Deepwater wins AMPP 2025 award
April 11, 2025
Our CP retrofit team had the honor of receiving the 2025 'AMPP Outstanding Engineering in the Area of Materials Protection or Remediation' award at the AMPP Annual Conference + Expo in Nashville for their work on the Who Dat offshore semisubmersible platform. Who Dat is owned and operated by LLOG.
LLOG Exploration’s Subsea Engineer and Project Manager Colin Reid, Deepwater Corrosion Services’ Engineering Manager Sami Abu Zahra and Deepwater's Head of US Projects Colette Brogna-Nichols accepted the award during AMPP's Honoree Night on Wednesday, April 9.
Earlier that morning, the group – joined by Deepwater's CTO, Matthew Taylor, Ph.D – participated in a panel discussion of the project. Matthew has provided a summary of the Who Dat retrofit in the section after this.
Our other award winner at the conference was Deepwater EU's Michael Jones, Ph.D, who received a 3rd place finish for his student poster contest entry, 'Examination of simulated polarization curves within a comprehensive mechanistic model of CO2 corrosion.' Michael, based at our London office, is a valued member of Deepwater's corrosion modeling team.
In addition to the awards, Deepwater's presence included a presentation on offshore CP retrofit case studies (SACP vs ICCP) by Deepwater's founder – and always engaging speaker – Jim Britton.
We'd like to congratulate not only all of our AMPP honorees, but every one of our colleagues whose hard work each day makes Deepwater a truly remarkable organization.
An overview of the award-winning project
Floating in 945 m (3,100 ft) of seawater, the 20 ICCP anodes protecting the Who Dat offshore semisubmersible platform were failing at an increasing rate and would soon leave the asset defenseless against underwater corrosion. Many floating offshore assets were built with off-the-shelf shipboard impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) systems. On ships, they are replaced every 3-5 years during dry-dock and often fail before the asset's end of life. Deepwater rapidly designed, fabricated and installed a guided-tension ICCP system to protect the structure. Only two systems were required for full protection, which was verified and optimized with computer modeling during the design phase. Similar to the RetroSAM™, a suspended anode module that protects FPSOs, the guided tension system is easily retrievable topsides for inspection, maintenance, or replacement without the need for subsea intervention. Costs and complexity were further reduced by novel installation tools and the re-use of existing power supplies. The ICCP retrofit was designed and installed in record time, heading off any consequences of the old system’s imminent failure. Sharing in this honor is the team at LLOG, the forward-thinking asset owner/operator of Who Dat. They presented this project to much interest during the 2022 "Deepwater Operations Conference" in Galveston, TX. Here's a link to the Who Dat retrofit's case study on our website.
