Industry Solutions

Systems for the Pipeline Industry

An increasing number of new oil and gas reserves are being discovered in remote, inaccessible areas. As a consequence, long distance onshore pipelines will represent a greater proportion of field development costs. Innovation across all aspects of onshore systems is required to achieve economies comparable to those produced over decades of progress in offshore systems. The traditional concerns related to pipeline exploration, route survey, construction, and operation must also expand to consider security against terrorism as a fundamental design principle.

Technological advances leading to new platform concepts, new sensor suites, and new communications capabilities have the potential to significantly impact the onshore pipeline industry. Platforms range from unmanned aerostats and airships suitable for carrying instrumentation to medium altitudes for extended periods of time through fully buoyant and hybrid lift systems capable of transporting hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies over long distances. As these platforms are emerging from proof-of-concept demonstration phase to early stage production, it makes sense to build a systems level strategy for their adoption and adaptation to the specific needs of the pipeline industry.

Vehicles and other unmanned aircraft systems can be used in tandem to address the need for pipeline integrity assessment, encroachment detection and counter-terrorism surveillance of pipeline right-of-ways. Each mission requires different degrees of persistence, pervasiveness and spectrality that may dictate different platforms optimized for each mission, but linked to a common alert and response infrastructure.