Drones flying off into brighter offshore future

With COVID-19 still a concern and climate change being a major talking point all around the world, drone operators and innovators are trying to test and push the limits of usefulness of drones in the offshore industry both here and now and in the future.

To just state an obvious definition of a drone and say that it is an unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV and move along is too simplistic and uninformative.

Most of us, when we think of drones, either picture a photographer taking wedding pictures with a small remote-controlled drone or maybe see an image of something meaner – like the US Air Force’s Predator and Reaper drones.

The truth is we would all be right, including the people that picture the types of drones which stand somewhere in between.

Before we get into types of applications, it’s worth looking into types of drones out there.

The best way to do it is by design. The easiest distinction is between multirotor drones which fly using two or more rotors and fixed-wing drones.

When covering the offshore oil and gas application of drones we will focus primarily on the multirotor drones. Such drones, usually with four or six rotors, are often used for industrial work like inspections which is rather commonplace in the oil and gas industry already. They also do aerial data collection for mapping.

We will not discuss fixed-winged drones since they are the type that lift-off and land like aeroplanes making them unsuitable for offshore use in most cases.

But there is one similar model which we must mention and which we will come back to later on as it will probably be of most interest to the oil, gas, and maritime industry in the years to come.

That model is the fixed-wing hybrid VTOL – short for “vertical take-off and landing” drone, and their use is gaining traction in the UAV delivery market. Or, they just might become air-taxis in Dubai.

If you take a good thorough look into what drones to, the question becomes what CAN’T they do?

There are drones which are designed in such a way that they fit only one purpose. Parrot’s Bluegrass is an agricultural drone, they detect problem areas in different types of crop fields with its multispectral sensor.

There are several models of construction, surveying, and mapping drones – some became synonymous with its field by chance while the Phantom 4 RTK is the ruler of the drone surveying and mapping world by design.

IGNIS is more an attachment for drones that drops small spheres of glycol to start controlled burns in fires and the Beebop-Pro is used for thermal imaging in firefighting.

The one the offshore oil and gas industry and most other similar industries care about are the ones similar to the Elios 2, a specially designed inspection drone. Such a drone is cased in a cage allowing it to crash with obstacles while in flight without harm. An ideal tool for inspecting tight, hard-to-reach spaces.

It could be said that purpose-made ones are not so ingenious when you consider what others were modified to do.

If drones helping police in Kazakhstan patrol and monitor illegal border movement is not impressive, how about stopping a swarm of locusts from destroying crops? Yes, that’s a thing too!

Certainly, drones were useful during the hardest times of the COVID-19 pandemic. We got to see just a little glimpse of how much they could be of assistance.

By now, everybody has been affected – in one way or another – by the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, social distancing, curfews – you name it and some country probably used it as a measure to try and contain the spread.

Namely, many companies had issues with COVID-19 positive crew members and many other problems regarding lockdown measures.

Some of the cases of coronavirus appearing on remote locations include Equinor’s Martin Linge field, Hurricane’s Aoka Mizu FPSO, or the Diamond Princess cruise ship which was one of the first offshore vessels with a major outbreak of the virus, etc.

Reducing human contact sounds easy from here on land but offshore, not so much. To assist with the problem F-drones late last month completed the first beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone delivery in Singapore to a ship managed by Eastern Pacific Shipping.

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The drone’s task was to deliver two kilograms of vitamins over 2.7 kilometres, a task completed in seven minutes.

Although the weight is small it is important to say that BVLOS flights to vessels are rare and according to F-drones, there are only a handful of operators which conduct commercial BVLOS drone deliveries.

Delivering anything to a vessel or a platform during, let’s say, a pandemic would be problematic. A helicopter could do it but it is a small and a rather crowded place and, like an offshore supply vessel, presents a great social distancing problem.

But the package is too small. Right? A massive vessel, rig, or platform can’t possibly have use of such a small parcel? Can it?

Allseas’ giant Pioneering Spirit offshore construction and decommissioning vessel, and one of the largest vessels on the planet in any category, was the test site for drone delivery last month.

The 382-meter-long and 124-meter-wide vessel, with a capacity for 570 crewmembers, received an even smaller package to test the capability of drones as an “effective means to quickly and efficiently deliver materials to vessels”.

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The test involved the delivery of small parts which can be swapped without the arrival of additional technicians.

Dutch Drone Delta, Allseas, and the Port of Rotterdam Authority were responsible for the test with the port attempting to become “the safest port to fly”.

Stephan van Vuren, one of the people behind the Dutch Drone Delta initiative, said at the test: “The sky’s the limit when it comes to using drones in the port area. Incident prevention and control, for instance; or water pollution; firefighting; monitoring port operations or damage.

“Other examples include everything from systems and bridge inspections, construction and maintenance of infrastructure, and deliveries to ships and oil rigs, to the rapid medical transport of blood and human organs“.

Furthermore, he stated that we soon might be seeing heavy freight deliveries and passenger transport, and he is not far off.

Notably, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is trying to get its PrimeAir delivery service off the ground while we already discussed passenger transport with air-taxis. Meaning that van Vuren is just looking slightly ahead.

Before looking ahead with him, we will first take a look at the here and now. Namely, what do drones do right now in different offshore industries?

After that, we will come back to a key part from the statement – heavy freight and the future of drones offshore.

Drones are not new in the offshore industry. They have been used for quite a few years in several sectors of the industry as tools for maintenance and inspections.

The offshore oil and gas industry is one of the sectors benefiting from this kind of UAV use. Companies like Sky-Futures, Cyberhawk, Bluestream, Skeye, and classification society DNV GL have been using them in surveys and inspections on offshore installations for a while.

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Some oil majors have more faith in UAV than others and a shining example of that faith could be Italy’s Eni which hired Sky-Futures to be its facility inspector on a global scale.

To put it in perspective, Eni is one of the largest operators worldwide in the energy sector and operates in 66 countries.

Other offshore sectors easily found uses for UAVs as well.

Last year, Aero Enterprise performed its first offshore wind turbine inspection using an in-house developed helicopter drone while the ORCA Hub unveiled fully autonomous drones that can inspect offshore wind infrastructure.

Earlier this year though, ESVAGT, Siemens Gamesa, and Ørsted teamed up to research the potential of using drones for delivering spare parts and tools to offshore wind turbines.

We have already mentioned F-drones and its BVLOS delivery and it can be a prime example of drones being used in the maritime industry.

A similar shore-to-ship delivery trial was conducted last year by Wilhelmsen Ships Services and Airbus. During the trials, Airbus’ Skyways drone carried payloads of up to 4 kilograms and navigated autonomously along pre-determined aerial corridors to vessels as far as 3 kilometres from the coast.

Worth noting, drones also entered the maritime sector through the inspection of enclosed ship spaces.

So, if we use them already and tests are being done to increase their worth to the offshore industries, isn’t the time for drones already here?

One could argue it is. But there is a step into the future. Maybe even a leap if drone development stays on course.

So, let’s meet the drone heavyweight in the making – the Hyperlaunch Heavy.

Now we have come back to van Vuren’s “heavy freight” statement and what the final question of the drone delivery exam is: How far can this go?

Truth be told, no one knows. But someone has an idea of what the next step is and has a timeline for it.

Last month, the Gulf Agency Company (GAC) partnered with F-drones to develop large-scale drones that can deliver up to 100 kilograms of supplies over 100 kilometres to vessels and offshore platforms.

Apart from GAC and F-drones, the project is also being supported by Eastern Pacific Shipping, the Schulte Group, Techstars, Port XL, Entrepreneur First, and Hafniat.

Now, lets recap first. We mentioned a delivery of two kilograms of vitamins to a vessel, a small lightweight part to the ‘Pioneering Spirit’, and “up to four kilograms” in the Airbus drone test – all across relatively small distances.

Quite a leap from what we have covered so far. However, the sole idea behind the founding of F-drones was to create a heavy payload VTOL drone which will take-off vertically, fly like a fixed-wing aircraft, and land on a moving target. To not make the task any easier, the design is fully electric.

As a concept, everything is possible. But, how far along is the project?

Currently, F-drones’ is testing its third prototype capable of handling items up to 5 kilograms over 50 kilometres.

The previous prototype was able to fly only five kilometres, and if tests go as planned, the next-generation drone, capable of flights ten times longer, will be ready in the second half of this year.

With Singapore’s first BVLOS drone delivery permit, F-drone is now scaling up commercial deliveries with an off-the-shelf drone as well.

After the third prototype drone is ready, the company will be heading for the finishing line. It will be looking towards the second half of 2021 when it is expecting the development of the Hyperlaunch Heavy to be completed.

Advantages of such a drone, with a large range and heavy load capabilities, were not lost on Lars Bergström, GAC Group VP for the Asia Pacific & Indian subcontinent regions, who last month said: “When fully commercialised, drones can be an attractive alternative to launches and helicopters for delivering supplies to vessels, especially for on-demand deliveries”.

Being fully electric, drone solutions in F-drone’s pipelines are well-timed. Energy majors are always the go-to companies to blame for the increase in carbon emissions. And certain oil and gas majors are making moves to make themselves net-zero companies.

BP already announced its move to become net-zero by 2050, just like Shell and Equinor. The latter two, along with France’s Total are also moving forward with the Northern Lights project aimed to enable the transport of carbon dioxide captured from industrial sites in Norway and its storage in a reservoir below the seabed in the North Sea.

Companies in other industries are even looking to become a carbon negative company like IT giant Microsoft.

In light of these moves towards a lower carbon footprint by not just the energy giants but the world as a whole a fully-electric, long-distance, heavy load drone could be just what the doctor ordered.

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With no large amount of manpower involved, no fuel necessary, zero CO2 emission, and high velocity, drones have all the conditions to beat all on-demand delivery options.

Finally, one thought only comes to mind: are we going to see more and more drones around oil and gas rigs and platforms, wind turbines, and large vessels?

With everything previously said it is clear that it is just a question of when will drones be absolute commonplace everywhere, not just offshore.

They will be air-taxis, they will get you your order from Amazon delivered in a flash, massive ones in development will even rescue you.

https://youtu.be/0c1_xpjNw2c

So, doing all that and sending a package to an oil rig falls under the same conditional sentence – it is doable if they are let loose.

For now, we as observers and participants in the offshore industry need to sit back and wait to see who will be the first to ‘knock it out of the park.’

Just to keep it suspenseful, Griff Aviation is developing a drone that can lift and transport 800 kilograms – let us keep an eye out for that one too.

Drone companies are moving quickly, maybe too quickly for different industry regulators to keep up.

But one thing is certain, with the need for different cost-effective and environmentally friendly options pushing innovation – a brighter future is coming for offshore drones.