Deep Sea Anchors for Offshore Installations

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It might look like a giant arrow or a rocket, but this 13 metre-long, 80-tonne anchor is currently being tested as a new mooring concept for offshore installations.

Entrepreneur Jon Tore Lieng is the man behind the new “Deep Penetrating Anchor.” His story shows how an idea conceived at SINTEF, combined with drive and persistence, can bring good, cost-effective technology to the market.

In the 90s, when petroleum production began moving towards deeper waters, Lieng was a geotechnologist with SINTEF. He envisaged a better solution than the box-like suction anchors of the time that were placed on the seabed. These are open at the bottom and function by pumping out the water inside, thus creating a vacuum that pulls the anchor into the substrate so that it holds solid. However, the need to carefully orient such anchors, and their sensitivity to high seas and waves, makes for problems when they are being deployed, in many cases involving delays that can cost millions a day.

Jon Tore Lieng thought that the simplest concept would be to drop a sufficiently heavy anchor straight down into the sea. If it was heavy enough, and moving fast enough, such an anchor would force its way into the seabed and create and extra powerful hold.

Science Daily