Drones and crawling robots outfitted with special scanning technology could help wind blades stay in service longer, which may help lower the cost of wind energy at a time when blades are getting bigger, pricier and harder to transport, Sandia National Laboratories researchers say…
Brent oil rallied above $65 per barrel on Friday and was on track for a 5% gain this week on fears of a U.S. military attack on Iran that would disrupt flows from the Middle East, which provides more than a fifth of the world's oil output.Brent crude was up $0…
UK-based asset integrity firm ICR has acquired drone inspection company Sky-Futures Partners. ICR says the acquisition facilitates the next phase of ICR’s inspection service offering. Sky-Futures has eight years of experience in 28 countries…
Two Belgian companies - Aerospace industry supplier SABCA and DEME Offshore - have formed a partnership to use drones for inspection services in the offshore wind energy industry.SABCA, a leading tier 1 aerospace industry supplier and DEME Offshore…
Missions—it’s all a question of missions. The mission decides the payload, battery capacity, size and processing power of an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV. King among these is payload, from which market disruption is just waiting to happen…
At BP's massive Thunder Horse oil platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, a dog-sized robot called Maggie uses magnetic tracks to creep along pipes connecting the giant oil facility to the sea floor. Before MaggHD, dubbed 'Maggie' by BP, the dangerous inspection…
2017 became the year that the oil and gas industry embraced robotics. Elaine Maslin reports on initiatives in the North Sea (first published in the January 2018 OE, access the full issue here). While the industry has long been using autonomous underwater systems and remotely operated tooling…
A series of trials in the North Sea to test non-intrusive inspection (NII) techniques have shown that they can offer similar results to traditional intrusive methods. Non-intrusive inspection technologies could mean operators do not have to shut-in equipment…
Upstream has fallen behind its “poor cousin” downstream in terms of performance, according to Simon Flowers, Chairman, Energy and Chief Analyst, Wood Mackenzie. “Over the last six years (2010-2016), upstream has had shocking performance…
Elaine Maslin examines the market for wave and tidal, and reports on industry efforts to drive down costs and eventually scale up. A Tocardo device, supported on a Damen-built “UFS,” at Hatston Pier…
Trondheim, Noway-based Blueye Robotics has developed an underwater drone called Blueye Pioneer, which the company says allows shipowners, vessel crew, and shipyards to perform hull inspections without the need of divers or ROVs (remotely operated vehicles)…
General Electric’s (GE) investment arm GE Ventures on Tuesday announced the startup of Avitas Systems, which will use predictive data analytics, robotics, and artificial intelligence to deliver advanced inspection services to the oil and gas…
BP has launched a 'return to growth' for its North Sea business after marking first oil from the Quad 204 project, west of Shetland on the UK Continental Shelf. Quad 204 is redevelopment of the 1 billion barrel plus Schiehallion and Loyal fields…
An Ocean Power Technologies' PB3 PowerBuoy has been deployed off the coast of Kozu-shima Island in Japan as part of its first lease agreement with Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding (MES). The PB3 was shipped to Japan in February and arrived in Tokyo on 18 March…
Subsea wireless automation provider WFS Technologies, and marine rental equipment specialist Seatronics, demonstrated drone-to-remote operated vehicle (ROV) wireless communications at a Subsea Internet of Things event in Houston. The…
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