On 15 July 2010, a SubSea wellhead Blow-Out-Preventer (BOP) weighing 75 tons was used to cap the wellhead of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, after the initial spill on 20 April 2010.[3]  The attending vessel in that operation was the Helix Q4000 vessel.[4]  Two early attempts had failed, one with a PDU using an oil filled transformer failed in a spectacular 50 foot fire ball on deck, (no one was injured, and viewed video was promptly removed) thereby dropping the ROV to the bottom, which was recovered later.Our team designed the 500 kVA PDU for OceanWorks, used on deck of the Helix Q4000, while being observed by MSV (marine service vessel) Skandi Neptune, 50 miles from the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.  The ROV (operated by Subsea 7 pilots) was used to successfully cap the British Petroleum (BP) wellhead, 1507 meters below the surface, on July 15, 2010 (Reference: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident of April 20, 2010).  On Sunday morning, September 19, 2010, Thad Allen, the federal spill response chief, said that after pressure testing, the well was “officially dead”.

Lesser Impressive, but Important and Significant Accomplishments

Our team has designed over 70 PDU from 2007 through 2011 that met or exceeded all client specifications, complied with all SubSea and Surface industry wide standards, passed all recognized maritime inspection requirements and each DNV certification during each Factor Acceptance Tests (FAT) including PDUs for the following:

The EXPRO AX-S™ subsea well intervention system is a 14 line PDU system consisting of a 12 foot wide enclosure (3 four foot wide sections) and separate HV outputs (one at 400 Hz.) for ACERGY applications in Aberdeen, Scotland.  It is a lightweight system used for analyzing and improving flows from subsea wells at depths to 3,000 meters without a surface vessel in attendance.

This is a safe and cost-effective method that may change the way companies might access and intervene on their subsea well assets at depths below 3,000 meters, which can dramatically reduce related operational costs.  The system can support multiple ROV tasks from a sea bottom parking facility.

The AX-S system is part of a multi-million dollar contract with BG Group to intervene on two North Sea wells, and formed an alliance with BP, Aker Offshore to further develop the system for use with their assets in international operations.  Industry operators such as GE, Weatherford, Baker Hughes, and Halliburton have expressed an interest in that system.

The SeaBotix LARS System is a highly customized container cabin that can be delivered to a vessel anywhere for immediate applications and contains a Complete ROV System.