1.
The Key Principles of Asset Integrity Management
2.
7 Ways Drones Improve Asset Integrity Inspection Process in Oil & Gas
2.1.
Cost-Effective Structural Health Monitoring
2.2.
Streamlined Asset Condition Assessments
2.3.
Early Issue Detection
2.4.
Safer Offshore Rig Inspections
2.5.
Data Collection for Digital Twins
2.6.
Ongoing Environmental Monitoring
2.7.
First Emergency Response
3.
Drone-Led Asset Integrity Inspection Shaves Costs and Increases Safety
Global oil and gas infrastructure is immense. The United States alone has almost 2M miles (or 3,2M km) of oil and gas pipelines. Over 12,000 offshore rigs and platforms are spread out across the globe. Time of service, environmental impacts, and chemical exposure continuously wear down these assets. One crack in the pipeline goes unnoticed — negative publicity emerges in the news outlets.
That’s why governments and regulators mandate regular asset integrity inspections — the process of testing and analyzing the structural health and efficiency of oil and gas assets. However, as everyone in the industry knows, such assessments are often cumbersome and expensive to initiate regularly.
Remote location, potential hazards, and lack of trained personnel are the common reasons asset owners postpone integrity inspections. Soundly, there’s a solution to that. Purpose-built inspection drones reduce the complexity, costs, and duration of integrity testing and inspection in the oil and gas industry.
Asset integrity management (AIM) is an operational process for ensuring longevity, extended service life, and reliable performance of industrial assets in the petroleum industry. AIM closely aligns with strategic organizational goals, ensuring maximum return on investment over the whole asset lifecycle and operational risk reduction.
The benefits of having an efficient asset integrity management practice are:
Asset integrity management programs follow a set of guidelines set out by the PAS 55:2008 standard. This standard incorporates and expands requirements from ISO 14001 for environmental management and ISO 45001 (which replaced OHSAS 18001) — for safety management.
PAS 55 defines 28 explicit requirements, listed across 6 categories, within the quality management Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) framework:
Act: Address any inefficiencies and continually improve the AIM strategy.
A key component of your overall strategy is an asset management plan. It should describe specific activities, timelines, resources, key players, potential risks, and their mitigation steps. The AIM plan provides details on all stages of the asset lifecycle:
Your asset management strategy should also specify measurable criteria on the expected performance, service levels, and conditions of assets. You will actively reference it during inspections to monitor deviations and take timely corrective action.
Asset owners have the right to select the optimal method for asset integrity inspection. The standard doesn’t have restrictions on test types or methods. Here are some options you can combine:
Certification guidelines and standards vary depending on the test you choose and the asset you inspect (e.g., ISO 16961 for testing coating of storage tanks, ISO 19901-8 for offshore structures).
Although necessary, asset integrity inspections aren’t always performed due to high-resourcing requirements. The New Mexico Environmental Department in the US had to admit that it doesn’t always have enough inspectors to inspect the scope and the number of facilities under their jurisdictions. Oil & gas companies, in turn, are facing the rising costs of regular inspections and maintenance, growing upwards of 9% per annum.
Commercial inspection drones help mitigate personnel shortages and optimize testing costs and times. Drones can access remote offshore locations, survey kilometers of pipes, and perform contact-based work at height to collect data for condition-based monitoring.
Regulations stipulate regular assessments. Piping must be inspected every 5 years (API 570), and storage tanks — monthly (STI SPP001). Because of the assets’ size, most managers must commission expensive equipment (planes, cherry pickers, scaffolding construction, etc). With hundreds of assets, the bill gets big.
Inspection drones eliminate the need for bulky equipment. Compact, nimble, and cost-effective, UAVs can survey miles of piping for structural damage and perform non-destructive testing inside storage tanks. The operator stays on the ground (cue greater safety) while collecting more comprehensive data about corrosion, cracks, and leaks using sharp imaging sensors and specialized payloads.
Voliro T, for instance, collected thickness measurements on the walls, roof, and floor of large storage tanks in Switzerland and Australia. By generating 200 corrosion readings per hour and performing 5-10 tank inspections daily, we saved the asset owners over 400 working hours (and corresponding costs) for scaffolding installation and dismantling.
The National Drilling Company (NDC) in UAE also uses drones to test seawater tanks, rig legs, and helidecks in offshore structures, reducing inspection time from a week to just one day. NDC saved resources on scaffolding installation and tank ventilation, reporting a process efficiency improvement of almost 700% post-adoption.
Visual inspections alone cannot always give conclusive data on the assets’ condition. Some defects may be subsurface or hidden by the protective coating. Modern inspection drones come with specialized payloads for performing non-destructive testing, from ultrasonic and eddy-current testing to acoustic emission and dry film thickness measurement with magnetic induction. Voliro’s high-temp UT probe, for example, can assess asset conditions even at 260°C operating temperatures, meaning you can safely inspect in-service flare stacks, chimneys, or fire suppression rings.
To give you an idea, Voliro T helped Bilfinger, a US-based maintenance vendor, to measure the wall thickness of more than 400 large industrial assets. Packed with UT/EMAT probes, the drone reliably detected corrosion and material degradation, saving the asset owners 24 days of work and approximately $165,000 of budget.
Drones with NDT probes provide accurate data on the precise location of cracks and leaks. You can also identify loss of hardness, wall thinning, and residual stress. Pulsed eddy-current probes, like the one offered soon by Voliro, can measure wall thicknesses through insulation at any height. Ultrasonic transducers, in turn, can detect cracks and pores as small as 0.2-0.05 mm. Using these findings, you can determine the remaining life of your assets and plan repairs or replacements proactively.
Drones provide high-fidelity measurements even on small asset components. Osprey Integrity, a Canadian inspection company, needed equipment to measure corrosion levels on a fire suppression ring. Voliro T mounted with an EMAT probe provided 30 detailed readings and prevented berm modification needed for cherry-picker access.
Offshore rigs and platforms operate in open oceans. Perdido platform, for instance, resides 200 miles (321.8 km) from the coastlines of Texas, USA. The Hibernia platform is located 196 miles (315 km) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Remoteness and harsh weather conditions further complicate offshore asset inspection.
UAVs can significantly improve the safety and accuracy of inspections by reducing the need for human involvement and streamlining data collection. Shell, for example, employs both above- and underwater UAVs to collect information about their offshore asset conditions with higher frequency. Equinor also uses drones for visual oil rig inspections in the North Sea and even completing logistical flights between the mainland and the rig for spare parts delivery.
Advanced visual sensor systems allow drones to collect ample photogrammetry data for 2D/3D model construction. Some of the best drones already include software for automatic asset scanning and digital replication with high precision, helping asset owners create digital twins. Moreover, operators can monitor asset performance and condition by combining drone footage with real-time data from mounted IoT sensors. Chevron, Shell, Petrobras, and ConocoPhillips are already among the digital twin adopters.
Continuous monitoring is a prerequisite for preventive maintenance, proven to reduce the frequency of Turnarounds (TARs) and Shutdowns, Turnaround, and Outages (STOs) in the oil and gas industry. Given that half of all shutdown turnarounds are delayed by more than 20% and 80% go over budget by more than 10%, these can lead to substantial savings.
The oil and gas industry does not have the best reputation for being environmentally friendly. As of 2020, the gas sector contributed about one-fourth of all European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions. Thousands of spills take place annually in U.S. waters over the past fifty years.
Governments continue to tighten the regulations, which usually leads to more mandated inspections — costly and labor-intensive. To comply with environmental regulations, operators enlist drones. HD and thermal cameras can detect the location and severity of leaks, streamlining maintenance crew dispatches. And new sensing technology is helping companies better track methane emissions.
TotalEnergies, for example, uses drones equipped with ultralight CO2 and CH4 sensors for inspections. The collected data and subsequent improvements helped the company reduce emissions by half between 2010 and 2020. Marathon Oil Corporation used drones with leak detection cameras and lasers to inspect well pads. Since 2019, the company has reduced methane emissions by ~20%.
Oil or gas leaks can occur at any time, and it’s important to assess the extent of the pollution before sending rescue crews. Drones, equipped with thermal scanners, cameras, and sniffer sensors, can identify the spill’s characteristics, allowing the team to select the optimal mitigation strategy and equipment.
The American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been using drones to inspect water surfaces and shorelines since the beginning of 2024. Before sending first responders to the scene, they track an oil spill’s precise location and direction. Chevron partnered with NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other government agencies to further advance emergency inspections. They simulated oil leaks and demonstrated the value of aerial testing both offshore and on land, in the daytime and at night.
Drones are no longer just photography gimmicks. Enterprise-grade inspection drones feature advanced computer vision-based systems, specialized testing tools, and the latest generation of visual, infrared, and electrochemical sensors. Compact, durable, and powered by AI-assisted autonomy, inspection drones help companies collect richer asset information for a fraction of the cost.
Versatile solutions like Voliro T can perform different types of inspections at a time, thanks to interchangeable payloads. You can select EMAT probes for corroded and dirty surfaces, UT probes for deep-seated defects, and PEC probes for corrosion under insulation. Inspection tasks that used to require a crew and a chartered plane can now be performed from the ground by one operator.
