Offshore staff
ABERDEEN, UK – The Oil & Gas Technology Centre has issued updates on the 10 start-up companies it is helping to fund under its first TechX Pioneers program.
This provides access to specialists and oil companies and up to £100,000 ($127,000) in financial backing to each start-up, without the requirement for equity or payback. In addition, the developers retain all intellectual property.
Seven of the 10 finalists come from northeast Scotland; the others are based in London and Italy.
To date, seven have secured 14 different field trial opportunities with North Sea operators.
Historically, the Centre said, it has taken up to 15 years for new technologies to be accepted by the UK oil and gas industry, and as a consequence, failure rates for new start-ups have been above 90%.
However, the industry has been more receptive to new ideas as a result of the recent downturn in the oil price.
One of the TechX Pioneers, Tenzor Geo, has secured trials of its micro seismic technology with BP in the North Sea, with trials to be conducted at Aberdeen Harbour.
The company has developed a foam designed to soak up oil from spills: the oil can be recovered and the foam re-used.
Blue Gentoo has produced a hydrate management tool that reduces the volume of chemicals needed to prevent hydrates.
A North Sea independent has commissioned trials of Sensalytx’s software to manage data generated by fiber-optic downhole sensing systems.
Among the other Pioneers, Envio has developed shipment tracking technology, and RAB-Microfluidics has devised an oil conditioning monitoring ‘lab on a chip’ technology. Field trials are planned in both cases.
01/08/2019
