US firm’s 24-year-old vessel going to Trinidad and Tobago for survey work at Woodside’s deepwater gas project

U.S.-headquartered geotechnical and offshore survey research and service company TDI-Brooks has won a new geotechnical survey assignment at a natural gas project off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, which is operated by Australia’s energy titan Woodside. The survey will be conducted by a recently retrofitted 2000-built research vessel (RV).

Woodside has booked TDI-Brooks for a geotechnical survey of the Calypso development around 225 kilometers off the eastern coast of Trinidad in water depths of approximately 2,100 meters. According to the U.S. offshore surveyor, this award will be its third at Calypso since 2022.

Thanks to the latest deal, TDI will deploy the 75-meter-long DP2 RV Nautilus, which underwent a six-month retrofit campaign in Las Palmas before going to the shores of the U.S. East Coast for offshore wind assignments.

With Geomil Manta-200 CPT, Neptune 3K & 5K vibracorers, and a specially designed pneumatic vibracorer by TDI-Brooks, the ship is said to be equipped for efficient and accurate geotechnical surveys and sampling.

In addition, the U.S. player claims that a Teledyne RESON full ocean depth multibeam echosounder (MBES) enables surveys in up to approximately 2,500 meters of water depth. The 2002-discovered Calypso conventional gas field, owned by Woodside and BP, is slated to be put in production mode in 2027.

With a final investment decision for the project anticipated a year before it comes on stream, the Calypso gas development is progressing under the assumption that it will cease production in 2048.

TDI-Brooks’ geotechnical survey award for the Calypso field comes months after Argeo secured a contract with Woodside to conduct a geophysical survey for the same deepwater project, with the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) survey work scheduled to be undertaken by the Argeo Searcher vessel in Q3 2024.

The RV Nautilus, which has been conducting deep push CPT projects in the NE at wind farm turbine sites for several months, is currently headed to the Black Sea for a deep geotechnical campaign.

With five more multi-use research vessels – Brooks McCall, Miss Emma McCall, Marcelle Bordelon, Gyre, and Proteus – in its operated fleet aside from Nautilus, TDI-Brooks carries out oceanographic research duties for the offshore renewables and energy sectors.

The company claims that Proteus is in Suriname, acquiring successive EBS projects for two major international oil companies (IOCs) aside from a buoy rotation program for a third IOC. However, the vessel is on schedule to be available in South America in August with full geotechnical, survey, and EBS capabilities.

The firm’s Gyre is in Suriname for its four-month-long seep hunting multi-client program, which involves around 50,000 km2 wide area MBES/backscatter/plume detection and about 100 SGE cores. The ship is on track to become open for new work in October/November.

After recently finishing a geotechnical project in the Gulf of Mexico, the Brooks McCall vessel is now en route to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for oceanographic research projects in the Northeast. The vessel, equipped for geotechnical, geophysical, and environmental baseline survey (EBS) projects, is slated to have an availability slot in August.

The U.S. company’s Miss Emma McCall will go to Trinidad and Tobago for a month-long analogue and 2D HR project, but it could be available in late August/early September or could go to West Africa after completing its gig in Trinidad.