iXblue launches new aerial mapping operations

By

-

August 2, 2019

iXblue Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Australia, part of iXblue Group based in France, has diversified its Sea Operations division operational capability to include aerial mapping operations to clients across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

With over 100,000 line miles surveyed worldwide, iXblue has been operating the Sea Operations division across the region since 2007 providing clients with detailed and precise surveys of the marine and littoral environment.

Dave Donohue, iXblue Pty Ltd.’s Managing Director states,

“the diversification in capability to include aerial mapping operations alongside our marine survey business complements the growing demand from our clients to offer seamless products from our hydrographic and topographic mapping operations.”

The aerial mapping operations will include Digital Imagery, Topographic LiDAR and Bathymetric LiDAR operations from helicopter and fixed wing platforms to provide custom solutions to commercial and government clients.

Leading the iXblue aerial mapping operations is Matthew James as the division’s General Manager. Dave Donohue says,

“Matthew’s appointment complements the growth strategy of the company to employ experienced industry personnel who can add value to the company to ensure its success. He brings a wealth of commercial experience in the geospatial industry with previous roles held at Fugro and Esri Australia.”

The world’s largest plug-in hybrid vessel was delivered to Color Line

By

-

August 2, 2019

0

Color Hybrid was delivered from Ulstein Verft to Color Line. With all its innovative and new environmentally friendly solutions, the ship is an important milestone project for both Ulstein, Color Line and the maritime cluster.

CEO of Ulstein Group Gunvor Ulstein said:

“Strong focus on innovation and delivering quality to our customers has always been very important to us. With broad maritime expertise, our skilled and committed employees have made a great effort to complete the Color Hybrid.We would like to express our gratitude to Color Line for a good and constructive collaboration throughout the construction period. We are pleased that the ship is ready for operation and that passengers very soon can experience traveling with Color Hybrid”.

Over 70% of the suppliers are from the maritime cluster in Norway and they represent the highest quality of the maritime industry.

Color Line CEO Trond Kleivdal said:

“The construction of the world's largest plug-in hybrid vessel is in line with the company's ambitions for further development of sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions for Norwegian shipping.“

Color Hybrid introduces new solutions to reduce noise and emissions. The vessel is a plug-in hybrid, where the five-megawatt batteries can be charged with environmentally friendly power from shore power in Sandefjord. The vessel will go silently in and out of the fjord of Sandefjord without emissions of harmful environmental gases, or nitrogen and sulfur compounds to air in the area.

The battery pack weighs 65 tons and can be recharged in one hour. The ship also has a heat reservoir of five megawatts which utilizes heat from both the wake and the exhaust for heating. This, together with an optimal hull construction, helps to make the vessel energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Measuring 160 m in length and 27.1 m in the beam, the vessel has a capacity of carrying 2,000 passengers and 500 cars.

iSEISMIC and ION to collaborate on seabed technology

By

-

August 2, 2019

0

ION Geophysical Corporation and iSEISMIC AS, an ocean bottom seismic (OBS) acquisition specialist, has announced a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on seabed acquisition technologies.

iSEISMIC plans to utilize the full suite of ION’s next generation 4Sea™ ocean bottom acquisition and imaging technology to deliver a step-change in the safety, efficiency, quality and turnaround time of seabed surveys. This agreement will enable ION to commercialize its new 4Sea technology and provides an opportunity to realize the benefits of our technology to acquire ocean bottom multi-client programs more quickly and cost-effectively with an experienced service provider. The companies are looking forward to successfully deploying 4Sea and significantly expanding the use of superior seabed data to enhance clients’ reservoir decision-making.

“This collaboration validates our component approach and provides ION an exciting opportunity to further participate in the growing, high value seabed market and extract recurring revenue from the value our technology delivers, without compromising our asset light strategy,” said Chris Usher, ION’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Deploying 4Sea as a complete system will enable iSEISMIC and our multi-client customers to gain maximum benefit from this fully integrated transformational architecture for exceptionally efficient OBS data acquisition. We look forward to working with iSEISMIC to create a Blue Ocean shift for the applications of OBS data in our industry.”

“This partnership presents a unique opportunity for both companies to leverage significant synergies to gain a strengthened foothold in the OBS market,” stated Carl Berg, iSEISMIC’s Chief Executive Officer. “ION is an ideal partner as their multi-client business development, imaging expertise and revolutionary technology nicely complements our team’s aggregated operational experience acquiring over 150 surveys, including more than 50 OBS surveys, while deploying a range of new technologies. After considering a number of industry alternatives, we believe the full suite of ION’s 4Sea technologies will enable us to achieve a radical breakthrough in OBS performance and give us a range of competitive advantages. As a first mover with the complete 4Sea platform, including the fully automated deployment and retrieval system, we will have the fastest operational speed in the industry, significantly faster than today’s standard.”

About iSEISMIC
iSEISMIC AS, part of the iSURVEY Group, is a new ocean bottom seismic acquisition specialist with a revisited perspective on high performance, delivering cost-efficient seabed seismic acquisition services.

About ION
ION develops and leverages innovative technologies, creating value through data capture, analysis and optimization to enhance critical decision-making, enabling superior returns.

SSA forms new Digital Transformation Committee

By

-

August 2, 2019

0

Singapore Shipping Association (SSA) announces formation of digital transformation committee initiatives aimed at accelerating the adoption of technology by shipping companies while embracing challenges in the age of digital disruption.

SSA has organised its inaugural Tech and Demo Day, during which it announced the formation of a new Digital Transformation Committee.

The Tech and Demo Day aims to help shipping companies — including the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) —catalyse their adoption of technological innovations by bridging the industry with technology start-ups. The initiative is also part of SSA’s efforts to support the Sea Transport Industry Digital Plan for the ship agency sub-sector driven by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), Enterprise Singapore, and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG).

During the Tech and Demo Day, technology providers showcased solutions and services designed to meet the needs of both SME and global shipping players. These solutions ranged from maritime cybersecurity to tele-medicine, and from smart supply chains to using cognitive automation to reduce administrative processes.

Complementing the presentations and demonstration booths were SME Digital Tech Hub clinics under the SMEs Go Digital Programme by the IMDA, where shipping companies could access free specialist consultancy on digital needs, government programs and grants to speed up digital adoption by the maritime industry.

At the Tech and Demo Day, SSA also announced the formation of a new Digital Transformation Committee. The Committee, chaired by SSA Councillor Mr. Steen Lund, will seek to help member companies change their business and operating models by leveraging on digital capabilities to achieve internal efficiencies, reduce costs and improve their services for sustained growth in the digital economy. Mr. Lund will be supported by his fellow Council Member, Mr. Teo Teng Seng, as Vice Chairman.

Ms.Caroline Yang, SSA President, said:

“The strong turnout for the Tech and Demo Day — more than 200 participants representing the broad spectrum of Singapore’s maritime community — is a clear signal of the interest among industry players in harnessing technology to strengthen their competitive propositions. The first edition this year focuses on helping bridge maritime SME with nimble technology tailored for their needs.”

Ms. Yang adds:

“I’m also excited that that the Digital Transformation Committee has been formed. This demonstrates a clear commitment by SSA to help our members and the industry chart a sustainable path forward —embracing the challenges and seizing the opportunities — in the age of digital disruption.”

Woodside has a pathway to the development of the Scarborough

By

-

August 2, 2019

0

Woodside’s Scarborough interests include three gas fields, Scarborough, Thebe and Jupiter, with a combined gross of 9.2 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Woodside Energy continue to work with the Scarborough Joint Venture to develop this world-class asset, which would generate jobs and supply chain opportunities for many years to come.

About Woodside

Woodside Energy is the pioneer of the LNG industry in Australia and the largest Australian natural gas producer. The company has a global portfolio and is recognised for its world-class capabilities as an integrated upstream supplier of energy.

Port of Dover to use radar tracking and display technology

By

-

August 1, 2019

0

Cambridge Pixel, a developer of radar display, tracking and recording sub-systems, has supplied its radar video trackers and display technology to Marico Marine as part of a major investment by the Port of Dover into safety systems at Europe's busiest ferry port.

Engineers at Marico Marine (Southampton, England) needed a low cost, open, software-based radar tracker for integration with its new vessel traffic service (VTS) system in Dover. It was important that the tracker worked seamlessly with a range of proprietary radars and delivered plot merging capability to combine multiple echoes from large ship reflections into single plots.

The software also needed to be highly configurable to support the tracking of small and large vessels at short and long range and to allow the suppression of radar returns and tracks from terrain and harbour artefacts, such as buoys, to minimise false alarms. Radar recording for training and incident analysis was also a prerequisite.

Martin Harvey, project engineer, Marico Marine, said:

"Cambridge Pixel's radar tracker and display software exceeded all our requirements. The company's extensive experience of working with different radars, such as the Terma 2202 and Simrad Halo-6 for this project, has been a key factor in us getting the VTS system installed, configured and fully operational so quickly."

For the Port of Dover installation, Cambridge Pixel has provided its SPx Server for radar video tracking and distribution, and its SPx library for display of scan converted radar video. SPx Server interfaces to each of the radars using their proprietary network connections and accepts input from an AIS receiver so that primary and AIS tracks can be viewed together. SPx Server also provides high quality radar video pre-processing to optimise tracking performance.

Dover is Europe's busiest ferry port with 1,760 commercial shipping, 36,331 ferry and around 9,500 leisure craft movements passing through the port during 2017. The radar installation is designed to detect commercial and smaller private vessels at a significant distance from the port as well as monitoring the movement of vessels within the harbour.

David Johnson, CEO, Cambridge Pixel, said:

"We are delighted to see our radar trackers and display software deployed to improve the safety at Europe's busiest ferry port. The radars with our trackers and display software will link to CCTV cameras to give Port Control Officers greater ability to track, target, record and intercept vessels navigating dangerously."

Cambridge Pixel's SPx radar tracker is a best-in-class software-based COTS primary radar data extractor and target tracker that provides target track identification, heading and speed. It is fully parameterised, highly configurable and supports multi-hypothesis and multi-model tracking to improve tracking efficiency and reduce nuisance alarms.

The tracker is designed to operate with many different radar types including those from Raytheon, Kelvin Hughes, Blighter Surveillance Systems, Saab Sensis, Furuno, JRC, Koden, Navtech Radar, Simrad, Sperry and Terma.

Cambridge Pixel's technology is used in naval, air traffic control, vessel traffic, commercial shipping, security, surveillance and airborne radar applications. The company's world-leading SPx suite of software libraries and applications provide highly flexible, ready-to-run software products for radar scan conversion, visualisation, radar video distribution, target tracking, sensor fusion, plot extraction and clutter processing.

Sequoia releases new technology to ocean research

By

-

August 1, 2019

0

Research and innovation continue to thrive within the science and engineering teams at Sequoia Scientific, Inc. (Sequoia), which announces the Hyper-bb product offering.

Sequoia scientist Dr. Wayne Slade has developed a hyperspectral backscattering instrument (Hyper-bb) through a NASA Phase II SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant. A prototype has been delivered to NASA for testing. This is Dr. Slade’s and Sequoia’s second SBIR-funded development and delivery in 2019.

Hyperspectral backscattering has been identified as a measurement gap in closure and validation studies for planned hyperspectral ocean color sensors, such as NASA’s planned Plankton, Aerosols, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. Hyper-bb employs technology similar to existing backscattering sensors used in the ocean optics community, but extends the spectral coverage using continuously varying bandpass technology. Hyper-bb’s backscattering measurements with higher spectral coverage complement other currently available instruments measuring hyperspectral optical properties, including absorption, beam attenuation, and radiometry.

The Hyper-bb is a submersible instrument, rated to 600 meters, with internal data storage, and is easily integrated into existing moored and profiling packages. The backscattering measurements collected by the Hyper-bb are highly relevant to ocean color remote sensing and ocean biogeochemistry research.

Features

Spectral backscattering over the wavelength range 430 nm to 700 nm.
High-performance depth and temperature sensors.
Internal data storage.
Powered from external battery pack (optional accessory), CTD, or 2-50 m power/communication USB cable.

McDermott awarded offshore EPCI contract by Saudi Aramco

By

-

August 1, 2019

0

McDermott International, Inc. announced it has been awarded a large* contract by Saudi Aramco to provide engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) of a production deck module (PDM) in the Hasbah gas field with hook-up and modification works in Saudi Arabia's Karan fields located offshore in the Arabian Gulf.

The scope of work includes EPCI of Wellhead PDM for four wells, 3.75 miles (6 kilometres) of 16-inch corrosion resistant alloy (CRA) cladded flowline, 4 miles (6.5 kilometres) of subsea umbilical cable, offshore tie-ins to existing facilities and electrical modifications to existing PDMs.

"This award is confirmation that the McDermott execution model we call the One McDermott Way gives clients confidence that we consistently deliver quality," said Linh Austin, Senior Vice President, Middle East and North Africa.

Engineering of the project will be performed in Saudi Arabia and fabrication will take place at McDermott's Jebel Ali yard in the United Arab Emirates. Fabrication is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2020 and the contract award will be reflected in McDermott's third quarter 2019 backlog.

* – McDermott defines a large contract as between USD $50 million and USD $250 million.

About McDermott

McDermott is a premier, fully integrated provider of technology, engineering and construction solutions to the energy industry. Operating in over 54 countries, McDermott's locally focused and globally-integrated resources include approximately 32,000 employees, a diversified fleet of specialty marine construction vessels and fabrication facilities around the world.

Vår Energi has completed field divestment

By

-

August 1, 2019

0

Vår Energi AS has finalised the divestment of 10 percent ownership interests in six Vår Energi-operated licenses across the Balder and Ringhorne fields in the North Sea to Mime Petroleum AS.

“We are pleased with having Mime Petroleum as a new partner; investing in our ambitious joint plans to continue the economic development of the fields, and we look forward to progressing the revitalization of the Balder and Ringhorne area together”, says Kristin F. Kragseth, CEO in Vår Energi.

The agreement provides Mime Petroleum with 10 percent ownership interests in the Balder and Ringhorne fields, and 7.4 percent ownership interests in the Ringhorne East field.

Vår Energi AS has reserves and resources of more than 1,250 million barrels of oil equivalent (Mboe), targeting development of about 500 Mboe during the next five year period. Continued development of proven and additional mapped resources in the Balder and Ringhorne fields are key components of this growth plan. In addition, there is potential to further increase the reserves in the area through an exploration program that is planned to start in 2020.

Vår Energi AS is a leading and growing independent E&P company on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) and the result of the merger of Point Resources AS and Eni Norge AS in late 2018. Vår Energi is jointly owned by Italy based energy company Eni (69.6 percent) and Norway based, leading private equity investor HitecVision (30.4 percent).

New mooring solution for Kincardine OWF

By

-

August 1, 2019

0

First Subsea Ltd has won a contract to provide platform mooring connectors to the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm (OWF), situated off the coast of Aberdeen.

The company, part of the First Tech Group based in Aberdeen, has confirmed it’s secured the contract with Spanish developer and construction company Cobra Group to provide platform mooring connectors (PMCs) for the Kincardine Offshore Windfarm.

The PMC was developed by the Lancaster-based company specifically to address the shortfall in mooring technology in the floating offshore wind market. The PMCs will be used to connect the semi-submersible platform to mooring lines at a water depth of 45m-143m. The connector will allow the mooring lines to be pre-laid on the seabed, prior to the arrival of the wind turbine structure.

Once the structure is in place, the end of the mooring line will be collected from the seabed anchor and connected into the PMC located on the platform’s hull. The connector will then automatically engage and provide an efficient and strong mooring system.

The PMC technology eliminates the need for mooring hardware such as fairleads, sheaves, chain tensioners and chain lockers. Removing the traditional connection systems significantly improves the known fatigue issues associated with fairleads. An additional benefit of the PMC allows the hookup installation to be performed more efficiently using smaller offshore vessels, which in turn reduces project costs.

Greg Campbell-Smith, Sales and Business Development Director said:

“As a UK company, First Subsea is proud to be supplying platform mooring connectors for the Kincardine Floating Offshore Windfarm. We are pleased to be part of this project which is at the forefront of the UK’s technology and innovation plans to decarbonise our energy supply.”

The Kincardine Offshore floating windfarm is a 50 MW pilot project 15km off the coast, south of Aberdeen. It began generating renewable power in September last year with the installation of the first turbine.

The project will be completed next year with the installation and commissioning of an additional five 9.5 MW turbines each installed on a floating substructure.

Photo: Kincardine floating offshore windfarm site and export cable corridor to shore near Altens, Averdeen.