Caspian Energy (CE): Mr. Mott, could you please provide the preliminary results of Fugro’s operation for the 2014 year?
Christopher Mott, General Manager, SOCAR-Fugro LLC: Well this year offshore has been quite a quiet time for SOCAR-Fugro because there have not been many offshore projects taking place. But we were quite busy on shore doing geotechnical survey work in Sangachal and at Sumgayit. We have just signed a new contract with a big international oil company to renew a master services agreement which will continue to enable us to deliver our services in Azerbaijan. And we are very pleased about that. The contract is valid until 2018 with the possibility of being extended. We know that there will be work to be done under this contract, but the specific work scopes are unknown to us.
CE: Could you please tell about your plans regarding the future activities in the Caspian for coming years?
Christopher Mott: We definitely plan to continue to work in Azerbaijan. We are in touch with oil and gas companies operating in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan but we don’t have any firm plans to operate in those two countries at the moment.
We are aware of the big developments that are taking place elsewhere in the Caspian region and if the opportunity presents itself we will be pleased to get involved.
CE: Are there any interesting moments fixed in the activity of your company through 2014?
Christopher Mott: I don’t know exactly what your readers will be interested in, but we were very pleased to be provided with an opportunity to do some environmental survey work on the Sumgayit chemical industrial park. It is an old industrial area which was developed during the Soviet era for industrial chemical production and the ground is still badly contaminated. Fugro has specialist and unique technologies that can determine whether pollution is present at a specific site or not, and if it is there measure how concentrated the pollution is and what is its nature. A particularly important point is that these measurements are done remotely without exposing human beings to the pollution. The benefits are that we can get the results of the survey very quickly without exposing our surveyors to the harmful effects of the pollution that may be there.
CE: Do you plan to use these technologies in other areas of Azerbaijan?
Christopher Mott: We would be pleased to use this technology elsewhere but we have not any projects at the moment. SOCAR Fugro will be very pleased to hear of projects that would be suited to the technologies that we could use.
CE: Could you please provide broader information about your activities at Sangachal terminal?
Christopher Mott: We are active inside the existing gas terminal. The soils that this terminal is built on are quite difficult from a construction point of view. When they get wet they behave in a way that can cause them to swell or collapse. This means that any critical equipment built on them may be subjected to differential settlements. This puts strain on the equipment.
We have done surveys, taken the samples of the soils and carried out tests both on site and back in the laboratory to analyze the composition of the soil and the way it is made up in order to forecast how it will behave when the structures are built on it. This enables the construction and foundation engineers to design the structures to ensure that they will not be damaged during the lifetime of their operation.
There are plans for SOCAR to build an oil-gas petrochemical complex (OGPC) at Sangachal, south of the existing Sangachal terminal. We have done survey work on that site to help the engineers to know what the soils are like there and how this site might respond to heavy rains and earthquakes. Similarly Total is intending to build a gas-processing plant at Sangachal and we have done some similar survey work there.
CE: Are the operations, performed there, a part of Shah Deniz II project?
Christopher Mott: Some of them are. The extension to the existing Sangachal terminal is part of the Shah Deniz II project. The work for Total is within the framework of the Absheron field development. And the work for OGPC I believe is within the wider framework of hydrocarbon production by SOCAR in Azerbaijan.
CE: Taking into account that you are a specialist in this area, we would like to ask to what extent the situation in the market of geotechnical and geophysical surveys has changed globally.
Christopher Mott: The biggest global trend in geophysical and geotechnical surveys is the ability to see with greater detail and greater accuracy what is happening beneath the surface of the earth. There have been improvements in computer power and in the practical applications of the sciences of optics and physics, and lasers and acoustics that enabled survey systems to be built which are ever more precise in conducting the surveys that we do.
Fugro has been awarded the contract from the Australian authorities to search for the airplane in the sea. The airplane took off from Kuala-Lumpur to China. Suddenly, for no known reason it altered course and disappeared from the radar screens and was only seen very occasionally by orbiting satellites. It was not possible to tell with any certainty where the airplane might be at any one time. The satellites could only provide a very approximate position for the plane. The search area has been estimated from these infrequent and imprecise positions and calculations of fuel consumption. These estimates place the crash site a long way off the west coast of Australia which takes days for search vessels to reach from the nearest port. Our search vessels are working 24 hours per day using our sophisticated survey systems to locate the wreckage in some of the deepest waters on the planet earth.
CE: To what extent are these technologies applicable in our region?
Christopher Mott: AUV survey technology has been used in this region. It was applied on the Absheron survey. SOCAR-Fugro has used these technologies in the deeper waters of the Caspian Sea down to 700m. Once targets have been identified from the current survey work, AUVs will be sent to the sea bed to find out whether any of them are of the missing airplane.
CE: Do you have any new technologies that you would like to tell about and would be of interest to our readers?
Christopher Mott: Yes. I have. We are refining our technologies in sound, optics and lasers to provide much more accurate images of the seabed and of the structures on the seabed. We will bring the technologies to the Caspian once our clients are made aware of them and realise what advantages they can bring and what value they can add to their businesses. We don’t bring new technology in just because it has been developed, we bring it in because we have contracts to use it. It is our job to inform our clients about the technologies and the value they bring to their operation.
CE: Is there anything that you would like to add on your own?
Christopher Mott: Yes. I believe, the technologies that Fugro has and technologies that Fugro is developing, are of interest to our clients because by using them they get information more quickly about their subsea assets and therefore they can look after them much more carefully. The whole of the economic expansion of Azerbaijan depends on the production and sale of its hydrocarbons. Our technologies provide engineers with the information that they need for preserving the integrity of those assets. Asset integrity reduces the chances of them breaking down, the flow of oil and gas is assured, and the wealth of the nation continues to grow. Additionally, adverse environmental and safety incidents are avoided.
