Active Depth of Burial (ADOB)

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

The purpose of the project is to develop an ROV based system for detecting position of buried subsea oil and gas pipelines and to measure the burial depth below seabed from fast running survey ROV’s. The requirement for measuring burial depth of pipelines can be based on different needs, e.g. authorities requirement for minimum burial depth in shipping zones due to marine traffic safety requirement, protection for heat expansion of hot oil pipelines or protection for fisheries. The current technology available in the market for this purpose has not been improved over the last 30 years and has got low range of 1.5 – 2.0 meters, which requires ROV to run slow, approx. 1 knot maximum and has doubtful accuracy. Our new system are designed to work at minimum 5 meter altitude at 4 knots forward speed and with 5 cm accuracy. This means new dedicated Survey ROV’s (SROV) can be utilized for depth of burial measurements at high speed and therefore lower cost.