go down and physically grab a data logger and bring it up to the surface," said Hyland. "We'd like to see AUVs roaming around pipelines in the North Sea, collecting data from sensors located in known problem areas and bringing it up to the surface or dumping it at a permanent underwater station."

12/05/06