| Press Releases - July 2005
July 28, 2005- Oceaneering Announces Record Quarterly Earnings
July 27, 2005- New Research Project to Test Autonomous ROV Technology in Kona
July 15, 2005- Siem's Subsea 7 Wins 200 mln nkr ROV Contract from Statoil for Visund Field
July 13, 2005- BP Teams To Assess Listing 'Thunder Horse' Oil Platform
July 12, 2005- ROV Searches Lake Superior for Sunken Coast Coard Vessel Mesquite
July 6, 2005- OceanWorks delivers Mardi Gras Fluid Injection System Operated Via ROV Control Panel
July 4, 2005- $50B Worth of Wood Awaits Underwater Harvester With ROV
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Current Press Releases
Date: July 28, 2005
Organization: Oceaneering International, Inc.
Oceaneering Announces Record Quarterly Earnings Earnings Increase Nearly 40% Sequentially and 35% Year-Over-Year
Houston, TX - Oceaneering International, Inc. today reported record earnings for the second quarter ended June 30, 2005. On revenue of $236.0 million, Oceaneering generated net income of $14.7 million, or $0.55 per common share. For the first quarter of 2005, Oceaneering reported revenue of $210.7 million and net income of $10.6 million, or $0.40 per common share.
The sequential increase in quarterly earnings of approximately 40% was largely attributable to improved performances from the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), Subsea Products, and Inspection segments.
For the second quarter of 2004, Oceaneering reported revenues of $194.7 million and net income of $10.9 million, or $0.43 per share. The year- over-year quarterly growth in net income of about 35% was primarily due to increases in ROV, Subsea Projects, and Inspection operating profits and equity income from the Medusa Spar.
John Huff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Results for the quarter continued to demonstrate the benefit of our technical, niche-market business strategy focused on providing deepwater services and subsea products. We achieved record quarterly net income and exceeded the guidance for the quarter given in late April and the average street estimate. Each of our business operations achieved results better than anticipated, led by a best- ever ROV business segment profit performance.
"When compared to the first quarter of this year, operating income from our ROV business improved due to a worldwide escalation in demand for our services, as reflected in our record 81% fleet utilization, and an improvement in average pricing per day-on-hire to an all-time high. Additionally, during the quarter we announced that we would invest $20 million to build 12 new vehicles by year-end, increasing our industry-leading fleet size to approximately 180 vehicles. Three of the 12 vehicles were in service at the end of June.
"Subsea Products operating performance improved due to a higher profit contribution from our Oceaneering Intervention Engineering operations, particularly on sales of subsea valves and ROV tooling. At the end of the quarter we acquired Grayloc Products for $42 million to expand our specialty, niche-market products offering. Grayloc is the leading oil and gas industry supplier of high-performance clamp connectors used in production manifold, flow line, and valve installations.
"At the end of June our Subsea Products backlog improved to $112 million, up from $91 million at the end of the first quarter. Based primarily on our anticipation of receiving pending umbilical contract awards, we expect our backlog will grow during the rest of this year, setting the stage for a substantial increase in this segment's profitability in 2006. We expect that our Panama City, Florida umbilical facility will be capable of manufacturing steel tube product around the end of the year.
"Inspection operating income increased due to the continued success of our efforts to secure higher value-added work and the benefit of cost containment initiatives taken last year. The profit contribution from Subsea Projects remained at a high level during the quarter due to the strength of overall subsea activity in the Gulf of Mexico. In the first half of 2005 we have already earned more operating income from these two segments than in all of 2004.
"Based upon our overall earnings performance in the first half of this year and our expectation of achieving improved second half results, led by our ROV and Subsea Products segments, we are narrowing our EPS outlook for 2005 to a record $2.00 to $2.20. For the third quarter, we estimate EPS of $0.55 to $0.65, with the amount of EPS increase over the second quarter largely contingent upon the results of our umbilical manufacturing operation.
"Given our assessment that demand for our oilfield products and services will continue to escalate, we believe 2006 EPS will be in the range of $2.40 to $2.70. This growth is anticipated to be driven by profit improvements from Subsea Products, particularly our umbilical manufacturing operation, and our ROV service business."
Date: July 27, 2005
Organization: Physics, Materials, & Applied Mathematics Research, LLC
New Research Project to Test Autonomous ROV Technology in Kona
Kailua-Kona, HA - (By Ron Baird, NELHA) - The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), an agency attached to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, has signed on a new research tenant: "Physics, Materials, & Applied Mathematics Research, LLC" (PM&AM Research) from Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Kevin Kremeyer, Project Principal, is expanding his company's work to the state of Hawaii by establishing a company presence at NELHA.
The main emphasis of PM&AM Research activities in Kona will be to develop and test novel sensors and autonomous, remotely-operated vehicles (ROV) for use in land, sea, and air environments. These mini-ROV are designed to carry sensor packages for data collection, imaging, and processing. In the ocean, these capabilities can be used to inspect pipelines and other structures that may be too dangerous or costly for human divers to inspect.
Immediate applications of the mini-ROV may include assaying ocean conditions and populations, mapping the ocean floor, and visualizing fish farms with their associated structures. The company is currently seeking projects and partners in Hawaii use the expertise and capabilities at PM&AM Research.
The NELHA site was selected for the company's Hawaii branch office because of its ocean access and the large variety of new applications being explored by the agency's tenants every day. One of the most attractive elements at NELHA was the site's combination of resources and potential collaborators in ocean applications; renewable energy; and the production of healthful water, salt, and other nutritional products. PM&AM Research hopes to assist companies optimize and export healthy products, and emphasizes its company's environmentally sensitive priorities of stewardship and remediation. Several areas of special interest are: monitoring and preserving aquatic species; mitigating invasion by foreign species; identifying and neutralizing unexploded ordnance; and monitoring and improving environmental quality.
Dr. Kremeyer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his PhD in Physics at the University of Arizona, where he worked in the Optical Sciences Center, developed carbon nanostructures and plasma diagnostics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and wrote his dissertation in the Applied Mathematics Program, measuring and modeling intricacies involved in the solidification of salt from aqueous solution. He also obtained post-doctoral appointments in Applied Mathematics, studying fluid flow, shock waves, and lasers/plasmas. Dr. Kremeyer founded PM&AM Research in 1998 to serve the scientific research and development needs of U.S. industry and government, specializing in lasers and sensors, and building platforms to support field-tests, applications, and research.
"In Tucson we have built up 6,000 square feet. divided into office space; laser facilities; robotics/vehicle-development facilities; two high-bay areas for staging; and four electrostatically-grounded laboratory rooms," he said. "The facility is further equipped with computational resources; vacuum and coating chambers; materials processing/preparation stations; and optical characterization, microscopy, and spectroscopic facilities. Our most recent addition is a highly specialized diagnostic called a scanning electron microprobe, which allows both imaging and elemental analysis on very fine spatial scale. Because of our facility clearance, we are able to perform these services for any customer in the U.S."
In addition to its contract work and internal R&D, PM&AM Research is also engaged in outreach and education to train the next generation of researchers and workers in these applied sciences.
"Our educational projects facility in Tucson provides high school and university students (U.S. citizens) the resources to learn how to design, build, and operate various platforms," Kremeyer said. "Our goal and aspiration is to develop comparable capabilities on the Big Island. We have also been extremely active in developing local sections and outreach programs for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), of which we're now a corporate member. These outreach activities are important for the community and the country, and they are also fun and rewarding for us."
In keeping with its outreach tradition in Arizona, PM&AM Research has already initiated an educational project at NELHA involving an intern from Rice University. A mechanical engineering major from Kamuela whose two major areas of interest are robotics and fluid dynamics, Marvin Kawano (Hawaii Preparatory Academy Class of 2001) is assisting PM&AM Research with a NOAA-funded project to develop a platform and laser-based sensor for quantifying the population of invasive/fouling species in ballast water.
PM & AM Research has a one-year, annually renewable agreement to rent office space at NELHA from May 2005 through April 2006.
Date: July 15, 2005
Organization: Statoil ASA / Subsea 7
Siem's Subsea 7 Wins 200 mln nkr ROV Contract from Statoil for Visund Field
Oslo (AFX News) - Statoil ASA said it has awarded Siem Offshore Inc's Subsea 7 a contract worth about 200 mln nkr to provide remotely-operated vehicles to the Visund field for three years. The contract includes three options for two-year extensions.
It has also included Subsea 7 as one of four companies with which it has signed frame agreements for ROV services on mobile drilling rigs.
These four agreements are also each for three years, with three two-year extensions and have a total estimated value of close to 1.5 bln over the full nine-year period.
Date: July 13, 2005
Organization: BP
BP Teams To Assess Listing 'Thunder Horse' Oil Platform
 Gulf of Mexico (AFP) - BP has sent teams to fix its 'Thunder Horse' oil platform, which has been listing since Hurricane Dennis hit the Gulf of Mexico, the British oil giant told AFP.
The platform, located 150 miles (250 kilometres) southeast of New Orleans, was slipping by around 20-30 degrees following the passing of the storm, but no injuries or leaks were reported. Dennis has however killed at least 62 people, the majority in the Caribbean.
"We have people working on the platform since yesterday (Tuesday)," BP spokeswoman Julia Yakimova said Wednesday. The teams "are getting ready to start the pumping operations" to restore the platform to its normal status.
Thunder Horse was in development and due to start production at the end of 2005.
"We are still investigating the case to find out what was the precise cause of the problem," Yakimova said, adding: "We don't know when the problem is going to be resolved frankly."
An underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle) inspection "revealed no damage to the whole of the platform", while observation teams had concluded that "the platform is stable".
Workers were evacuated from all Gulf of Mexico oil facilities last Friday before Dennis struck, but have since begun returning to work after most infrastructures escaped its impact.
Thunder Horse is 75-percent owned by BP and a quarter-held by US oil giant ExxonMobil. It was to have with an eventual output of 250,000 barrels per day of oil and 5.7 million cubic metres of natural gas.
BP currently produces more than 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the area -- about 7.5 percent of the group's total daily production.
Meanwhile, the region was braced for another possible hurricane as Tropical Storm Emily roared across the Atlantic, just days after Dennis killed people in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and the southern United States.
Date: July 12, 2005
Organization: Pier Wisconsin
ROV Searches Lake Superior for Sunken Coast Coard Vessel Mesquite
 (Houghton, MI) By Kelly Fosness, Daily Mining Gazette - With a crew of 16, a captain and a 137-foot, three-masted schooner, local residents set sail on a week-long educational voyage on Lake Superior Monday.
Organized through Pier Wisconsin of Milwaukee, which is the operator of the ship, those aboard the Denis Sullivan will act as crew while learning to sail the vessel.
Jeff Phillips, operations manager for Pier Wisconsin, said the trip isn't necessarily designed for adventure, being that the vessel is reminiscent of 19th century schooners prominent in the Great Lakes during that time period. He said it's not "your typical margarita cruise."
"Once you're on the boat, there are a lot of responsibilities," he explained. "All the sails have to be raised by hand. There's a lot of physical labor, the decks have to be cleaned and because you're sailing 24 hours around the clock, someone has to be on watch at all times. It's like camping only you're in the water."
Also during the week, participants will engage in a variety of lectures and demonstrations on Great Lakes maritime heritage, water ecology, resource conservation and Lake Superior history.
Evan McDonald, executive director of the Keweenaw Land Trust, said the program was a wonderful opportunity for the Keweenaw Land Trust to get involved.
"Part of our mission is to educate the public about the value of land resources and how land resources are important for the health and quality of the lakes," he said. "This will be a nice opportunity to educate people about how land and water are connected."
Among the sites the crew will visit include Bete Grise, Manitou Island, Isle Royal and the Apostle Islands.
McDonald also mentioned they would visit deep water areas of the lake, conducting water samples while looking at environmental conditions at various depths of the lake. They will also have on board, a remote-operated vehicle that has a robot submersible with a camera which will enable them to view the lake bottom.
One item the crew is hoping to find is the U.S. Coast Guard vessel the Mesquite, which sank of the Keweenaw point years ago.
McDonald said he was looking forward to the voyage.
The Denis Sullivan sits along the dock in the Portage Lake Shipping Canal Monday. The crew is preparing the schooner for several educational journeys on Lake Superior this month.
Date: July 6, 2005
Organization: OceanWorks International, Inc.
OceanWorks delivers Mardi Gras Fluid Injection System Operated Via ROV Control Panel
(OilOnline) - OceanWorks International, Inc. has delivered a Fluid Injection Skid to Mardi Gras Transportation Systems Inc., for use in commissioning the Okeanos and Cleopatra pipeline. This project presented a unique technical challenge by requiring large volumes of fluid to be transported to the seabed in water depths of up to 7,200 fsw and transferred into pipeline jumpers in a controlled manner.
The Fluid Injection Skid incorporates two custom manufactured 2,200 gallon bladders which are used for supplying and receiving the glycol fluid. The system is operated subsea via a ROV control panel, and a 100 GPM pump is used to transfer the fluid. The Fluid Injection Skid also includes integral foldout mud mats to spread the load when landed on the seabed, and a water jetting system installed in the lower skid can be operated (if necessary) to reduce the effects of seabed suction when recovering the unit after use.
OceanWorks delivered the turnkey system in just under 4 months, on schedule for the planned offshore operations, and in compliance with all of the client's quality requirements.
Date: July 4, 2005
Organization: Triton Logging
$50B Worth of Wood Awaits Underwater Harvester With ROV Slick new system operating in B.C. lakes can salvage one submerged log every seven minutes
Lois Lake, B.C. (By Larry Pynn, CanWest News Service) - On a remote reservoir on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, trees are being invisibly cut beneath the water's surface in what might be the most unusual yet environmentally friendly logging of all. Josh Chernov sits at the helm of the Sawfish, a remotely operated vehicle equipped with a steel-jawed grapple and wicked-looking chainsaw that's used to log soaking wet standing timber left behind during the flooding of the Lois Lake reservoir for hydroelectric power.
"It's like a big video game, for sure," says Chernov, seated in a darkened air-conditioned room while operating two thruster controls and watching a series of camera, sonar, and global position system monitors. "Lot of fun and very challenging."
When Lois Lake was flooded, in 1931 and again in 1941 to create hydroelectric power to drive the mills near Powell River, no one envisioned that decades later someone would invent a contraption to go back and harvest timber left beneath the water's surface.
But that's exactly what Triton Logging, based in Saanichton on Vancouver Island, has done -- and they have economic visions that extend well beyond the Sunshine Coast.
The company estimates there are 45,000 reservoirs globally representing $50 billion in potential wood, including $1.5 billion in B.C., that are ripe for the harvesting.
Triton president Chris Godsall used to salvage logs submerged in fresh-water lakes around old booming grounds, but four years ago launched Triton with $2 million from a group of 35 investors.
"The Sawfish is a marriage of marine technology and forestry equipment," he explains. "This is a whole new resource that we're tapping into that was thought to be lost."
Underwater logging has been around since at least the 1970s, involving everything from divers hauling hydraulic chainsaws ("Very slow and dangerous, and still done in developing countries around the world," says Godsall) to industrial teeth-pulling operations where trees are yanked from the lake bottom, creating a silty environmental mess.
How does Sawfish work?
A small crane situated on a barge offshore is used to lower the ROV into the water, with a tether containing all the wires required to operate the hydraulics.
That's when Chernov takes over navigation in the control room. When he singles out a tree on the lake bottom, the Sawfish gives it a bear hug with the steel grapple, employs a drill to attach one of 37 air bags to the wood, inflates the bag, then cuts the log free with a 1.3-metre chainsaw.
What makes the Sawfish different is that it leaves the root system in the lake, as well as the independent airbag system that allows the ROV to move on to the next tree immediately. It doesn't have to resurface after each cut.
Since Triton launched its prototype at Lois Lake in the summer of 2003, the Sawfish has been cutting a tree about every seven minutes it is engaged, with a goal of three to five minutes.
The logs are a combination of western red cedar, Douglas fir, western hemlock, and white pine, mostly young trees as a result of a fire that swept through the area 80 years prior to the flooding of the reservoir, but with some old-growth specimens that survived the blaze.
Individual trees may stand more than 30 metres tall, their heads periscoping above the surface. Triton is mainly interested in the 12 metres that has been fully preserved below the surface. The company pays salvage stumpage rates to the B.C. government of just 25 to 75 cents per cubic metre. The whole logs -- the company recently sold 21 to a homeowner in California -- must be shipped to a special microwave kiln in Squamish, B.C., to wring out all the water.
John Nelson, an associate professor of forestry at the University of B.C. who specializes in long-term forecasting of forest management, says underwater logging in the past tended to flourish when log prices were high and volumes low.
"With so much mountain pine beetle wood up there that's dirt cheap standing, it's tough to compete on the underwater side," said Nelson, while noting Triton's Sawfish is "definitely the slickest system" he's seen.
"It's a good concept. I don't think it can do much harm."
Alan Shaw, provincial tenures officer for the Sunshine Coast forest district, confirmed that underwater logging operations have come and gone over the years. "People have tried it before, but I don't know how profitable it's been," he said.
For more information, visit www.tritonlogging.com and to see video of the vehicle in action visit the Discovery Channel here.
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