Japan's Mitsui Ocean Development Co., Ltd. (MODEC) and fellow drone and urban aerial mobility (UAM) technology company Terra Drone Corp. have signed an agreement to enhance drones for inspection of offshore oil and gas floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, enabling unmanned inspections that will reduce the number of laborers needed for such work.
Following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed on November 7, 2023, which allows MODEC to continue to use Terra Drone's drone technology to measure the hull thickness of crude oil storage tanks of FPSOs currently operating in Brazil, the two companies have signed a joint research and development agreement to introduce advanced drone technology to FPSOs with the aim of improving safety, reducing labor and streamlining inspection operations.
While the introduction of drone technology has reportedly reduced the need for working at height and made the inspection process safer, the two Japanese companies believe that further optimization of drone inspection technology is essential to overcome the harsh working environment of offshore assets. Given the current implementation and efficiency issues of hull thickness measurement, crew-operated inspection work has yet to be fully replaced by drones.
Furthermore, MODEC and Terra Drone believe that maintaining asset integrity is critical to safely operate offshore platforms such as FPSOs for more than 20 years. Although regular structural inspections are essential, there is a constraint that inspection work must be performed in parallel with production operations by a limited number of crew members, and manpower constraints are a common challenge across the industry, the companies noted.
With this at the forefront, the Japanese duo aims to completely replace manual inspection of crude oil storage tanks with drones in the near future by innovating drone inspection technology, tripling inspection efficiency and reducing inspection costs. Furthermore, they hope to deploy drone inspection technology on FPSOs operated by MODEC and across the industry.
This is expected to contribute to solving common industry challenges such as occupational safety and manpower reduction in offshore platform operations. As a result, MODEC and Terra Drone claim that they can contribute to the sustainable operation of FPSOs and other offshore platforms from environmental, economic and social perspectives.
The new contract between the two companies comes just months after the two companies received the world's first approval from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for using drones to measure FPSO hull thickness.
Recently, MODEC and JGC Corporation completed a project to measure and quantify emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases (GHG) from two FPSOs off the coast of Brazil.
