A Total-led consortium of petro-giants has brought in US wave energy device developer Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) to progress a project to use remote-controlled zero-carbon renewable marine energy to improve the economics and environmental impact of production from deepwater oil fields.

The Texas-based DeepStar project – which is backed by majors Chevron, CNOOC, Equinor, ExxonMobil, JX Nippon, Occidental, Petrobras, Shell, and Woodside – aims to explore using an OPT PB3 PowerBuoy as a means of powering and controlling subsea oil & gas production equipment on fields in water depths from 1,000-3,000 metres.