As a central hub of offshore development, the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM) offers an opportunity for companies to examine the monitoring capabilities of drone systems on deepwater production platforms. At a presentation hosted by the SPE Gulf Coast Section’s Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility Study Group last September, Balaji Ramachandran, an associate professor of geomatics at Nicholls State University, discussed the work being done by his department with operators and US government agencies to test drones in the inspection of offshore platforms and overall infrastructure monitoring.
Ramachandran said the drone sensors had several potential applications, both in visual-line-of-sight (VLOS) and BVLOS. In VLOS, they can help operators remotely monitor and inspect critical offshore infrastructure. They can also provide air pollution monitoring and monitor marine mammal and bird activity near a given facility. With BVLOS, they could help with onshore pipeline corridor mapping and monitoring, disaster response and recovery, oil spill detection, and facility security operations.
“We know a bit about the remote oil monitoring sensors. Everybody knows about optical, thermal, infrared, LiDAR [light detection and ranging], SAR [synthetic aperture radar], and so on. They are good. But then, we want to design something active. Can we put a dipping sensor on there, or a dropping or towing sensor, from the drone that goes and grabs the data? We’re putting the vision out there,” Ramachandran said.
For facility inspection, Ramachandran said the industry needs to develop and validate a standard operating procedure for the technical requirements and safe use of drone technology. This includes the testing of any additional sensors that are part of the inspection regime, as well as the geo- and time-tagging of images for archiving.
The Draganflyer X6 is a drone that Nicholls State has worked with for this purpose. It has a 335-gm payload, carbon-fiber body, and was equipped with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20, a 14.1-megapixel camera, for surveillance and real-time monitoring workflow.
Shell paid approximately USD 250,000 for use of the Draganflyer X6 over its Mars platform. The Nicholls State team performed a system review, double-checked the safety protocols, and submitted an application containing key plots and coordinates of the deepwater platform to the air traffic controller responsible for the necessary waivers. Ramachandran said the primary goal was to develop effective operating procedures. His larger goal was to develop a full-scale model using the drone that could, in time, gather useful data. However, in the initial stages of the project, Shell wanted it to capture high-resolution images of the flare stacks and any structural instabilities on the platform.
“What happens when you take a drone on? What happens to the battery? Is it safe? Can it fly? Potentially, in Phase 2 [of the project] we’d want to look at testing of the sensors. They were very happy if we could take an image, geotag it, time it, and put it into a report without turning off the production platform. That was a big thing for Shell at the time,” Ramachandran said.
The drone took several images of the flare stacks, subdecks, and other areas of the platform. Ramachandran said Shell was pleased with the results, even though the drone did not gather any quantitative data for study. The value of performing unmanned facilities inspections will become more apparent for operators looking to reduce cost and risk in the future.
“You can go up close without putting someone in harm’s way, and you can capture some of the images,” Ramachandran said. “Then, you can use image processing platforms to automatically pick those [images to review]. That’s what the second phase of the project is something I really want to do.”
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