Ocean Infinity has announced that its partner, Brazilian offshore consulting company Cepemais, has been awarded a contract to provide high-resolution hydrographic mapping services to Brazilian national oil company Petrobras.

During the project, which is for the Campos, Espirito Santo and Santos basins, offshore Brazil, Ocean Infinity will work under contract to Cepemais to map an area of 5,000 square kilometers and inspect 12,000 kilometers of pipelines using its AUVs.

Ocean Infinity’s AUVs will operate from the company’s ‘Island Pride’ vessel, and will work in water depths between 50 and 3,000 meters. Cepemais will interpret and report on the data that Ocean Infinity collects during the project.  

Work is expected to begin mid-2019, and the contract lasts for three years.

“We are delighted to be supporting Cepemais on this important Petrobras project,” says Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity’s CEO.

“Working on a project of this scale is a clear endorsement of our technology and highlights how the oil & gas industry recognizes that through the deployment of multiple AUVs, we can deliver the highest quality data, safely, quickly and more cost effectively than ever before.”

Ocean Infinity’s AUVs can operate in water depths from five meters to 6,000 meters. Since they are not tethered to their host vessel during operations, the AUVs can go deeper and collect higher quality data for the search.

The AUVs are built to conduct successful operations thanks to being equipped with a variety of tools, including side scan sonar, a multi-beam echo-sounder, a synthetic aperture sonar and a turbidity sensor.