Kraken Joins LifeMoor Mooring Chain Inspection Project

Kraken Robotics Inc. has joined the LifeMoor project, an industry collaboration focused on improving the lifetime estimate of subsea mooring chains.

This 4-year “Knowledge Building Project for Industry” started in 2018. LifeMoor is supported by the Research Council of Norway and run by SINTEF, Norway’s largest independent research institution. The project includes a consortium of industry partners (NTNU, Equinor, MacGregor, Aker BP, Nosted, Kraken Robotics).

Saving Money and Extending Asset Life through Mooring Chain Inspection

The offshore mooring market was valued at over US$ 1 Billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a 3.7 % CAGR from 2021 to 2026 according to industry analyst, Market Study Report LLC. The largest market segment is offshore oil & gas FPSOs, accounting for over 2,000 km of mooring chains. There is also growing demand from floating offshore wind platforms.

There are a diverse number of factors that contribute to mooring chain failures. Industry best practice and available technology have limitations in estimating remaining life. In most cases industry is overly conservative, which leads to changing a mooring system earlier than needed, resulting in a loss of millions of dollars in costs and production downtime. In other cases, industry is not conservative enough which can lead to a mooring system failure earlier than expected. This can have catastrophic consequences that can cost billions of dollars in damages. The outcome of the LifeMoor project will allow for better service life estimates on mooring chains, delivering a significant benefit to offshore energy operators.

Kraken is Bringing Efficiency and Cost Savings to Mooring Chain Inspection

Kraken in partnership with the offshore energy industry and government is developing SeaVision® Mooring Chain Inspection Tool (MCIT), an underwater mooring chain inspection tool based on Kraken’s SeaVision® sensor. SeaVision® is a mature Kraken technology that produces ultra-high resolution underwater 3D laser-imaging scans and has been deployed successfully in diverse mooring campaigns in Canada and Brazil. With SeaVision® MCIT, Kraken is also developing the data analytics software to process SeaVision® data efficiently into corrosion and dimensional measurements requirements for mooring integrity analysis.

In conjunction with Kraken becoming a new member of LifeMoor, Kraken has entered into a project agreement with a major East Coast offshore energy operator. The project objective is to validate SeaVision® MCIT on a mooring chain provided by the offshore energy operator and to integrate SeaVision® MCIT with LifeMoor analytics software. Kraken expects to have the results validated and certified by Q3-2021.