As part of a framework agreement with Dubai Petroleum, Cyberhawk was appointed to inspect more than 350 risers on 63 offshore platforms. The inspection took only one month to complete, followed by the production of over 90 detailed engineering inspection reports, the Livingston, Scotland-based company said.
The rationale behind Dubai Petroleum’s use of UAVs was to quickly complete detailed inspections of all their risers. Risers are traditionally a difficult area of an offshore platform to inspect; in the under deck and the splash zone, options for access, such as abseiling or scaffolding, are limited, extremely time consuming and very expensive.
Using UAVs as a scanning tool, the high-quality reports produced by the Cyberhawk team allowed the client to plan contact-based inspections or repairs. Additionally, now that a full inspection has been completed on all risers, defects can be tracked over time to understand their long-term degradation, the company said.
Daily reports were produced to notify Dubai Petroleum of potentially serious defects, with detailed inspection reports produced thereafter by Cyberhawk’s oil and gas inspection team.
On the same project, an additional three elevated flare stacks and 24 bridges were inspected, maximizing the value of the mobilization, Cyberhawk said in a statement.
