Work Class ROV Market Expected to Grow to Over $2 Billion Per Year
A Triton XLX work-class ROV manufactured by Perry Slingsby Systems
Since 2003, expenditures on work-class ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) have more than tripled. The findings of a new market study “The World ROV Market Report 2008-12″ from energy analysts Douglas-Westwood Ltd (DWL) project further strong growth is expected over the next five years – leading to an annual market of some $2.4 billion per year by 2012. The majority of growth is expected from the offshore oil & gas industry as ROVs have become an essential part of offshore exploration and production.
Around a third of world oil & gas production came from offshore in 2008; a figure which will increase as rising oil price rises will enable some offshore fields, particularly in deepwater, to become economically viable. Also many onshore fields have now matured and therefore unlikely to see any significant increases in production. As such, any increase in offshore activity has a direct impact on the demand for ROV systems.
DWL estimates that, over the next five years, over 650 new work-class ROVs will be required to keep up with increased demand and attrition of the current fleet. The continued growth in the offshore industry will increase the amount of ROV operations during the 2008- 2012 period as the high levels of drilling activity and increasing installations of subsea wells, pipelines, control cables and other seabed hardware, all require the use of work-class ROVs. Moreover, this is increasingly happening in water depths beyond the economic reach of manned intervention.
The growth in the ROV market bodes well for Marport’s underwater sensing instrumentation – including DataSquid® – a new multi-function Attitude Heading Reference Sensor system that we plan to introduce to the ROV market during 1Q’09.
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