Matt Zborowski
Staff Writer
The incredibly daunting, 2-months-and-counting hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has covered 1.8 million square miles of the southern Indian Ocean and driven searchers to investigate where few have dared to explore. The Indian Ocean's average depth is 12,990 ft, about 2.5 miles below the surface of the water. World superpower US, for context, has only one manned vehicle, the Alvin submersible, capable of approaching that depth.
Because they're dealing primarily with the most hidden parts of our planet, searchers have solicited the technology and expertise of those who've been there before—at least via the equipment they've developed. Working in deepwater has become second nature to the oil and gas industry. Royal Dutch Shell PLC's Perdido project in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, holds the current world record water depth completion of 9,627 ft achieved at Tobago field.
Unmanned deepwater activity
With that in mind, Australian Defense Minister David Johnston has considered employing US-based Oceaneering International Inc., a global oil field provider of engineered services and products for deepwater use. Notably, the company with Shell in 2010 used its Olympic Intervention IV support vessel, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), ROV simulation capabilities, and a diverless installation team to install a tie-in for the Perdido oil export pipeline to the Hoover Offshore Oil Pipeline System (HOOPS) pipeline.
It was the first time in deepwater operations anywhere in the world that a flowing pipeline without a preexisting connection had been shut-in and reconfigured to tie-in a new pipeline.
Australia deployed in mid-April the unmanned Bluefin-21 minisubmarine, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), to depths exceeding 15,000 ft. Unlike ROVs, AUVs are not tethered to an umbilical, enabling them to go where ROVs cannot. Equipped with side-scanning sonar, Bluefin-21 initially explored 15 sq miles of seabed in the vicinity of signals detected from the plane's black box. Over a 16-hr period each day, it composed a high-resolution 3D map of the ocean's surface.
This is the type of equipment that has become indispensable for operators, who've long worked to advance the technology so they could reduce manpower and margin of error while increasing efficiency of their offshore operations. A quick search of "AUV" on OGJ Online yields results dating back to 1999, where, in an article featuring analysis from Douglas-Westwood Associates, it was predicted that markets for subsea technology companies were then-set for "unprecedented growth." This was due in part to the prospect of AUVs offering cost savings in deep waters, opening up "a number of potential applications (OGJ, Oct. 4, 1999, p. 36)."
John Westwood, Douglas-Westwood chairman, described AUVs at the time as "true, preprogrammed robots, operating without cables to surface and using advanced navigation systems." He added, "They are designed to dive to the seabed, carry out high-precision seabed surveys, then return to their support ship with the data."
Industry can help
A type of AUV called Remus, which stands for remote environmental monitoring units, did just that in 2011, locating and mapping the wreckage site of Air France Flight 447, 2 years after the plane settled 2½ miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean offshore northeastern Brazil. The investigation for MH370, albeit even more difficult, has drawn comparisons to that of AFR447.
Fugro NV of the Netherlands also has been named as a possible helper, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. It specializes in "acquiring and interpreting earth and engineering data." These companies would be tasked with essentially pinpointing a needle in a haystack—times a million.
But seemingly impossible challenges are nothing foreign to the oil and gas industry, which has evolved exponentially in the past 15 years, and companies are exemplifying their progress is not only advantageous for exploration and production of hydrocarbons, but to other areas in day-to-day life as well. Here's hoping that MH370 is soon recovered, regardless of how it's done or who does it, delivering much-deserved peace to the families of the 239 souls who left them behind.
