The first ever oil and gas inspection by drone in the Gulf of Mexico for a leading global oil and gas service and drilling company has been completed by Houston, USA and London based provider of drone inspections services, Sky-Futures company.
The inspection is the first ever legally carried out in the Gulf of Mexico by a drone for the oil and gas industry. It comes just over 10 months after Sky-Futures received the 46th Section 333 Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Exemption Certificate to operate drones in the USA, and opened their first North America office in Houston, Texas.
The inspection scope requested by the client included the Derrick, a heli-deck and 4 cranes on a Drill ship and was completed in 2 days. Current inspection methods would have taken 17 days to inspect the same scope of work. Offshore, Sky-Futures provided a highly experienced crew consisting of an inspection engineer and remote pilot, who had both completed oil and gas drone inspection training at Sky-Futures specialist training center in the UK
The planning, execution and work flow was supported by Sky-Futures 5 years of oil and gas expertise delivering work offshore globally in the North Sea, Offshore Malaysia and in the Baltic Sea. This experience, including 1,760 hours of drone inspections delivered offshore in 2014, has seen Sky-Futures deliver work globally for leading companies such as Apache, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Statoil and Petronas.
Sky-Futures says that inspections completed by drone are safer, faster and more cost efficient than other inspection techniques used at onshore and offshore installations, including rope access and helicopter fly-bys. Inspections prevent personnel being put at risk and allow savings to be made by preventing unnecessary shutdowns.
Source & Image Credit: Sky-Futures
