The grant falls under the government’s new $1 billion Commercial Ready program designed to encourage the development of data-acquisition technology to speed up the electronic gathering of information.
Seatrac will use it to fabricate the $6 million tool which will be used for repairs, data acquisition and abandonment of subsea wells in the Bass Strait, North West Shelf and Timor Sea.
Uniquely, the tool will be transportable rather than fixed to a specific vessel, as is the case with many similar systems around the world. This aspect of the design will help keep operating costs down, according to managing director Jon Edwards.
"Currently the only way to carry out critical subsea tasks is through the use of drilling rigs, which can be difficult and expensive to get hold of," he told EnergyReview.net.
"If a production well shuts down for example, you may have a wait of up to nine months for a rig to fix it. A company can suffer millions in lost revenue in the meantime.
"By comparison, the independence of our tool allows us to search the market for a work vessel of opportunity, install the system onboard and be offshore and on the job almost immediately."
Edwards hopes the cost benefits will also encourage companies to maintain accurate logs of their production wells. Logging information can be used to investigate the cause of well problems and stem the damage before it becomes too great.
"A lot of the time, logging doesn’t get done because it involves rigs which are again, expensive and are usually tied up drilling new wells so most operators just avoid doing it," he said.
"We believe we can open up a market locally where we can log wells at a much lower rate because we’re using a boat rather than a rig and hopefully encourage companies to get into the habit of good well management."
Seatrac’s new subsea system will initially target Australian producers with additional opportunities available in the Malaysian and southeast Asian markets.
"We’re tailoring our system to the local market because we know it’s sporadic and that it doesn’t sustain high-cost vessels," he said. "This will be a low-cost solution which we expect will require a three to four month campaign once a year allowing us to comfortably repay our capital and maintain a sustainable business."
The system will be built at sites in Perth, Fremantle and Adelaide. The exception will be the pressure control equipment, which will be built by specialist subsea contractors in Singapore.
Seatrac expects to have the system commissioned and ready for use by mid-2006.
