Blue Ocean sees potential in glider
From a Subiaco office building, a technician takes the controls of a 2m-long rocket-shaped device cruising underwater off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
Operated by Blue Ocean Monitoring, the Slocum Glider has been surveying tailings piped out to sea from Newmont Mining's Batu Hijau copper-gold mine.
The just completed three-week program demonstrated a new market for an environmental monitoring service mostly targeted towards the oil and gas industry.
Blue Ocean chief executive Simon Illingworth said demand for the year-old company's four gliders was rising. A Singapore office opened this month and the firm was chasing work around the globe.
The technology was first used during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to monitor pollution.
Northern Star Resources chairman Chris Rowe, Mr Illingworth's colleague at Blue Ocean investor Padstow Partners, recognised the device's potential.
"He saw the commercial application and we started a project to commercialise this technology," Mr Illingworth said.
That happened through a tie-up with Ben Hollings, a University of WA-based expert in deploying the gliders. He is now Blue Ocean's chief operating officer and a shareholder.
Mr Illingworth said the $200,000 devices, made by Teledyne Webb Research, offered a cheaper alternative to remote-operated vessels for monitoring oil and gas pipelines for leaks.
With about half a dozen staff, Blue Ocean had a turnover in the low millions and only one known competitor globally.
"I'm not saying it's going to last forever," Mr Illingworth said. "But right now we're the biggest commercial operator of these gliders in the world."
He said the Blue Ocean investors had already fielded offers to buy the business. It would most likely be sold to a multinational within three to five years.
