Remote inspection and intervention

The global demand for oil and gas remains high and will do for the foreseeable future. However, the industry is facing a number of challenges, including the struggle to retain production levels and access reserves that are often in extremely demanding environments. These challenges have led to calls to boost the level of automation in the oil and gas industry while maintaining the focus on health, safety and the environment. Many oil and gas facilities are already remotely operated during normal operation, but highly skilled people are still needed to perform specialized work, such as maintenance and repair tasks during operation and planned shutdowns. To benefit from an increased level of automation in this area, which would protect humans from hazardous environments and potentially dangerous tasks, a combination of remote operations combined with telerobotics is required. In answer to this demand, ABB has developed a robotics-based remote automation system prototype that is capable of performing inspection and maintenance of an oil and gas process module. This compliments existing automation system and work practices and enables the operators to perform the same job but from a safer location.