Offshore Technology Reports

As a proud member of the CLS Group, Horizon Marine, Inc. (HMI) provides data-driven metocean forecasting for the offshore energy industry to improve situational awareness, reduce downtime, protect the environment, and enhance safety. Utilizing state-of-the-art technologies to acquire and analyze oceanographic data, we map, model, and forecast oceanographic features that can delay current sensitive operations, damage equipment, and threaten both personnel and the environment.

The offshore industry has various current thresholds for safety and equipment performance. Currents exceeding 1.5 knots often suspend critical deepwater operations until the threat passes, and due to the high cost of these operations, downtime incurred while “waiting on currents” can be extremely expensive. Our three core services: EddyWatch®, SurveyWatchSM, and RouteWatch® provide site-specific, regional, and underway forecasting support of offshore activity ranging from seismic surveys to drilling, field design to installation, and optimal relocation of industry assets around the world. HMI’s services leverage technologies that allow our skilled analysts to convert data into actionable information that ultimately reduces our clients’ exposure to risk.

Established in 1982 as an oceanographic services company, Horizon Marine initially tracked Gulf Stream eddies, measured storm-induced currents offshore Alaska, and tracked hurricane-intensified currents in the Gulf of Mexico, providing valuable data for equipment design purposes. When the offshore industry ventured deeper into the Gulf of Mexico and encountered persistent ‘Loop Currents’, HMI seized a remarkable opportunity, shifted its focus to the Gulf in 1984, and started EddyWatch®, a unique real-time monitoring and forecasting service geared towards the offshore industry.

The Loop Current (LC) and LC eddies (oceanographic features unique to the Gulf) often exhibit surface current velocities as strong as 4.0 knots. Unfortunately, during the early EddyWatch years, oceanographers were starved for in-situ ocean current data to make credible nowcasts and provide useful forecasts of these features. In 1985 HMI developed a cost effective means to observe ocean currents utilizing a small, lightweight GPS drifting buoy. These buoys have since become indispensable for characterizing ocean circulation and ground truthing remotely sensed satellite data in the Gulf and other regions.

Outside the Gulf of Mexico, EddyWatch regions include the offshore waters between Trinidad and Brazil. RouteWatch® leverages EddyWatch and other global datasets to provide routing recommendations, allowing clients to take advantage of favorable currents and avoid adverse currents to significantly reduce fuel consumption and decrease voyage duration.

HMI now occupies a small but vital niche as a service company capable of supporting a 24/7/365 industry. Our steady growth is attributed to enhanced services and the explosion of deepwater activity worldwide. Our proprietary buoy data is unrivaled and our EddyWatch reports and online mapping interface are utilized by all deepwater operators to aid in planning, improving operational efficiency, and reducing exposure to downtime.

HMI’s support of massive platform installations, pipelay and seismic operations, complex subsea construction, deep well drilling, and response efforts during the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico caught the attention of Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), and in April 2015, HMI became a member of the CLS Group, a subsidiary of the French Space Agency (CNES), the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), and the investment company ARDIAN. As a subsidiary of CLS, Horizon Marine is now part of a larger family of companies with broad expertise, a wide range of resources, and a global footprint. 

Horizon Marine, Inc.
15 Creek Road
Marion, MA 02738
USA

Tel: +1-508-748-1860
Fax: +1-508-748-1525
Email: horizon@horizonmarine.com
Web: www.horizonmarine.com