Page 34: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2013)

Some international deepwater companies have been here for many years, including familiar names such as FMC, Aker and Subsea 7. Many more are recent arrivals, international com- panies exploring opportunities to set up shop in Brazil, such as ECA Hyatec, which through its Brazilian subsidiary ECA Latin America Ltda. offers a range of AUVs, ROVs and other equipment to O&G operators and Navies in Brazil and all of Latin America. New arrival Advanced Subsea do Brasil, born from a French parent, has opened its own local subsidiary in downtown Rio de Janeiro and has been involved it deepwater survey and construction support in Brazil. According to Schoellkopf, a partnership between Advanced Subsea do Brasil and ECA (a French company specialized in ROVs and AUVs) has been formed to conduct work in deep- water pre-salt areas in the Santos Basin, primarily using the Alistar 3000 AUV from ECA for data acquisition. The AUVs are used either in autonomous mode or in remote mode using a 3km Þ ber optic umbilical. The scope of AUV applications are construction support for Þ eld installation with pre-lay sur- vey, touch-down point monitoring and as-laid/as-built survey at the development stage and IMR activities such as pipeline inspection, FPSO riser & mooring inspection at the exploita- tion stage. Advanced Subsea and ECA launched a Joint Inno- vation Project based on Alistar 3000 for sharing AUV experi- ence between major Brazilian market operators. Advanced Subsea has completed a Survey Construction Sup- port Services Contract with REPSOL offshore from Spain for the development of the Montanazo & Lubina deepwater Þ eld. The scope of work was to perform pre-engineering survey, pre-lay survey, coring & seabed sampling, then trenching depth monitoring and Þ nally as-trenched/ As-built Survey and Reports.According to Schoellkopf, the Pre-salt ROM is important as a way of forecasting the complex deepwater currents that oc- cur along the pre-salt. These currents can be strong and un- predictable, endangering the expensive drilling equipment. In addition, it is important to better understand the speed and nature of the currents in the event of an oil spill, to expedite clean-up and recovery efforts. Advanced Subsea do Brasil is currently offering consulting & services in the following areas: Rig Positioning; Survey Construction Support; Metrology; LBL array design; Inter- vention & Inspection AUV Services; and Operational Ocean- Vehicles Advanced Subsea Group Director, Jacques Schoellkopf. He has an MSc from the Museum d?Histoire Naturelle de Paris (Paris VI) and worked at Knowledge Systems/ S20 Group and C.G Doris prior to joining Advanced Sub- sea SAS as group director. (Photo credit: Advanced Subsea) View of currents from PRESAL36 output. (Credit: Advanced Subsea) January/February 2013 34 MTRMTR #1 (34-49).indd 34MTR #1 (34-49).indd 341/30/2013 12:02:45 PM1/30/2013 12:02:45 PM