Drone technology, integrated with 3D virtual modelling is a cost savings technique, and it also significantly vastly improves HSE and security perspective. The magnificent infrastructure and their parts in the oil and gas industry require a nearly consistent evaluation and maintenance.
Where manual evaluation of these big, mostly inaccessible structures takes months or weeks and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. A drone could deliver in a matter of days, at a fraction of the original cost.
For example, think about the maintenance of flare tip on an oil rig; high up, with a constant flame. Examining it for maintenance might require closing down the entire production pipeline and set up a crane to physically send out somebody for an evaluation. This is a pricey and prolonged operation, and obviously, the safety threats involved as well. On the other hand, a drone can fly in and record what’s wrong without sending out a human anywhere close, and provide information in much more details.
Another way this innovation saves time and money is the software’s ability to store and enable access and interrogation of evaluation and upkeep records. Frequently these large offshore jobs have various, disparate records associated with them. Without linking these records, money and time are lost on finding, replicating or combining reports. In addition, it’s now possible to create a digital twin of the whole structure, mapping all readily available info in a 3D location in a manner that engineers can instantly access the history of a rig’s repair.
