Baku, Azerbaijan, April 15
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iranian expert says that the country has achieved self-sufficiency in building underwater drilling robots.
Head of underwater robots' research institute of Qazvin Azad university, Hatam Ghasemzadeh said that the country has indigenously made underwater drilling robots which can operate on a depth of 100 meters in Gulf waters, Iranian SHANA news agency reported on April 15.
He also recommended Iranian oil industry companies to use homemade robots for their drilling operations.
Ghasemzadeh went on to say that Iranian oil ministry has established a working-group for producing Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle (ROV) to take offshore drilling operations in the deep waters of the Caspian Sea.
In April 2012, Iran announced that it had become the first country in the Middle East to activate an oil exploration robot at a depth of 800 meters.
Managing director of Iran's North Drilling Company, Hedayatollah Khademi said the robot moved across the Caspian seabed and its main duty was opening and closing undersea valves that control oil gush.
The Caspian Sea basin is estimated to hold 17-33 billion barrels of oil, and 8 trillion cubic meters of gas. The Caspian region's proven and recoverable natural gas reserves are about 7% of the world's reserves.