A team of researchers, engineers and submariners tested on Monday, near the Port of Leixões, a prototype of a submersible which could lower the price of oil exploration at great depths.
Coordinated by the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering (INESC TEC), University of Porto, prototype development is a partnership “in consortium with several companies and with the invaluable collaboration of the Portuguese Navy,” he told Lusa Alfredo Martins, a researcher at INESC-TEC and professor at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP).
be around 1,300 kilograms and the size of a small car utility, the submersible allows market applications to civil and military levels, both under the “mining, evaluation of conditions for oceanography and biological or military applications”, as well as independent and cheap exploitation of oil deposits.
Called for now, the “Turtle”, English word for turtle , the prototype can be controlled to the maximum distance of eight kilometers by a laptop computer equipped to perform readings sonic waves.
“It is increasingly important, since Portugal is responsible, especially now with the expansion the continental shelf, by a very wide area of the ocean floor, “considered Alfredo Martins, underlining the sinking capability of the equipment up to a thousand meters deep, which in the future could approach the” average four kilometers that has the Atlantic Ocean ” .
According to the researcher, the “Turtle” is still relevant in that “nowadays there is a lot of oil exploration at great depths, as in the case of Galp in Brazil with operating two thousand meters, and this type of technology allows operate at these depths with reduced operating costs. “
The sharp cut in underwater exploration costs, mineral exploration, monitoring and marine life analysis and even measuring seismic activity It is explained mainly by high autonomy prototype, apart from cheap production – so held in series -. exempting “the usual kilometers of cable and structures to the surface involving”
The security applications, defense port or tracking vessels on the high seas with discretion are also valences of the submersible that captivated the attention and support of the Portuguese Navy.
“Lets go down autonomously and energy efficiently and, once placed in the background, can be reprogrammed to move to a new location without having to return to the surface, which greatly reduces costs, “explained the researcher.
This” first depth submarine designed and developed entirely in Portugal ” It was tested on the same day that the National Authority for the Fuel Market (TNGC) announced that it has invested over 236 million euros between 2007 and 2013, in the search for oil in the country.
Between the main actors on the ground to invest are Partex (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), Repsol, Eni and Galp. According to José Miguel Martins, the TNGC, quoted by the weekly Expresso, “more than half of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) [Portuguese] has oil potential.”
The project that gave rise to the “Turtle” It had its genesis in the European Defense Agency program [European Defence Agency], or EDA, and was “one of six out of 70 projects at European level” whose support was approved in conjunction with a national funding reimbursed by the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF)
“Basically, what the EDA does is say, ‘this project won and deserves to be funded.’”, said Alfredo Martins, just before analyzing the data collected during the test carried out the collaboration of the Portuguese Navy and stressing “the ambition to provide the country and the national economy tools to exploit the deep sea Portuguese, which is vast.”
They are also scheduled two new tests with the Portuguese submersible with the cooperation of the Portuguese Navy for the month of October and another with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) by the end of the year.
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