Reports circulating in the industry predict that in excess of 650 new work class ROVs will be required to meet industry demands over the next five years driving expenditure on new-builds to $2 billion+ during the period 2008-12.

With a shortage of vehicles and personnel, demand will continue to outstrip supply, even in the medium term, with costs having escalated by almost 50% during 2008.

Continued high levels of activity in deepwater hotspots such as West Africa and Brazil will ensure vital technologies such as ROV operations will continue to flourish even during short-term oil price dips.

Smaller, lighter, better
Balmoral Offshore Engineering has launched a new range of low density ROV buoyancy to meet the growing deepwater demands. This latest high performance composite is available in five standard grades:

The improved densities allow for increased uplift and can be used in a number of ways such as reducing vehicle dimensions or increasing uplift without altering the overall dimensions.

Improved payload and manoeuvrability
Dr Bob Oram, Balmoral’s technical director, said: “The components and production processes are, to the best of our knowledge, unique to BOE. Ultra-high performance binder systems have been identified and specially-processed glass microspheres adopted to produce syntactic foams which set new standards of performance for deepwater syntactic buoyancy material.

"The new materials show typical weight savings of 75kg per cubic metre when deployed at 3000msw. Because the actual weight of the buoyancy has been reduced, UVs can increase their payload and manoeuvrability significantly.

“We believe we have delivered an important breakthrough in ROV/AUV design parameters that will open up new opportunities for underwater vehicle design and construction companies.”