Canadian UAVs completes its first pipeline inspection
Published by Anna Nicklin,
Assistant Editor
World Pipelines,
Canadian UAVs and Lockheed Martin CDL Systems have completed their first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) pipeline inspections. The companies used the Lockheed Martin Indago 2 for the inspection, which took place at the Foremost testing range.
They successfully performed multiple BVLOS operations to inspect several pipelines, wellheads and powerlines. Canadian UAVs aims to provide technologies that ensure safe and economic data acquisition for oil and gas, as well as other industrial assets.
“It's a milestone our team has been working towards for years,” said Sean Greenwood, President of Canadian UAVs Inc. "Going BVLOS has technically been solved for some time with regards to powerful communications links and autopilot hardware.
“Canadian UAVs has been focused on creating an end-to-end paradigm in co-ordination with Transport Canada to conduct these operations outside of Restricted Military Airspace, where our customers have a substantial regulatory and logistical needs to acquire actionable data.”
John Molberg, Business Development lead for Lockheed Martin CDL Systems commented: “We are pleased that Canadian UAVs has selected our Indago 2 aircraft system with mobile ground control station as a solution for their commercial enterprise.”
Meanwhile, Beau Chaitan, Environmental and Regulatory Engineer MEG Energy, stated: “The ability to use BVLOS for UAV inspection and survey purposes would considerably increase safety, economic, and environmental considerations. As many of the assets and areas we are interested in surveying are located in regions of dense, muskeg and access is significantly limited. Using traditional techniques on the ground for performing integrity inspections on remote sites or conducting reclamation monitoring would require the construction of either winter ice roads, or extensive summer access. This is not only an expensive exercise, but it's also environmentally disruptive, as it creates numerous linear disturbances that potentially affect wildlife. BVLOS with a UAV is an improvement over performing inspections and monitoring with a manned helicopter as it is safer from a worker exposure point-of-view.”
Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/15032017/canadian-uavs-completes-its-first-pipeline-inspection/
You might also like
World Pipelines Podcast: UK pipeline perspectives
In this episode, we look at the work of the Pipeline Industries Guild, in facilitating connections and learning for pipeliners of all kinds in the UK.
Northwind Midstream Partners expands off-spec gas treating, gathering, compression and carbon sequestration system in Lea County, NM
Northwind Midstream Partners LLC has announced that it has constructed and put into service a large amount of high-circulation amine treating capacity, two acid-gas disposal and carbon sequestration wells, over 200 miles of large-diameter pipelines and 41 750 hp of compression across five compressor stations.
