Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. announced that the Company has signed an agreement with Premier Oil to study the feasibility of using the PB3 PowerBuoy for decommissioning operations in the North Sea. The contract outlines work that will determine the viability of using the PB3 for monitoring and guarding remaining wells and subsea equipment after removal of a floating production, storage and offloading vessel and prior to subsea decommissioning and/or well plugging & abandonment operations. The PB3 would primarily be used to provide site monitoring and surveillance to prevent vessel intrusion and disturbance of remaining subsea infrastructure. The study will also evaluate the PB3's ability to monitor well pressures and temperatures by connecting to subsea control modules. This added functionality could allow more precise planning and prioritization of plugging and abandonment activities by giving accurate real-time information on well integrity, while also enabling PMO to provide regulators with higher quality information on well conditions. During the study, OPT will work closely with Premier Oil's other subsea equipment suppliers to produce a design to integrate their equipment into the PB3. If the feasibility study is successful, the next step could be to prove the solution through a North Sea trial deployment in 2018.