RemSense’s VR/AR platform tackles multi-billion decommissioning issue

Technology solutions company RemSense Technologies (ASX: REM) is planning to utilise its unique virtualplant, a visual digital twin to assist with one of the Australian oil and gas industry’s largest and costliest problems.

Over the last decade or so the petroleum industry, government and specialist offshore regulatory bodies have been closely investigating the looming issue of offshore oil and gas platform decommissioning which has been estimated to have potential costs of up to US$40.5 billion (A$59.5 billion).

According to stats produced by Australia’s offshore energy regulator National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) in their ‘Australia’s Offshore Decommissioning Journey’ report, 35 platforms and 11 floating facilities will have to be removed in Western Australian and Northern Territory waters alone.

Add to that the need for 548 subsea wells to be plugged and abandoned and 6,076 km of pipelines and static umbilicals to be removed, then you can see the size of the issue oil and gas operators are facing.

Offshore Victoria, where 22 platforms, 460 wells and 2089 km of pipelines and static umbilicals are located, also need to be assessed.

The removal of all of these assets will require strategic thinking, close co-operation between industry, government and regulators – and specialist technologies and equipment providers such as RemSense.

RemSense has already attracted interest from major oil and gas companies in the region, with key players such as Woodside Energy and Chevron, utilising its solutions and scanning technologies.

VR and AR solution

Virtualplant is a visual digital twin that utilises virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create a digital representation of plant assets that integrates with existing business operations and asset management systems to deliver greater productivity, increased safety, and reduced cost.

The company believes that the digital twin outcomes created by virtualplant can assist in up-coming decommissioning programs by providing operators with a more accurate and cost-effective model.

Of particular value is the RemSense solution’s ability to facilitate general visual inspections (GVI) operation remotely first, assessing the asset in its ‘as built’ environment and not ‘as designed’, providing a safer and more cost-effective alternative to drastically reduce the need of sending multiple people on site to perform decommissioning operations.

This is expected to help resolve some of the obstacles that must be considered for a decommissioning project such as safety overall, the limited availability of beds on the offshore structures and support vessels, limited helicopter seats and the increasingly strict health and safety measures brought in during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Virtualplant will also provide collaboration opportunities for suppliers, contractors, staff and management through the remote access to a ‘single source of truth’.

Users can also integrate and continually build asset knowledge to support ongoing monitoring, audit and maintenance planning; staff, supplier, and contractor induction to .

Decommissioning issue studies

Two recent studies have confirmed the need for state-of-the-art technologies like virtualplant.

A NOPSEMA investigation found that there is the potential for a significant decommissioning workload between 2020 and 2030, based on independent estimates of decommissioning commencement dates.

It noted that substantial opportunities for cost reduction must be considered through well-established initiatives, such as knowledge sharing and multi-asset campaign approaches.

There is also a need to continuously improve the underlying dataset and to maximise efficiency through a centralised planning system.

According to a report from Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), a multitude of decommissioning risks is creating uncertainty around operators’ plans and final costs.

Inexperience, uncertain timelines and costs, environmental and social license risks, regulatory scrutiny and energy transition pressures are all factors affecting Australian companies’ decommissioning plans and estimated costs.

Recent virtualplant successes

RemSense, which has been actively marketing to Australian energy sector clients since its core product virtualplant was launched in March 2021, has obtained a number of significant recent sales to Tier 1 clients.

In the March quarter it achieved its largest virtualplant site contract to date with AGC Industries Pty Ltd, on behalf of Chevron Australia, signing RemSense on to undertake virtualplant scanning of additional LNG facilities through 2023 and 2024 for a total contract value of approximately A$2 million.