Drones will help prevent oil spills in largest extracting company of Rosneft

RN-Yuganskneftegaz, the largest mining company of Rosneft providing about a third of all production of the company in September, 2019 announced open request for proposals on rendering services of monitoring of pipelines the Purchase No. 31908269202 unmanned aerial vehicles^[1]. The maximum amount which the company is ready to pay for service makes about 92 million rubles, and terms of its rendering are designated by the period from January to December, 2020.

Follows from the technical project that services need to be rendered in five regions of work of RN-Yuganskneftegaz. Flight of pipelines and well pads using mobile complexes of UAVs will allow to conduct monitoring of the interesting section regarding identification of pourings of pumped liquid, warehousing of household and construction debris, finding of the foreign equipment and persons in a security zone of pipelines, existence of places of the fires, etc., it is specified in documentation to a request.

Drones for monitoring of pipelines use also other enterprises of Rosneft, for example, RN-Krasnodarneftegaz (a photo - RN-Krasnodarneftegaz)

It is necessary to tell that against the background of the sizes of penalties which can be imposed on the companies for oil spills and also costs for recultivation after such incidents, the cost of services of monitoring by drones looks very democratically. For example, in 2016 directed to pay to RN-Yuganskneftegaz a penalty in the amount of 238 million rubles on liquidation of oil spill in KhMAO-Yugra^[2], and in 2018 the Nefteyugansk interdistrict this court obliged RN-Yuganskneftegaz to pay more than 70 million rubles of compensation for damage to the environment^[3].

It will be necessary to carry out monitoring and in real time, with transfer of visual information on an UAV complex radio channel on attendant workstation in the mobile unit of control of the drone and to provide a possibility of the subsequent data analysis, saved on the removable physical medium.

The detail of the aero facsimiles executed from the UAV should provide recognition of pipelines, well pads, motor transport and special equipment, personnel, spill of pumped liquid with the area of contamination more than 1 sq.m. Also recognition of primary signs of failure of the pipeline is required: a breaker, spouting, a deposit of snow and the soil, soaring, an iridescent film on a surface of the water, etc.

The UAVs necessary for RN-Yuganskneftegaz should be capable to perform flight tasks with transfer of the high-quality video image and deshifrovochny services of fotomaterialal in day and night time of day at a temperature from – 45C to + 45C, it is specified in the technical project. From the contractor it is required to render service and in rainy weather, and in the conditions of limited visibility at the lower bound of clouds it is not lower than 300 m, with a wind force at operating height to 15 m/s.

From the contractor it will be required to incur completely expenses on the maintenance of own repair depot, the equipment, delivery of the personnel and to provide its accommodation and a power supply.

Began to use drones to monitoring of pipelines RN-Yuganskneftegaz in 2015-2016. Provided data in Rosneft that due to use of UAVs the frequency of flight of the pipeline park was twice increased and costs in comparison with helicopter service are reduced by 30%. Besides, the efficiency of response to the reasons of deviations in the technology modes increased, control in security zones of trade objects is strengthened that allowed to reduce impact on the environment. In 2017, after efficiency analysis, RN-Yuganskneftegaz began to expand a territorial scope of use of drones.

Before service in monitoring of pipelines rendered to RN-Yuganskneftegaz the TsST companies which are based in Izhevsk (works under the Zala Aero brand) and Finko. Service contracts with them were signed on each platform separately, judging by information on the official portal of state procurements.

In September, 2019 the representative of a digital cluster of Sibintek - internal IT integrator of Rosneft, reported that their cluster develops the platform based on which it is going to render services using independent unmanned aerial vehicles (drones as service - drone-as-a-service, DaaS). Sibinteka could not comment quickly on TAdviser whether the company is going them to submit the proposal on a request of RN-Yuganskneftegaz. By estimates of a digital cluster, the potential size of the park of UAVs for her customer can be more than 500 devices.

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