A picture of an industrial drone undertaking a task that would have put a human in danger only a few years ago is something we all want to see.

And such dangerous jobs are common in offshore operations, where engineers and other professionals in the oil and gas industry has to climb some really unsafe heights to do their jobs.

Drone technology has come and put a stop to most of that, with a major oil field in Norway setting a permanent drone operation around its rig, in a move that has the oil and gas’ industry’s use of drones for safety inspections to a new level.

From a control room in Norway’s oil capital of Stavanger south of the country, pilots are performing drone inspections of the Edvard Grieg platform, whose location is some 180 kilometres into the North Sea.

The drone operation is a step toward fully autonomous inspections, requiring fewer workers to be sent offshore, according to its operator Aker Solutions ASA.

Flights inspecting oil and gas infrastructure are nothing new. It used to be helicopters in the recent past, with regulators and companies around the world deploying the manned aircraft to check for issues with infrastructure and to monitor leaks and spewing emissions around oil rigs.

But now drones are taking over, having been used for years in oil fields from the US to the UK.

The difference with the Edvard Grieg oil field, operated by Aker BP ASA, is different because it has a permanent docking station for a drone, which can examine a platform’s structural integrity, or monitor for emissions and leaks, by streaming live footage back to the control room onshore, the company said.

Data from the drone’s sensors are recorded and downloaded for artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to analyse.

“Instead of having a crew carry it on board the platform, then do the job, then take it back home again, the drone is always there,” said Joachim Hovland, head of drones and robotics at Aker Solutions.

“We no longer need to mobilise humans to go offshore to inspect the platform.”

Norway has been working to clear the airspace over North Sea rigs for drone use up and down its coast. Ultimately, Aker Solutions sees a future when the unmanned aircraft will fly on their own without being steered by remote pilots. 

Humans would pre-program flight paths for the inspections and one pilot would observe several drones at the same time.

Not too many at once, “because it needs to be done safely,” senior vice president Anja Dyb said.

“But that has a significant scaling opportunity as well,” he clarified.