Trying to stem some of the problems of the highly international competitive market, the engineers have secured federal funding to address the problem of stranded reserves.
"The research will contribute towards pushing offshore projects down the cost curve by enabling the tapping of oil and gas reserves that are currently too expensive to extract," UWA said.
The team is headed up by UWA Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems professor Susan Gourvenec, who said she was working to change some pre-existing ideas about subsea pipelines.
She said she wanted to prove it was possible to design mobile foundations to safely and efficiently support subsea infrastructure, which challenged traditional thinking.
"Mobile foundations offer a technology to improve the viability of development of Australia's deepwater reserves that are currently stranded," Gourvenec said.
