Revolutionizing Safety Inspections in the Oil Industry with Drones

(Bloomberg) — A major Norwegian oil field is taking the industry’s use of drones for safety inspections to a new level, with a permanently installed aircraft that’s operated remotely from the shore.

From a control room in Norway’s oil capital of Stavanger, pilots are performing drone inspections of the Edvard Grieg platform some 180 kilometers out at sea. The technology is a step toward fully autonomous inspections, requiring fewer workers to be sent offshore, according to its operator Aker Solutions ASA.

Flights inspecting oil and gas infrastructure are nothing new. Regulators and companies around the world have for years sent aircraft to check for issues with infrastructure and to monitor leaks and spewing emissions. Drones have been used for years in oil fields from the US to the UK.

Edvard Grieg, operated by Aker BP ASA, is different because it has a permanent docking station for a drone, which can examine a platform’s structural integrity, or monitor for emissions and leaks, by streaming live footage back to the control room onshore, the company said. Data from the drone’s sensors are recorded and downloaded for artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to analyze.

“Instead of having a crew carry it on board the platform, then do the job, then take it back home again,” the drone is always there, Joachim Hovland, head of drones and robotics at Aker Solutions, said in an interview. “We don’t need to mobilize humans to go offshore” to inspect the platform.

Norway has been working to clear the airspace over North Sea rigs for drone use up and down its coast. Eventually, Aker Solutions sees a time when the unmanned aircraft will fly on their own without being steered by remote pilots.

Humans would pre-program flight paths for the inspections and one pilot would observe several drones at the same time. Not too many at once, “because it needs to be done safely,” senior vice president Anja Dyb said. “But that has a significant scaling opportunity as well.”

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