Inspection/maintenance
SPE's new Asset Integrity Technical Section brings together industry experts to advance best practices in reliability engineering, asset integrity, risk reduction, and infrastructure performance. The global community will focus on the safe, reliable, and sustainable operation of energy assets across both traditional and emerging energy sectors.
The latest edition of ISO 20815 extends the petroleum industry's production assurance and reliability management framework to carbon capture, hydrogen, ammonia, and wind assets.
Shell has demonstrated drone-in-a-box operations from its Mars floating production unit, becoming the first operator in the region to secure FAA approval for self-approved offshore beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights. JPT Senior Technology Editor Jennifer Pallanich visited Shell Technology Center Houston to see the system in action.
-
Wearable computers are turning heads in the oil and gas industry and appear to be on a trajectory for widespread adoption. -
Ground sensors on assets over a broad area have limited returns on investment if the asset life cycle is less than 10 years, and obsolescence of the technology if it exceeds 10 years. Complementing sensors with aerial remote sensing at scale may help to mitigate these issues.
-
BHGE opened its largest Customer Solutions Center globally for its inspection technologies business.
-
Advanced AUVs with early-stage technologies for live streaming, ultrasonic testing, and 3D laser scanning are set to enter inspection trials on North Sea facilities. The aim is to reduce facilities inspection costs by 50%.
-
An 18-month project will develop and trial a mobile robot for autonomous operational inspection of Total facilities.
-
The digitalization of oil and gas facilities is becoming a new technical arena. Effective solutions can be used to convert data into information and knowledge, which can then be used to improve maintenance operations.
-
Intel and Cyberhawk released a case study outlining the successful inspection of a gas terminal near the coast of Scotland using commercially available drone technology.
-
Operators need to take steps to protect their facilities from drone security breaches by outsiders. The costs an attacker incurs in developing tools to break into and control infrastructure is low compared to the costs an operator incurs in defending against those tools.
-
AUVs aren’t limited to inspections and pipeline surveys. Deployment of a flotilla of AUVs to work on a project, and the communication among them, may someday lead to a subsea Internet of Things.
-
Current methods for external inspection of floating assets on station use divers or remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), but these methods incur high safety, people-on-board (POB), and cost penalties. New methods to eliminate diving are being developed.
