As the main economic driver for the countries of the GCC, the oil & gas industry is of critical importance to the region. Ensuring that energy facilities and infrastructure are secure and operating properly is an essential task for organizations operating in the sector.
Monitoring essential assets such as drilling sites, pipelines, shipping terminals and offshore platforms is especially challenging when sites are at sea, or in remote and inhospitable locations such as deserts. With recent threats against oil and gas facilities and related infrastructure, however, the ability to provide constant surveillance and monitoring of sites has become more important than ever. In addition, the pressure of low oil prices has put more impetus on the need to be more efficient, and companies are looking for new ways to optimize processes and control costs.
Aviation has long provided a solution to the challenge of how to monitor remote facilities, as well as for surveying, transport and other tasks. The first aircraft flight in the Gulf region, was reportedly undertaken in 1911 by an oil company engineer looking for a more efficient way to survey pipelines. More recently, energy companies have been looking for less expensive, less manpower intensive solutions for monitoring, and increasingly autonomous systems – drones – have become the solution of choice for the role.
Autonomous systems, such as the family of solutions developed by Boeing, bring advanced capabilities that help oil & gas companies to perform ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ missions monitoring assets on land and at sea. Autonomous systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vessels (USVs) not only reduce the risk and workload for personnel, but also enable greater awareness and better information through the deployment of advanced sensor equipment, which provides the same or even better information than having field teams on the ground.
Autonomous systems also make it cost-efficient to provide continuous monitoring of sites and assets, no matter how remote.
Boeing subsidiary Insitu is a pioneer in high-performance, cost-effective UAVs. Founded in 1994, Insitu has built more than 3,000 UAVs for a global customer base that spans more than 25 countries, and Insitu platforms have logged nearly 1.3 million flight hours operating over land and sea.
The standout features of Insitu’s UAV platforms, which include the ScanEagle and Integrator series, are runway independence and payload flexibility. The ability to operate fixed-wing UAVs without the use of runways is among the most valued capabilities for operators. Insitu pioneered the use of runway-independent, fixed-wing UAVs nearly two decades ago, via the use of a pneumatic launch catapult and a patented SkyHook recovery system, which uses a mast rigged with a rope and bungee cables to capture the UAV mid-flight. This equipment enables launch and recovery operations from small clearings on land as well as from ships – even ships that are not equipped with a flight deck.Â
Insitu’s platforms also offer payload flexibility – the ability to quickly and easily change payloads for each drone, and to integrate new types of payloads when new technologies become available – the Integrator UAV got its name from its ability to easily integrate new payloads.
All of Insitu’s platforms are designed to support plug-and-play compatibility with a variety of payloads, including those from third parties. This payload flexibility means operators can deploy a range of different monitoring technologies and other capabilities, ranging from traditional electro-optical and infrared video cameras to communications relay, synthetic aperture radar and wide-area motion imagery among many others.
For example, ScanEagle UAVs can be equipped with ViDAR (Visual Detection and Ranging) payload, which works like an optical radar to automatically detect objects on the surface of the ocean. ViDAR can detect a person in the water at more than 1.5 nautical miles away and large ships at more than 30 nautical miles away. The United States Coast Guard has utilized ScanEagle ViDAR since 2017, and in that time, the system has supported the detection and seizure of more than $4 billion worth of illicit cargo.
While Insitu’s UAS are being deployed to monitor from above the earth, Boeing subsidiary Liquid Robotics is extending capabilities to the oceans. The revolutionary Wave Glider is an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) that is able to operate for extended periods, powered only by clean energy sources.
The Wave Glider consists of two parts; a floating surface platform that houses the solar panels and communications antennae, and a sub-surface unit with sensors that operate beneath the waves. The two components convert wave motion into propulsion by leveraging the difference in motion at the ocean surface and below. The solar energy system powers sensors, communications, and enables a thruster propulsion system that provides additional navigational agility and thrust for challenging ocean conditions.
This unique power system allows Wave Glider to stay at sea for extended periods, using just solar and wave energy for operations, including 24/7 real-time data transmissions, without producing any emissions that are harmful to the environment. This operational longevity, combined with an open sensor and payload architecture, is opening up new areas for missions using WaveGlider, including uninterrupted monitoring of sea conditions, low-profile surveillance of maritime borders and assets, or long-term research into the marine environment.
Autonomous systems are helping oil & gas organizations to monitor their mission-critical assets for longer, cover more area and provide more immediate, actionable knowledge – making for smarter systems, safer missions and more efficient operations.
