Press Release UTEC Doubles its AUV Fleet

UTEC Survey has advanced its service offering by doubling its AUV fleet to 4 vehicles in response to increasing demand for its highly regarded AUV services, the company reports as it prepares to head to OTC (Houston) next week.

The global company now operates a fleet of four identically equipped 1000m rated AUV systems for the benefit of its growing client base. The fleet offers clients enhanced subsea positioning, robust operational performance, low logistics designed for dual mode operations utilizing client's vessels of opportunity, in other words a highly flexible system.

The AUV's are comprised of separate modules enabling operators to change configuration by adding or removing sensor modules, subject to the requirements of each mission. Typical missions have included pre-route survey, structure and pipeline inspection, scour monitoring and shallow environmental investigation. The ability to rapidly reconfigure the AUVs means for example that a mission undertaking seafloor bathymetry can be reconfigured on deck to undertake the next mission with a suite of environmental sensors for locating hydrocarbon seeps or pipeline leak detection. The AUV's endurance with a full sensor suite is approximately six hours, while its low logistics and small backdeck footprint allows for multiple AUV's being deployed at one time providing data acquisition on a 24 hour basis.

Developments and enhancements to standard off the shelf systems include: a sub-bottom profiler module; enhanced surface "DGPS" acquisition; subsea 'acoustic' positioning; a 'magnetometer' ferrous metal detection module; a seep/leak detection module and photogrammetry capability for subsea structure/pipeline inspection.

Trevor Hughes, Global Sales Director UTEC, comments: "A single fleet design allows us to offer enhancements to the whole fleet in terms of additional sensors and firmware upgrades, saving time and money for clients while offering increased system capability."

UTEC provides a wide range of survey services including offshore positioning and construction support, metocean, geophysical and AUV surveys, geotechnical sampling and consulting services to the oil, gas and energy industries. The company also offers dimensional control surveys, laser scanning, 3D modeling and the iSITE™ asset management software. UTEC has offices located around the world including: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.