The robots are coming, and they’re ready to go to work
BP and others are sending drones offshore to cut expenses and take humans out of harm’s way
This is the year BP will unleash a wave of robots into the Gulf of Mexico.
The British oil and gas major, as well as other Big Oil companies, are increasingly turning to aerial drones, underwater robots and magnetic spider-like crawlers to examine oil platforms and other offshore equipment for safety inspections and emergency response. Ultimately, that means replacing some of most dangerous offshore jobs with robots.
The goal is to become more efficient and lower costs, said Gordon Birrell, BP’s chief operating officer for production, transformation and carbon. Some companies eventually aim to run fully unmanned platforms, run by people working in control rooms miles away on land.
“As we automate, we will take people out of harm’s way,” Birrell said.
BP, like many industrial companies, is using technology to predict failures before they happen and make repairs to avoid shutdowns and catastrophes. BP, for instance, used its Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf as a pilot program for robotics inspections last year. The plan is to roll out automated safety checks to its Gulf operations and, if all goes well, take the effort worldwide.
Starlee Sykes said crawler robots, which move up and down offshore pipes and other metal equipment via magnetic connections, replace the need for rope-access technicians, who inspect equipment by hanging from oil platforms by ropes. The crawlers are controlled remotely by people now, but they’re being designed to operate independently through machine learning, in which computers use data to improve performance without specific programming.
BP is launching other new technology for the Gulf, such as its Wolfspar low-frequency seismic equipment that allows it to essentially see through salt formations in the Gulf and discover pockets of oil and gas underneath, potentially unlocking new reservoirs of energy in mature areas.
Other companies are turning to drones and robotics as well. Saudi Aramco unveiled its new SWIM_R — shallow water inspection and monitoring robot — for underwater inspection and safety tests. In Texas, the Austin company Drone Pilot is expanding its business from emergency response to energy, using drones to inspect everything from refineries to deep-water oil platforms.