Malaysia's HGIS Uses Ocean Alpha USV for Shell Pipeline Survey

Malaysian geo-solutions provider HGIS has used their first uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), the 5.5 m M40P developed by OceanAlpha, to complete an entirely remote nearshore inspection of a subsea pipeline in TALI Field for their project with Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP).

As a project highlight, the USV is deployed to acquire seabed data from offshore, nearshore, and onshore fields to provide continuous geo data support to the construction, operation, and maintenance of pipeline routing and subsea infrastructure in field developments.

The USV was remotely controlled and monitored using OceanAlpha’s control system from a station near Shell Crude Oil Terminal, approximately 4-5km from the Tali Field pipelines. As the USV autonomously executed accurate surveys with minimal human intervention, surveyors could allocate more effort to critical data analysis and hazard pin-pointing, OceanAlpha said.

Increasing interest in USVs

"Due to mixed factors, including workforce shortage caused by the COVID and the industry's shared goal for sustainable development, we see increasing interest in our USVs. M40P is a platform dedicatedly developed to empower the transition of the offshore industry by digitizing the workflow and cutting down carbon footprint”, introduced Ran Zhang, General Manager of OceanAlpha, a Hong Kong-based USV manufacturer.

“Conducting surveys remotely from shore is a unique and inspiring experience for us," said Mr. Alexis Wan Ullok, Executive Director of HGIS, “The Introduction of unmanned technology undoubtedly reduces HSSE exposure and survey duration. With less human activity on the sea and cut-downed fuel consumption, it’s a down-to-earth fulfillment of our goal to support sustainable economic development.”