Ocean Power Technologies has signed a contract with an undisclosed oil and gas company to complete a 12-week feasibility study that will examine the use of OPT’s products and services in monitoring subsea wells during decommissioning activities.
The work was issued under a recently announced master service contract and OPT will execute the contract under its innovation & support services vertical.
George H. Kirby , president and CEO of OPT, said: “ This study will evaluate the use of our PowerBuoys in monitoring multiple customer wells during oil field decommissioning activities in the very deep and challenging waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We believe our solutions will reduce the cost of our customer’s operations and will also increase safety and improve operational flexibility by providing an unmanned, autonomous power and communications platform. Feasibility studies are an excellent way for us to apply our solutions as the first step toward deploying our products within customer operations. We will leverage our many years of experience with marine systems and deployment services to analyze the installation and operation of OPT’s solutions in this very challenging application. More often oil and gas operators are coming to OPT to tap our expertise and solutions to tackle tough problems. I am proud that we have been selected for this study, and we look forward to working closely with this customer. ”
The study will further address technical issues such as customer equipment power demands and PowerBuoy power generation during continuous and intermittent operations, mooring design, payload survivability during storm conditions, deployment and maintenance, and complete end-to-end data solutions including communications and security requirements.
Design of turn-key solutions often include the integration and mounting of specific sensors for both topside and subsea, the use of custom protective enclosures, wiring and control solutions, and considerations of total life-cycle costs, customer operational cost savings, and safety improvement. OPT’s new products, the hybrid PowerBuoy and its Subsea Battery Solution which are currently under development will be considered as either prime or alternative solutions in the study, possibly in combination with the PB3 PowerBuoy.