Monitoring of Oil and Gas Pipelines by Use of VTOL-Type Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
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Oil and Gas Facilities
Abstract
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The vast and diverse spread of the oil and gas pipeline infrastructure
makes real-time monitoring of the entire network a very costly
task. This topology has provided vandals and crude-oil thieves with
the opportunity of tapping the pipelines and successfully stealing
crude oil from them unhindered. Nigeria lost more than USD 11
billion to crude-oil theft and pipeline vandalization over a 4-year
period (2007 to 2011). The increase in vandalization has led to the
divestment of assets by some of these oil companies because it is
no longer economical to continue operating the assets. Strategies
used by the government and oil companies to tackle these challenges
include the deployment of military personnel to these assets
and also along their pipeline right of way (ROW). In spite of these
attempts, the results show that the deployment of these personnel
and the attendant cost have not reduced the quantity and frequency
of oil theft because the deployment time to some of these locations
also contributes to delay in the response of the security personnel.
The deployment of dynamic pipeline-pressure profiles enables
the determination of the onset of a leak or a loss of crude oil. This
paper presents the deployment plan and communication architecture
of the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) type of unmanned
air vehicles (UAVs) for pipeline monitoring. The pipeline network
of the company is divided into wide area cells, and each cell is controlled
from a facility. Low-power UAVs with directional antennas
and long-range zoom cameras are deployed to provide real-time visual
monitoring of the pipeline section whenever a pressure drop
or any significant third-party activity is detected on a section of
the pipeline. Security personnel can then be deployed to the pipeline
section if vandal activity is detected. This solution has the capability
of reducing crude-oil theft by providing accurate location
data in a timely manner to the company with respect to the bunkering
activity along its pipeline ROW and also enabling the timely
deployment of personnel to contain the situation.
Keywords
TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering