THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 19, 1996 TAG: 9608170491
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 79 lines
As big as an aircraft carrier, this submarine would creep under the Arctic ice cap.
It would be a 1,000-foot-long tanker that would collect oil or natural gas from undersea wells in the Arctic Ocean and deliver it to ports around the world.
It sounds like a gee-whiz idea out of the pages of Popular Mechanics. But Norfolk-based Heflin & Williams is helping study the feasibility of the ambitious proposal.
Werner Offshore Inc., a Florida-based company, hired Heflin & Williams, a marine engineering consulting firm, to serve as technical advisors.
The Maritime Administration first floated the idea of an oil tanker submarine back in the 1970s as a way to tap the vast oil reserves under the ice-capped Arctic Ocean.
``Technically the answer was yes, it could be done,'' said Dan Heflin, partner in Heflin & Williams. ``Expense-wise the answer was no, and environmentally the answer was hell no.''
To make it work back then the sub would have had to have a nuclear propulsion system, Heflin said.
The idea was shelved.
But since then marine engineers have developed a non-nuclear propulsion system that doesn't need fresh air - a closed-cycle diesel combustion motor.
The need for new sources of fossil fuels has not abated as the world economy has opened up. The demise of the Soviet Union and the reduction in military threat also lowered the risk of sharing and commercializing many technical secrets.
``The logical question arose again,'' Heflin said.
Herbert Werner, Werner Offshore's chairman and chief executive, wanted to see if the tanker sub might be possible now.
Heflin & Williams hosted a week-long mini-conference at its Monticello arcade offices in January to kick off the study.
The conference brought together experts in undersea technology from around the United States, Great Britain and Russia.
At one point Heflin realized he was sitting across the table from the Russian sub architect who was designing the very subs that would track and hunt the subs he helped design for Newport News Shipbuilding.
``Let me be very clear, there were no technology transfers involved in this meeting,'' Heflin said.
The meeting involved clarifying the submarine's mission and laying out design requirements for an oil tanker sub and a natural gas carrying sub.
The sub is being designed by Russia's Lazurit Central Design Bureau, which designed the Soviet Union's military submarines.
Heflin & Williams is advising Lazurit in its feasibility study for Werner Offshore. The consulting firm is making sure Lazurit is familiar with all the regulations and requirements for commercial shipbuilding.
``We were not telling them how to do it, but we were telling them what they needed to do,'' Heflin said.
Heflin & Williams will also review Lazurit's designs for Werner Offshore.
The feasibility study and initial design work is now underway and should be completed early next year, Heflin said.
``It's technically feasible,'' he said. ``It's within the state of the art to thread the needle. The question is whether you want to do it, whether it's cost-effective to do it.''
If it can be built, a tanker sub, arguably, might be safer to the environment than a surface tanker. ``The submerged environment involves a great deal less stress than the surface environment,'' Heflin said.
The vessel would be crewed by 15 to 30 people, much like a surface supertanker.
Unlike military subs, which listen with passive sonar and try to avoid detection, a tanker sub use active sonar to paint the environment around it, so it would know where everything is.
``A military sub is stealthy,'' Heflin said. ``We want this beast to announce itself to the world.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by COURTESY HEFLIN & WILLIAMS
Herbert Werner, CEO of Werner Offshore, center, receives a model of
the tanker submarine from Stanislav Lavkovsky, chief designer of
Russia's Lazurit Central Design Bureau. At left is James Burritt, an
associate with Heflin & Williams. At right is Oleg Edelev, deputy
chief designer of Lazurit. by CNB