TAMU Center to Manage BSEE Institute
The five-year agreement provides $5 million in funding from the federal agency overseeing offshore oil and gas operations, with three Texas universities participating.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's director, Brian Salerno, announced Nov. 7 that the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center has been selected to manage the Ocean Energy Safety Institute. Dr. Sam Mannan, Regents Professor and director of the institute, joined him for the announcement in College Station, Texas.
The five-year agreement includes $5 million in funding from BSEE, and it involves three Texas universities -- A&M, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas. The goal is to provide a forum for academia, government, industry, and other non-government organizations in offshore technologies and activities that help ensure environmentally safe and safe offshore operations.
Salerno and BSEE Chief off Offshore Regulatory Programs Doug Morris toured some of the facilities at TEES before the announcement, including the Offshore Technology Research Center, which can provide large-scale simulations of the effects of wind, waves, and currents on offshore structures; and the Tower Lab, a 140-ft tall multiphase flow loop "for the investigation of steady-state and transient flows in pipes and testing of production engineering equipment, including production logging tools, downhole pumps and multiphase flow meters," according to BSEE.