TDI-Brooks’ newest vessel R/V Miss Emma McCall has recently completed its first projects for the U.S.-based marine data acquisition services company on behalf of Total and Cairn Energy offshore Mexico. TDI-Brooks has the vessel on a long-term bare-boat charter from Cameron Offshore Boats.
The 2003-built Miss Emma is a multi-use oceanographic research vessel outfitted for a wide variety of oceanographic research duties for operations in the Northern/Southern Gulf of Mexico (GOM), U.S. East Coast and elsewhere in the Americas. The vessel is equipped to acquire geophysical surveys for offshore hazard/site clearance assessments, pipeline/cable routing, seafloor mapping, port and channel conditions, fisheries habitat mapping and burial assessment studies. She is also well suited to perform geotechnical sediment and seabed coring/CPT for wind farm and LNG port facilities, pre/post excavation dredging. The Miss Emma McCall encompasses satellite communications (voice, fax, and email), differential GPS, geophysical survey gear and two A-frames with high-speed winches.
The Miss Emma McCall was recently mobilized to Mexico to complete two EPOS projects in Mexico for Total in Blk. 2 (Perdido) and Capricorn Energy Mexico (Cairn Energy) in Blk. 9 (Sureste Basin). The Block 2 EPOS program was in deepwater (~3,300 m) offshore northern Mexico, while the Cairn project was a shallow water project in the Gulf of Campeche.
According to TDI-Brooks, these were the first EPOS programs completed in Mexico in the COVID-19 work environment. In order to minimize risk and avoid local quarantines at Mexican ports, TDI-Brooks mobilized Miss Emma McCall from Texas to conduct this program on a 25-day cruise leg with short, restricted port calls in Tampico for inward and outward clearances.
The cruise acquired more than 45 sediment and more than 22 CTD-water stations in these blocks. Sediment sampling involved box core (BC) acquisition which included photographic documentation of the seafloor at each site (see below) with a benthic camera attached to the BC. The box core sediments were subsampled for macroinfauna, meiofauna, sediment chemistry and redox profiles.
At each sediment site for the deepwater study, sediment profile imaging (SPI) and planar photography was also conducted with TDI-Brooks’ Ocean Imaging Systems SPI.
At selected water column sites CTD/water/rosette casts were acquired. On the deep water program, plankton nets were also deployed and lowered ADCP measurements were acquired to measure current profiles.
In the past three years, TDI-Brooks has acquired 19 EBS or EPOS programs in Mexico for eight major oil and gas firms all safely and efficiently without any incidences. The company teams with Maxon Consulting who provides the regulatory and interpretative reporting components