Understanding Dropped Object Prevention for Energy Industries
In 2016, dropped objects from Offshore Oil facilities resulted in 255 worker fatalities in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an alarming statistic that made clear the urgency of a curious, but important safety protocol that industries needed to adopt: fighting gravity. However, these incidents are far from inevitable and can be significantly reduced through a robust Dropped Object Prevention program. And, considering the scale and complexity of the energy industry’s operations, these programs became a fundamental piece of Industrial Safety and Risk Management. But what defines a Dropped Object? What is a Dropped Object? [...]
5 Essentials of Hull Damage Prevention for ships and FPSOs
Hull damages such as cracks and discontinuities can lead to oil leaks, implicating direct emergency costs surpassing USD 50,000,000, according to Brazil's National Petroleum Agency. From oil spills to accidents, the consequences of hull damage on oil and gas operations are far-reaching. Besides that, hulls are the exoskeleton of offshore units, requiring regular, accurate, and efficient maintenance procedures to address the excessive wear and tear, cracks, and anomalies that these structures are exposed to. Ensuring adequate maintenance and repairs demands inspection procedures that often require rope access techniques. Even though it is a common practice, it exposes inspectors to complex [...]
Computer Vision 101: How can AI see things?
A world where computers can understand the environment around them simply by looking. This isn't science fiction anymore. It’s the new frontier of artificial intelligence called Computer Vision. It can perceive its surroundings and interpret visual information to identify objects, colors, shapes, and areas. This technology consists of a model that learns information from multidimensional data, such as images or videos, enabling machines to develop a visual perception like humans. Today, Computer Vision systems can analyze vast amounts of visual data with incredible accuracy. But how exactly was Computer Vision developed? How does it work? And what are the [...]
How to optimize Industrial Safety and Risk Management
The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers reported a 36% increase in offshore fatalities from 2020 to 2021. This concerning rise underscores the inherent safety challenges of the industry. Certainly, this sector is subjected to safety threats due to the complex processes and hazardous environments in which it operates. For this reason, high-complexity facilities such as oil and gas need to target safety and risk assessments as fundamental pieces of operational management. But what are the main concerns of the oil and gas industry regarding risk management? Concerns regarding risk management in the O&G Industry [...]
The Future Lies in the Past: Embracing Mature Fields for Tomorrow’s Energy
A 2011 study by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates reported that approximately two-thirds of global daily average oil production comes from mature fields and that the percentage is increasing over time. Indeed, it’s evident that mature fields have become a fundamental piece of the petroleum exploration sector, but what exactly are mature fields? According to Parshall (2012), mature fields are defined by years of production and aging infrastructure. For a field to be considered mature, it had to produce more than 50% of its established proved plus probable resource estimates or have produced for more than 25 years. In this [...]
Exploring the Depths: Understanding Offshore Oil Drilling
Until 1894, we didn’t know extracting crude oil from subsea environments was possible. This changed when the lure of offshore production enticed Henry L. Williams and his associates to build a pier 90 meters out into the Pacific — and assemble a standard cable-tool rig on it. Since then, oil extraction has evolved in unprecedented ways. In recent years, new technologies have emerged as powerful tools for addressing the inherent challenges of exploring previously unreachable resources. Indeed, subsea drilling still represents a complex operation that requires advanced techniques and skilled teams to achieve optimal efficiency and safety. And, despite the [...]
How to leverage the full potential of AI Predictive Maintenance
Industrial maintenance is a crucial but challenging aspect of large-scale process industries. Traditional maintenance methods result in expensive, risky, time-consuming, and often inefficient activities. This has led to a growing implementation of digital technologies to optimize maintenance, which made clear the opportunities that these optimized processes offered, like foreseeing anomalies with predictive maintenance for example. However, successfully implementing this maintenance approach requires the integration of different cutting-edge technologies. Despite the complexity surrounding the adoption of predictive maintenance, we need to understand its leveraged opportunities in industrial environments. Why industrial maintenance requires predictive care Industrial maintenance can be a [...]
Why Reality Capture is a must to report anomalies in industrial inspections
Industrial inspections consist of reporting anomalies to later perform maintenance plans. For this purpose, companies display several methods to inspect assets that can be divided into two major categories: the traditional methods and the digitized ones. In this context, these two groups present clear disparities in the benefits they generate to operators. While traditional methods still expose professionals to risky and time-consuming activities, new digitized ways of capturing reality have intuitively fostered safety and uptime for industrial inspections. Indeed, the new optimized methods of visually inspecting assets have accurately illustrated industrial realities to streamline maintenance actions. Thus, reporting anomalies with [...]
AI-driven Hull Inspections: Streamlining Safety and Efficiency
Vessels are crucial parts of different industrial operations. Considering this, the ship's main body: the hull, must be regularly inspected to ensure high asset integrity, safety, and efficiency standards. Hull damages such as cracks can lead to oil leaks, which can implicate direct emergency costs that surpass USD 50,000,000 according to Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, which is 100x more expensive than the investment to repair the defects on time (before the accident) not including compensations, fines, and asset depreciation. In this regard, hull inspections are a maintenance procedure that helps energy companies and bulk cargo transporters maintain high safety, compliance, [...]
Making the most of POB on offshore assets
As a risky environment, Oil and Gas offshore operations claim meticulous interventions from the People on Board (POB). The term is used to track and manage the workforce and ensure safety, resource allocation, and overall operational efficiency. In this sense, managing People on Board (POB) it’s a crucial and inherent challenge to the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas facilities may present risks such as explosions, health hazards, and oil leaks. Besides that, unplanned events happen, which requires workers to solve the occurrence. This harms the planning of the POB previously done and increases the downtime of the asset, [...]
