Oil India Limited deploys drone surveillance solution for crude oil pipelines

Detect Technologies has collaborated with Oil India Limited (OIL) to launch the ambitious advanced drone surveillance project at OIL’s field headquarters at Duliajan in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh district. This is India’s first autonomous drone project at this scale, an initiative by Digital Readiness for Innovation and Value in E&P (DRIVE) under the support of the Ministry of Petroleum and National Gas, and the first digitized solution offering pipeline surveillance and mapping at this scale.

Pipelines are spread across hundreds of kilometres, passing through various terrains, making conventional methods like shutting down and manually inspecting pipelines extremely challenging. Pipe leaks and spillage cause massive damage to the environment, and illegal tapping leads to losses worth $12 billion worldwide. The primary objective for implementing the drone surveillance project is to get complete visibility of crude oil delivery lines and flowlines across large areas, strengthen their operations, and ensure the security of national assets.

Daniel Raj David, CEO & Co-founder, Detect Technologies, said, “Detect Technologies is championing the use of AI and robotics across the complete industrial sector within the country and internationally. We are ecstatic to work with OIL by bringing #madeinindia technology that automates the detection of safety, surveillance and enhances security across OIL pipelines. The key lies in marrying cutting edge robotics and data acquisition with automated analytics.

We have enabled companies to leverage computer vision and AI in the avenues of reliability, productivity, safety, and security through multi-million-dollar benefits. We are happy to partner with OIL in bringing AI to revolutionize security and safety detection across thousands of kilometres of pipelines, ” added Daniel.

OIL has incorporated Detect Technologies drone surveillance solutions for its installations and oil & gas pipelines in Assam to curb spillage and loss of crude oil, manage toxic hazards, condensate, tampering of well heads, and tapping of crude oil delivery pipelines. The solutions ensure pipelines are surveyed 24 hours a day and monitored 365 days, enabling faster detection of fire incidents, crude oil leaks & spills, and near real-time detection of intruders, thus enabling OIL to initiate proactive steps to obtain better performance and improve productivity.

Prasanta Borkakoty, Resident Chief Executive, OIL said, “OIL is a progressive and responsible organization that is adopting cutting-edge technologies like solutions from Detect Technologies that can be used for better safety and security of our operational areas. The drone surveillance project is a step towards this direction that will assist OIL to lower miscreant activities, faster response to security, HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) issues and resulting in enhanced productivity, profit and safer operations.”

Detect Technologies is revolutionizing the industrial sector with cutting-edge technologies. Their digital solution powered by AI and with data acquired by drones, map and predict potential oil and gas leakage in the pipes, ensure fast detection of fire incidents, and deliver advanced analytics to improve efficiency. It also takes safety measures to reduce wastage of the resource, identify miscreant activities, and monitor the seamless functioning of the machinery by capturing accurate data.