Emerging autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) developments across the oil and gas industry now include pipeline inspection; structural survey; deepwater inspection, repair and maintenance (IRM); and field resident systems for remote/harsh environments. As these capabilities mature, AUVs will become an increasingly important tool for deepwater field operations. Early adoption of AUV standards will facilitate more rapid deployment of AUV technologies and enable the industry to reap a wide range of safety, environmental, operational, and economic benefits for its deepwater fields. The development of industry standards for AUV interfaces will facilitate more rapid implementation of AUV capabilities and lead to more cost-effective, compatible system designs by AUV vendors and field hardware manufacturers. The development of regulatory standards for the interpretation and acceptance of autonomous inspection results is also an essential step toward the achievement of more cost-effective operations and regulatory oversight of deepwater subsea fields. This paper describes a future vision for the use of AUVs in deepwater field operations, the benefits to be realized, and the future capabilities of AUVs that must be anticipated and facilitated within AUV standards to achieve that vision. Additionally, this paper describes the goals and objectives of DeepStar Project 11304, which is laying the groundwork to achieve accelerated standardization of AUV interfaces and the development of regulatory standards for AUV inspections.

Technology innovation and application appears to have driven down the finding and producing cost of oil and gas for the last two decades. The industry structure and corporate strategies that delivered these results has changed markedly, with budgets for both funds and people being slashed. Duplication and overlap in programs and piece-meal projects that don't provide end " to " end solutions continue to hamper efficiencies yielding product development cycles that continue to lag other industries. With reserve revisions, rate acceleration techniques, depletion schemes that result in fewer delineation wells, etc; has value really been added? The panel will examine these issues and discuss strategies and models of cooperation to help fund and commercialize technologies that can make a difference. Session Chair - Art J. Schroeder Jr., CEO - Energy Valley, Inc.(Picture available in full paper) Art Schroeder is CEO of Energy Valley, Inc., a company that provides money, marketing and management to advance energy related technologies. Art is also a principal and founder of The Energy Forum, LLC which specializes in energy event production and management. For over 20 years he has been responsible for operations, engineering, construction, environmental, health & safety, and crisis management within the petroleum sector. Through his career he has served on a number of industry and civic boards and published numerous technical papers. Art was graduated from Ga. Tech with both a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Environmental Engineering, and from the University of Houston with an MBA, major in Finance and International Business. He recently completed a one-year graduate level certificate program at University of Houston in eBusiness Management Co-chair; Michael Economides, University of Houston (Picture available in full paper) Michael J. Economides is one of the most instantly recognizable names in the petroleum and chemical engineering professions and the energy industry. He is a Professor at the Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, and the Chief Technology Officer of the Texas Energy Center. Previously, he was the Samuel R. Noble Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University and served as Chief Scientist of the Global Petroleum Research Institute (GPRI). Prior to joining the faculty at Texas A&M University, Professor Economides was the Director of the Institute of Drilling and Production at the Leoben Mining University in Austria. Before that, Dr. Economides worked in a variety of senior technical and managerial positions with a major petroleum services company. Publications include authoring or co-authoring of 11 professional textbooks and books, including "The Color Of Oil" and almost 200 journal papers and articles. Economides does a wide range of industrial consulting, including major retainers by national oil companies at the country level and by Fortune 500 companies. He has had professional activities in over 70 countries. In addition to his technical interests he has written extensively in wide circulation media in a broad range of issues associated with energy, energy economics and geopolitical issues. He also appears regularly as a guest and expert commentator on national and international television programs.

This set of speaker notes introduces the subject, which is the topic of a panel discussion for the 2003 Offshore Key Points from Dr. HendersonThe emerging picture of integrated digital solutions has far reaching opportunities to the EP industry. With a reliable and secure global infrastructure, applications and data can be accessed remotely on hardware sitting in centralized locations, production can be optimized remotely, experts can be deployed and accessed independent of the physical location, and staff productivity gains and cost efficiency realized using real time collaboration. Through real examples including Smart Fields, Production Dashboards, Remote Applications and Data, Knowledge Gateways, Visualization Centers, and Collaboration Networks, the exciting future world will unfold. InfrastructureShell EP has made significant progress to develop a global high capacity, fast, reliable and cost effective IT network. A standard 'locked down' desktop environment has been implemented, allowing access from all locations worldwide to both desktop and sophisticated technical applications. Bandwidth has been increased by an average of 20 times in 2002, with almost all sites now linked by fiber with multiple routes providing resilience. Further extensions to bandwidth are linked to business requirements, following an in-depth review of future applications.

Subsea production systems and processes are generally conducted using hydraulic and more recently electro-hydraulic controls. These systems have become complex and expensive to deploy, especially with increasing length of tie-backs, more deepwater installations and challenging environments. Electrically powered and controlled equipment has become the standard for onshore and topsides equipment. Developing a subsea electric control unit that is modular and easily packaged is integral to leveraging the benefits of electric monitoring and control into subsea production systems and processes, as well as many other intervention applications such as subsea chemical storage and injection. In addition to simplifying and reducing costs of these systems, the unit will be able to discern an end component's health and status providing an opportunity to adjust or modify the operation in-situ, and in some instances real-time as well as provide other benefits. New analytical techniques powered by advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are being developed to examine in greater detail the controlled equipment's operational status, infer its current state of health and even predict future performance and maintenance/repair needs. As more and more data are collected and analyzed, the predictability and accuracy of the analysis and prediction improves. Coupling the newly developed all electric subsea controller unit described in this paper with advanced data analytics will lower operator costs and risks in subsea systems. the system presented herein has been designed as a simple, rugged and reliable piece of equipment based on years of experience with API RP 17H Class 2 torque equipment and variable speed subsea pumps. It utilizes serial communications with position limiting and has a closed loop speed/position control, torque control, and real-time torque limiting. The profiling feature helps establish valve and pump status, functionality and health monitoring. The tool is ideally suited for subsea application to 10,000 fsw for any application requiring up to 250 ft.-lbs. with position and variable speed control. Leveraging learnings from the nuclear industry and their regulators, this ‘spring-less’ unit includes an option for a ‘smart battery’ (Lithium ion) back-up for specified fail-safe positioning and monitoring. Technical specifications were driven by operator customers. A full set of Functional Design Specs (FDS) were developed as well as an Inspection and Test Quality Plan (ITP). Where practical, acceptance criteria were leveraged from API, ASME and other industry guidance. A full-scale prototype unit has been built, tested and qualified with over 1 million cycles. The unit enables collecting sensed operating data from one or more end devices and one or more control end points, calculating and performing analytics, and reporting health and status of the one or more end devices and one or more control end points. It is currently being utilized on a common industry subsea ball valve, integrated into a subsea chemical storage and injection system as well as a drive for a variable speed subsea chemical injection pump. Regulator authorities in the U.S. have been included in the qualification witnessing.

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