C-CORE, an international leader in research and development based at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, has launched The Centre for Arctic Resource Development (CARD), an initiative to help unlock the potential of the Arctic’s rich – and largely untapped – natural resources. CARD is supported by $16.5 million in combined funding from the Hibernia and Terra Nova projects and the Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (RDC).

The Hibernia and Terra Nova projects will each contribute $6.25 million over five years ($1.25 million each per year) to support leading-edge research projects and programs, as well as technology development. RDC will provide $4 million to build a 1,260 square metre expansion to C-CORE’s Dr. Jack Clark Geotechnical Engineering Building on Memorial’s St. John’s campus.

“World-class, industry-driven R&D and proven operational capability is helping to position Newfoundland & Labrador as a centre of technological excellence for oil and gas projects in ice-prone regions,” said Honourable Shawn Skinner, Minister of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. “Building on the existing base of expertise, the CARD will help position this province, its industry and its institutes as the centre of technological excellence for Arctic oil and gas development.”

CARD intends to build a critical mass of Arctic expertise in St. John’s based on (1) the lessons learned from offshore Newfoundland and Labrador, (2) C-CORE’s 36-years of experience in remote sensing, ice engineering and geotechnical engineering, and (3) attracting Arctic experts from across Canada as well as “rising research stars” from Memorial’s and other universities’ graduate programs. Thirty full-time staff will be hired, “but the Centre has the potential to grow to 40 or more staff, as it attracts new projects and new funding,” said Dr. Charles Randell, C-CORE’s President and CEO. “Potentially, sponsoring oil and gas and/or services companies could second staff to CARD to participate in the research activities or manage projects.  The Centre will invite experts from around the globe to serve as ‘experts-in-residence’, providing valuable input into the projects and mentoring junior staff.”

The Centre will bring together industry, academic and technology partners to conduct medium- to long- term research and development focused on improving Canada’s capacity and capability to support safe, responsible, cost-effective and sustainable hydrocarbon development in Arctic and other ice- and iceberg-prone regions.

CARD has engaged the oil and gas companies that are active offshore Newfoundland and Labrador that also have an interest in Arctic development—including CARD sponsors ExxonMobil (the Operator of Hibernia) and Suncor Energy (the Operator of Terra Nova)—in a consultation process to begin making a decision chart for priorities which will lead to the development of an Arctic roadmap. This includes characterizing the environmental and logistical conditions in the Canadian Arctic, identifying a range of development options, defining technology gaps, and identifying likelihoods of success. Guided by a five-year R&D plan that has been approved by an advisory body of experts for potential to improve exploration and production in harsh, cold environments, CARD will then develop a research program and undertake research.  

Paul Leonard, President of Hibernia Management and Development Company Ltd. (HMDC), said, "Research and development associated with operating in harsh arctic climates have enabled the development of Hibernia and the Hibernia Southern Extension subsea project. The research that will be undertaken through CARD will be focused on improving industry's capacity for oil and gas production and transportation from ice- and iceberg-prone regions."

Sandy Martin, Vice President, East Coast with Suncor Energy, operator of Terra Nova, said, “The Terra Nova development and the rest of our industry already take advantage of the exceptional harsh climate expertise available at C-CORE, and CARD is a natural extension and enhancement of that. The innovative research to be conducted at CARD will put Newfoundland & Labrador on the map as a leader in arctic research and expertise.”

A Joint Industry Project (JIP) launched by INTECSEA aims to advance the application of existing and emerging subsea technologies in strategically important offshore oil and gas developments in remote and hostile environments—particularly in offshore arctic and cold-climate regions. The JIP is led out of INTECSEA’s St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada office. Petroleum Research Atlantic Canada (PRAC) administers the contractual entity. 

INTECSEA kicked off the JIP in December 2010 in St. John’s. Completion is scheduled for year-end 2011. JIP participants include three oil companies participating in arctic developments offshore Eastern Canada.

“The prize is enhanced confidence in deeper waters and ice-prone regions worldwide while improving the availability of valuable hydrocarbons,” said Uri Nooteboom, president of INTECSEA, a leading engineering and project delivery company serving the offshore oil and gas industry. With 17 offices across five continents, INTECSEA, a WorleyParsons Group company, delivers solutions for floating systems, marine pipelines and risers, subsea and control systems and offshore technologies including flow assurance and materials engineering. Noteboom added that frontier developments in cold climates—where ice floes and icebergs are prominent much of the year—and remote offshore arctic areas require robust subsea systems that effectively manage the extraction of produced fluids and transportation to the end user.

Frontier and deep water prospects offshore Eastern Canada which would benefit from the JIP research include Orphan Basin, Laurenian Basin, Central Ridge/Flemish Pass and the Labrador Shelf, said Mike Paulin, INTECSEA Operations Director for Canada. “The Labrador Shelf is a very harsh environment and will require innovative solutions to overcome the challenges,” he said.

The Labrador Shelf includes water depths up to 9,900 feet and experiences waves up to 43 feet high. Ice conditions on the Labrador Shelf are significant, with pack ice reaching a thickness up to 23 feet and icebergs a serious threat from July through October.

To address these and other frontier issues, the JIP will generate a database with a user-interface tool that allows operators and developers to screen and select from a broad array of active production technologies, including separation, boosting, compression and direct electric heating systems, suitable for stranded and existing field developments. Inherent evaluations include system installability, operability, reliability and maintainability issues specific to the environment, as well as technology maturity and any additional fit-for-purpose qualification programs.

Efforts of the JIP will redefine current industry limits for field development architecture in cold-climate regions while improving expectations for robust systems that are flexible and responsive. The application of active subsea production technologies may deliver new strides in field development in the following areas:

            - Extend present arctic oil tie-back limits of below 10 kilometers or six miles to a goal of around 50 kilometers or 30 miles, and

            - Tie-back subsea wells in potentially 10,000 feet of arctic water to a floating production facility in shallower, more protected waters.

The JIP is also tackling prominent offshore arctic issues, including the impact of iceberg scouring on subsea facilities, said Paulin. “A floater can be relocated but subsea facilities cannot,” he added. Arctic operators, particularly offshore Eastern Canada, dig huge holes—60 feet deep and up to 1,080 feet long—or the length of three football fields—to avoid ice scouring, explained Paulin. “This approach is costly, time-intensive and will not sustain the level of subsea development the industry anticipates,” Paulin said.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has announced a $500,000 investment in NavSim Technology Inc., a St. John’s-based software and hardware developer of electronic navigation solutions. The investment will support the company’s efforts to target growth opportunities in international markets for its navigational software which reduces the risk of collision or grounding for recreational boaters and major ship traffic. According to the company, NavSim currently has a greater than 90 per cent share of the Canadian piloting market for the safe and efficient navigational handling of marine traffic near land using buoys and other landmarks. NavSim will use the investment to expand sales activities, do market and product testing and initiate marketing campaigns in Europe, Asia and the United States.

“NavSim is fortunate to have access to a world-class post-secondary education system and R&D infrastructure and an almost bottomless pool of smart, talented young engineers and developers,” said NavSim CEO Alvin Osmond. “However, difficulties accessing private investment and financing, especially for software ventures, put us at a major disadvantage when competing with technology firms in the United States and Europe. With this contribution, NavSim Technology will be much better equipped to secure an international market-leadership position in marine e-navigation systems.”

“NavSim Technology’s ability to capture a large portion of the Canadian piloting market has proven that it can deliver a solution that enables safer and more effective management of port and waterway traffic,” said Susan Sullivan, Minister of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. “With this investment, the company is now better positioned to build its operational capacity to expand its market coverage into new international markets. The development of knowledge-based industries starts at our post-secondary and research institutions. Supporting the commercialization of the tremendous activity at our local institutions and the establishment of new industries is central in the province’s economic development. It is an approach that will benefit the province for the long term.”

NavSim Technology began as a research initiative at the National Research Council Institute for Ocean Technology in St. John’s and in 2002 was turned into a business. In 2009, the company received the Canadian Innovation Leader Award for its industry-leading achievements in pioneering advanced navigation systems.

On April 25, Marport Deep Sea Technologies Inc. of St. John’s announced AquaPix®, a new interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) developed for mine countermeasures, hydrography, seabed survey and other underwater imaging markets. AquaPix® is based on Marport’s Software Defined Sonar®, an underwater acoustics technology platform that enables advanced underwater sensing, communications and imaging products. The software-centric architecture enables digital signal processing to be executed in multiple FPGA cores allowing dynamic reconfiguration and massively parallel processing performance.

The sonar is frequency agile from 200 – 400 kHz and offers range-independent resolution of 2.5cm by 2.5cm with co-registered 3D bathymetry. Effective swath widths are up to 12 times water depth in shallow water, to a maximum width of 600m. According to Marport, this swath width more than doubles that achieved by currently available high-resolution bathymetric sonars. The new sonar is suited to applications where seabed image quality is critical.

SAS is a type of sonar in which sophisticated signal processing of successive acoustic pings is utilized to form an image with significantly higher resolution than conventional sonars. The image formation can require aligning the echoes to less than 0.1 millimetres. This is made possible through recent advances in broadband sonar technology combined with adaptive focusing techniques similar to those used in optics, but performed in software rather than in hardware.

When integrated onboard an AUV, the AquaPix® uses sonar sensor data with multi-aspect diversity to reconstruct images . "Underwater imaging markets present very demanding requirements not only for sonar performance but also overall image quality," said Karl Kenny, President & CEO of Marport. "With AquaPix®, we are again leveraging our latest Software Defined Sonar® technologies to bring critical improvements in quality and performance. AquaPix® provides the underwater imaging markets with a price competitive solution to replace and overcome the performance shortfalls of conventional systems."

Its sonar design exploits a dual row frequency multiplexed transducer array which allows selection of the vertical beamwidth of both the transmitter and the receiver on the fly in order to optimally suppress multipath. Two beams with different beam-widths are transmitted at the same time, at different frequencies, and the best beam is dynamically selected by frequency filtering, a technique based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) used in radio communications for the same purpose. The multiplex also provides the high level of spatial overlap required to robustly implement adaptive focusing techniques.

PanGeo Subsea Inc. of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, a service provider of high-definition 3D sub-seabed acoustic imaging, and SeaRoc Inc. of Brighton, UK, a consultancy with experience in offshore wind, wave and tidal energy, have entered into a working agreement to pool their expertise to offer a comprehensive service package to the offshore renewable industry.

The two companies will provide a bundled site investigation service that includes project management, vessels, imaging equipment and data collection and analysis to support the near-shore and offshore requirements of investigations and installations related to the development of wind farms.

“PanGeo Subsea has broad-based intellectual property and expertise related to high-definition, detailed volumetric mapping of the sub-seabed,” said PanGeo Subsea President Moya Cahill. “Our technology involves a family of stationary acoustic coring tools called the Acoustic CorerTM and an ROV/AUV platform-supported near-surface sub-seabed unit, the Sub-Bottom ImagerTM, delivering continuous volumetric mapping. Combined with the significant offshore and project management experience that SeaRoc puts forward, we will deliver a dramatic improvement in the resolution and focusing ability for 3D site investigations and route surveys for our customers.”

“As a marine consultancy, SeaRoc has been involved in the offshore renewable industry since 2002 and the majority of offshore wind farm projects (in the UK)”, said SeaRoc Chief Operating Officer Eric Briar. “Our marine knowledge and experience, twinned with the Acoustic Corer and Sub-Bottom Imager, will deliver results not yet seen in the industry and for us that is a very compelling offering.”

PanGeo Subsea specializes in 3D and 4D subsea acoustic imaging, utilizing acoustic tools that deliver high-resolution volumetric delineation of sub-seabed hazards and sediment variations. The company’s international clients include: oil and gas (installations, decommissioning, pipeline installation and monitoring), renewable energy (foundations), military (Q routes and UXO detection); marine civil engineering; archaeology and mining. Corporate headquarters and technology development are located in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with global operations and business development in Aberdeen, UK.

SeaRoc provides specialist products and services to the offshore renewable energy sector, offering marine engineering, quality, health, safety and environment (QHSE) and geographic information system (GIS) data management expertise with applications that support the lifecycle of offshore wind, wave and tidal projects. SeaRoc has been involved from site selection through construction to operations and maintenance on a large number of UK offshore wind projects, as well as an increasing number of Northern European and North American projects. 

St. John’s-based Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science is launching a five-year project, “Intelligent Sensor Platforms for Remotely Piloted Vehicles”, to develop intelligent sensor systems to support autonomous decision-making and the operation of unmanned vehicles.

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency’s Atlantic Innovation Fund is investing $2.2 million and the Research & Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador is investing $723,750, which complements funding from The Boeing Corporation to Memorial University for research on autonomous systems. The estimated project costs are $3.6 million.  

New specialized R&D tools and scientific equipment will be purchased for the creation of the Mechatronic Development and Prototyping Facility at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. Mechatronics is the integration of mechanical, electrical and computer engineering to improve the design and functionality of intelligent systems and products.

 “We are looking at developing active vision systems for unmanned aerial vehicles,” explains Dr. Nicholas Krouglicof, Associate Professor at Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. “These are systems that can actively direct the camera at a region of interest.” A parallel research effort will focus on the development of an underwater 3D vision system. A camera will be used in conjunction with a laser scanner to selectively take 3D measurements for applications such as pipeline inspection and monitoring, and navigation.

Dr. Ralf Bachmeyer, Canada Research Chair in Ocean Technology and Director of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Lab at Memorial University, will be collaborating on the underwater sensor development. This will enable gauging the vehicle’s distance from the seafloor and maintaining a fixed distance from it. 

The project aims to achieve high reliability, low power consumption, and real-time performance through the integrating of image sensing, acquisition, and processing within a single robust enclosure.

The Mechatronic Development and Prototyping Facility, which is set to open in late 2011, will be a key component supporting collaborative R&D between Memorial University and The Boeing Company. It will also serve the specialized needs of researchers and other industrial partners whose focus is Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles. 

The Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University (MI) of St. John’s, Newfoundland is the first post-secondary institution in the world to offer simulation-based training in launching, maneuvering and recovering lifeboats in all weather conditions. MI’s Offshore Safety and Survival Centre is training offshore personnel and students on the Survival Quest system developed by Virtual Marine Technology (VMT), also of St. John's. VMT develops simulators for survival craft and high-speed electronic navigation training. 

“Using the SurvivalQuest simulator we can better prepare lifeboat operators to handle a variety of emergency launch conditions in a safe, realistic and focused learning environment,” said Glenn Blackwood, Executive Director of the Marine Institute.

Learning how to perform an emergency evacuation on the water, even in moderately rough conditions, can result in injury or death, as occurred in the sinking of the Ocean Ranger drilling rig offshore Newfoundland in 1982 and the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in 1988. “Lifeboat simulation bridges the gap between classroom theory and on-the-water experience,” said VMT President and CEO Captain Anthony Patterson. “Using simulation, students are able to develop skills which cannot be developed in the classroom and are logistically too difficult to practice on-the-water.”

Seated in the SurvivalQuest cabin, the trainee looks out at several computer screens which display the computer-generated weather and sea state, as well as the lifeboat’s pitch and roll.

The development of SurvivalQuest began in 2002, when a joint research project was undertaken by the National Research Council’s Institute for Ocean Technology (NRC-IOT) and Memorial University’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and the Marine Institute.  Their focus was to develop an innovative survival craft launching simulator for lifeboat coxswain and fast rescue craft pilots to undergo evacuation training in extreme conditions, but in a safe environment.

Model scale experiments were conducted in NRC-IOT’s towing tank, ice tank, and offshore engineering basin, and full-scale trials were conducted at the Marine Institute’s Offshore Safety and Survival Centre.  NRC-IOT researcher Antonio Simoes Re’s operational data and modeling techniques collected during the model and full-scale trials were incorporated into the development of the virtual training system.  “The NRC Institute for Ocean Technology supported each step of the technology development process,” said Dr. F. Mary Williams, Director General of NRC-IOT, “and, as a result has been recognized with the federal government’s Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for 2010.”

Memorial University’s School of Human Kinetics and Recreation advised VMT to ensure the realism of the simulated lifeboat environment.

Funding for SurvivalQuest was provided by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development, Petroleum Research Atlantic Canada, the National Research Council, and private and venture capital.  

A $6.8 million investment to establish the Suncor Energy Offshore Research and Development Center was announced this week in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The new facility will expand Memorial University of Newfoundland’s S. J. Carew Building which currently houses the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
 
Suncor Energy is contributing $2 million and the Research and Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (RDC) is investing $4.8 million in the 1,090-square-meter extension to the building.
 
The Suncor Energy Offshore Research and Development Center will provide dedicated office space for collaboration between industry and research partners on projects related to the ocean technology and offshore petroleum sectors. Construction is slated for completion in 18 to 24 months.
 
A leading operator on Canada’s East Coast. Suncor Energy (formerly Petro-Canada) has a significant stake in Newfoundland and Labrador’s first two major offshore oil developments, Hibernia and Terra Nova, and interests in every other Grand Banks discovery to date.
 
Suncor Energy’s contribution builds on a longstanding relationship the company has with Memorial University. Suncor has provided funding for a number of Chairs, specific research programs, and investments in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Music.
 
RDC’s chief executive officer Glenn Janes pointed out that oil production accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the Province’s GDP. “Oil is a very significant contributor, and there’s a lot more potential to be had,” he added. “This expansion will build upon the expertise that’s already here, and it will bring more people with complementary expertise to avail of the opportunity.”
 
“Memorial University is leading the country in terms of both research growth and research in the offshore technology and oceans sector,” said Dr. John Quaicoe, Dean (Pro Tempore) of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Memorial University. “In the past five years our faculty has generated approximately $52 million in R&D funding, published 1,000 papers, secured 180 grants and graduated more than 200 graduate students from the program.”

Rutter Technologies, a division of Rutter, Inc. of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada has secured a $1.3 million (US) order to provide its Oil Spill Detection and Management Systems to Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC). Delivery will begin immediately and is expected to be completed in April 2011.

“This purchase by Marine Spill Response Corporation is intended to enhance offshore skimming capabilities during night-time operations as well as during times of decreased visibility,” said Rutter President and CEO Fraser Edison. “The majority of the units will be deployed on boats and barges operating in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Based in Herndon, Virginia, Marine Spill Response Corporation is an oil-spill response organization that owns and operates a fleet of dedicated oil spill response vessels, self-propelled skimming vessels, boom, and skimming systems in the continental US, Hawaii and the Caribbean.

In June 2010 Rutter Inc. and Aptomar AS of Trondheim, Norway launched the Integrated Oil Spill Response and Management System which integrates Rutter’s Sigma S6 radar processor and display with Aptomar’s infrared camera, real-time video, searchlight capabilities, and chart-based display.  The integrated system provides automatic oil spill detection and tracking, area, thickness and volume estimations as well as oil spill drift prediction, detection of boom leakage and disposition of the oil spill skimmer.

Rutter’s Sigma S6 radar processor will enhance oil spill response vessels’ capability to operate around the clock independent of visibility, which was an issue during the cleanup of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, said Byron Dawe, President, Rutter Technologies Products Group.

For further coverage of Rutter’s Sigma S6 radar system and Oil Spill Response and Management System, see “Specialized Radar for Ice and Oil Spill Detection”, pages 14-17 in the January/February issue of Marine Technology Reporter.  

The SmartBay ocean observing system in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland has secured $224,000 in funding from the Government of Canada’s Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) to support two years of operations and the development of a sustainability plan.

“The success of this user-driven observation system involving fishers, the oil and gas industry, marine transportation, recreational boaters, and municipalities is being piloted in Placentia Bay for potential development and use in oceans around Canada and throughout the world,” said Senator Fabian Manning in St. John’s.

The federal government funding support supplements $451,000 in provincial government support for SmartBay announced in September, 2010.

These funding commitments bring total federal government support to $2.2 million and provincial government support to $1.1 million since 2006.

An initiative of the School of Ocean Technology at the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, SmartBay provides near real-time wave, wind and water data from three buoys in the bay, utilizing the technology of the Marine Institute’s partners, AMEC Earth and Environmental, ICAN, and EIT Ltd. Hourly weather forecasts are accessible 24/7 through the web portal www.smartbay.ca. The site’s buoy page is accessed approximately 7,000 times per month, mostly by repeat users. “The buoy data and weather forecasts provide mariners and other users of the bay with accurate, up-to-date information which contributes to better decision making in marine operations,” explains Bill Carter, Manger of Ocean Observation at the Marine Institute’s School of Ocean Technology.

There are between 1,400 and 1,600 tankers movements in Placentia Bay each year related to the operations of Newfoundland Transshipment Ltd. and North Atlantic’s refinery. 

Based on results of an assessment prepared by ACOA (Newfoundland and Labrador), in 2008 SmartBay saved marine users an estimated $940,500 in tanker fuel costs, plitage costs, demurrage savings, and potential savings to fishers.

The Atlantic Pilotage Authority is a regular user of SmartBay. The Canadian Marine Pilot's Association is taking the lead on "SmartAtlantic", an initiative to adopt the SmartBay model of providing high-resolution marine forecasts and near real-time wind and wave information for the Atlantic Canadian ports of Halifax and Chedabucto Bay in Nova Scotia, and Saint John in New Brunswick. "We have the support of funding partners for the ongoing operational costs," says Rae."A request has been sent to the federal government to provide the initial capital funding."