Oil & gas underwater support services: productive, efficient, and safe in Alaska's challenging waters.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: OIL & GAS

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It's difficult enough in Alaska maintaining and servicing various oil and gas industry equipment and infrastructure to ensure that projects run efficiently and safely for everything involved: the equipment, the environment, and the people. Consider then the extraordinary skillset required to build, maintain, and repair such vital infrastructure while working in Alaska's frigid waters, often on the North Slope or in the notoriously difficult conditions of Cook Inlet.

Global Diving & Salvage

"There's absolutely no visibility in Cook Inlet most of the time," says Global Diving & Salvage, Inc. Alaska Region Dive Operations Manager Bernie Rosenberger. "Even with a light on the diver's helmet or a high intensity light, you're only lighting up the area right in front of your face, and it's just muddy brown water," which is why it's commonly referred to as black water. Rosenberger says that that kind of low visibility isn't necessarily unique to diving in Alaska, but "combined with the current and the short bottom times available to safely dive, it makes for a pretty challenging environment to work in." He goes on to say that the Cook Inlet can have up to a thirty-foot tidal change four times a day, which results in swift tidal currents, up to six knots. "Sometimes the fixed platforms look like they're moving boats and have a wake."

In May of this year, Global had a team onboard their dive vessel in the Cook Inlet performing annual inspection work for Hilcorp Alaska, which operates twenty oil and gas fields, including fourteen offshore platforms in the Cook Inlet. Rosenberger says that Global rotates through inspecting different structures at different times, but generally there's some kind of work that they're doing in the Cook Inlet every year.

R&D Saves Time and Money

Global invests a lot of time and money into research and development to find innovative ways to make diving and dive projects safer, less costly, and more efficient, says Global's Alaska Region General Manager Deirdre Gross. "We've looked into and currently utilize advanced technology systems to help divers locate targets in zero-visibility" said Rosenberger. Historically divers would just walk on the bottom of the inlet with a survey line, sweeping an area in an effort to "catch the search line on something or just stumble across the pipeline while sweeping." Now, using sonar technology, divers can land on the inlet floor and be directed towards the target. He says, "We can be upwards of one hundred feet from a target, if we get bad position data, and still get on it within a few minutes."

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