With more than 600 installations in the North Sea alone, the energy industry faces a daunting and hugely costly task in terms of decommissioning, with some putting the figure at £30 bn.

With this in mind, Deep Sea Recovery Limited has developed its Controllable Buoyancy System (CBS) to help tackle many of the issues associated with decommissioning and other subsea tasks requiring movement of heavy loads through the water column such as renewable energy device installation.

When working at great depths, challenges include increasing pressures and decreasing capacity of compressed gas, shortfall in heavy lift vessel (HLV) capacity, remote operation, and increasing cost per tonne. CBS technology is a variable buoyancy system, which uses liquid nitrogen as a subsurface buoyancy gas source, and as the system is reusable, it has the potential to save operators significant costs.

Tags: Deep Sea Recovery Limited