Subsea Tech ROV on work in Saudi Arabia

Marseille-based engineering company Subsea Tech has recently delivered its Tortuga remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to Saudi Aramco.

The Saudi national oil company will utilise the ROV for underwater inspections and NDT operations on its offshore infrastructures.

Launched in 2018, the Tortuga ROV is a 500-metre-depth-rated underwater inspection robot.

Each one of its 4 horizontal thrusters develops a 17 kgf thrust, fitted with an azimuthal control system that allows operating the ROV in strong current conditions up to 4 knots.

According to the company, thanks to its unrivalled 1.5 thrust-to-weight ratio and its fully integrated acoustic imaging solution, Tortuga is the ultimate vehicle for underwater inspection in harsh operational conditions.

Specifically for this order, Subsea Tech delivered a multi-sensor Tortuga unit fitted with Blueprint Subsea Oculus M750d imaging sonar and SeaTrac USBL positioning system, Cygnus Instruments FMD and thickness probes, Buckleys (UVRAL) CP probe, altimeter, 2-function grabber, cleaning brush, laser defect sizing tool and launch/recovery davit.

“The high payload capacity of the Tortuga allowed simultaneous integration of most sensors and tooling, which is a real performance on such compact and lightweight ROV,” Subsea Tech said.

The dual screen console offers optimised comfort to the operator by displaying simultaneously the ROV videos and the sensor data (sonar image, positioning information). Also, the light davit supplied to Aramco can be adapted on vessel freeboards, piers, platforms, etc. to ease launch/recovery operations.