HOUSTON, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Deep Down, Inc.'s (OTC Bulletin Board: DPDW - News) proprietary Horizontal Drive Units (HDU) have played a major role and had a significant impact on offshore projects for various customers, during 2007, in the deployment and recovery of certain lighter-duty, flexible and not so flexible components of the subsea distribution system which connects offshore platforms to oil and gas wells on the ocean floor. First introduced in 1998, the HDU was developed by Deep Down as an alternative to industry-accepted vertical drive units to specifically enable substantially quicker, safer and more cost-effective installations of steel flying leads and specialty cables.
The HDU eliminates the undesirable, and potentially hazardous, uneven tension experienced by steel flying leads and specialty cables during deployment and retrieval operations, as well as spooling, with vertical drive units. This uneven tension can often lead to balancing and other problems due to alternative cycles of slackening and tightening due to variability in the centrifugal forces that are experienced through a vertical drive unit. The use of Deep Down's HDUs also ensures quicker and safer non-permitted transportation of its proprietary Rapid Deployment Cartridges (RDCs), Subsea Deployment Baskets (SDBs) and carousels since these items can be placed on the HDU adapters with loads kept very low to the ground. After exceeding the expectations of its original design during several key installation projects over the past several years, the benefits of the HDU are receiving increasing attention in an accelerated fashion in the offshore market.
Ron Smith, Deep Down CEO, said, "Our Horizontal Drive Units have made a significant contribution on subsea projects throughout the Gulf of Mexico. Installation contractors expend large amounts of capital to outfit their vessels with dedicated, high-tension deployment and recovery equipment required to put major systems in deep water. Ease of deployment, floor-space and safety are key considerations for these contactors. Our proprietary RDCs, SDBs and carousels can each be independently attached to the HDU. These additional components, including the HDU, can be stacked, thereby, saving valuable deck space on installation vessels. This is in stark contrast to the vertical drive units of our competitors, which are non-stackable and usually fixed and non-interchangeable. The ease of removing large terminations from the roof of our carousel or wings of our RDC, while attached to a crane as it turns the last two revolutions, is also a major advantage of the horizontal system. All these benefits combine to make our HDU, and its complementary, detachable RDCs, SDBs and carousels very attractive to our customers. We are proud of the support we have rendered in 2007, and we look forward to providing even more critical support to our customers in 2008."
During 2007, our Horizontal Drive Units were used to perform deployment and recovery functions on the following projects:
1. Oceaneering Flying leads in Panama City Florida 2. Chevron Agbami flying leads for Subsea 7 3. Noble Energy Lost Ark 2 Composite Jumper for Saipem 4. BP King Pump Electrical Power flying lead and steel flying leads for Saipem 5. Noble Energy Lost Ark 1 flexible flowline Jumper for Saipem 6. Mariner Bass Lite Steel Flying leads for Technip 7. Independence Hub Steel Flying leads for Subsea 7 and for Anadarko 8. BP Thunderhorse Steel flying lead, ADCP, and RMS [define and name ADCP and RMS] 9. Chevron Agbami Flexible Flowline jumpers for FMC 10. Bluewater Gomez Steel flying leads for Drill Quip 11. New Field Steel flying lead
About Deep Down, Inc.
Deep Down specializes in the provision of innovative solutions, installation management, engineering services, support services, custom fabrication and storage management services for the offshore subsea control, umbilical, and pipeline industries. The company fabricates component parts of subsea distribution systems and assemblies that specialize in the development of subsea fields and tie backs. These items include umbilicals, flow lines, distribution systems, pipeline terminations, controls, winches, and launch and retrieval systems, among others. Deep Down provides these services from the initial field conception phase, through manufacturing, site integration testing, installation, topside connections, and the final commissioning of a project. The Company's ElectroWave subsidiary offers products and services in the fields of electronic monitoring and control systems for the energy, military, and commercial business sectors. ElectroWave designs, manufactures, installs, and commissions integrated PLC and SCADA based instrumentation and control systems, including ballast control and monitoring, drilling instrumentation, vessel management systems, marine advisory systems, machinery plant control and monitoring systems, and closed circuit television systems. The Company's Mako Technologies subsidiary serves the growing offshore petroleum and marine industries with technical support services, and products vital to offshore petroleum production, through rentals of its remotely operated vehicles (ROV), topside and subsea equipment, and diving support systems used in diving operations, maintenance and repair operations, offshore construction, and environmental/marine surveys
The Company's strategy is to consolidate service providers to the offshore industry, as well as designers and manufacturers of subsea, surface, and offshore rig equipment used by major, independent, and foreign national oil and gas companies in deep-water exploration and production of oil and gas throughout the world. Deep Down's customers include BP Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Devon Energy Corporation, Chevron Corporation, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Marathon Oil Corporation, Kerr-McGee Corporation, Nexen Inc., BHP, Amerada Hess, Helix, Oceaneering International, Inc., Subsea 7, Inc., Transocean Offshore, Diamond Offshore, Marinette Marine Corporation, Acergy, Veolia Environmental Services, Noble Energy Inc., Aker Kvaerner, Cameron, Oil States, Dril-Quip, Inc., Nexans, Cabett, JDR, and Duco, among others. For further company information, please visit http://www.deepdowninc.com and http://www.electrowaveusa.com
"Installation contractors expend large amounts of capital to outfit their vessels with dedicated, high-tension deployment and recovery equipment required to put major systems in deep water."