RemSense continues to provide virtualplant solutions for Australia’s oil and gas sector

Perth-headquartered digital twin solutions specialist RemSense Technologies (ASX: REM) has celebrated the win of a $245,000 contract with leading Australian petroleum company Woodside Energy (ASX: WDS).

Under the agreement, RemSense will utilise its unique virtualplant technology to create a photogrammic digital twin of one of Woodside’s floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels.

RemSense managing director, Steve Brown, said an initial one year contract was scheduled to commence in early August.

“RemSense continues to expand virtualplant both with existing and new customers. This is our second seagoing vessel, reinforcing virtualplant’s wide application base. RemSense is at an inflection point and is in a far better place to secure our next sale opportunities than one year ago.”

Digital twin service provides many benefits

With rising costs becoming an increasing issue, a number of offshore and onshore operators are expanding their utilisation of digital twin technology to undertake remote monitoring, obtaining significant savings by ranking risk on the asset and deploying inspections on an as-needed basis versus calendar or frequency deployments.

Earlier this year RemSense undertook a number of successful virtualplant operations including providing scanning data to Chevron for the first of four contracted LNG facilities.

The company also delivered a new work pack generation tool within virtualplant in support of Woodside’s corrosion maintenance repair planning.

Growing offshore opportunities

Virtualplant utilises virtual reality and artificial intelligence 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.

RemSense believes the technology’s capacity to uncover visual ways of working in one common platform while being accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device is making it increasingly attractive to customers looking for simplified collaboration across teams, contractors and partners.​

In particular, the company believes the virtualplant digital twin capacity can support those involved in the multi-billion dollar offshore decommissioning programs being contemplated by operators and contractors around Australia.

Major decommissioning program looming

A National Energy Resources Australia forecast on decommissioning costs for the nationwide offshore oil and gas industry over the next 50 years is estimated to be around $60 to $70 billion.

The Australian offshore regulator expects the decommissioning to be ‘complex, expensive, span many years and introduce many new and significant safety, environmental and well integrity risks’.

A multitude of decommissioning risks have been identified creating uncertainty around operators’ plans and final costs.

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

The RemSense virtualplant solution’s ability to facilitate general visual inspections operation remotely first, assessing the asset in its ‘as built’ environment and not ‘as designed’, is already attracting attention for its capacity to provide a safer and more cost-effective alternative to drastically reduce the need for sending multiple people on site to perform decommissioning operations.