Schiebel demonstrates Camcopter S-100 UAS during trials in Nigeria

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Schiebel has announced that during trials in Rivers State, Nigeria from January 27 to 30, its Camcopter S-100 UAS demonstrated its capabilities to a large European oil and gas corporation.

According to Schiebel, the international oil and gas industry has shown increasing interest in using UAS to effectively monitor and control oil and gas infrastructure, both onshore and offshore.

With this in mind, the flight trials in Nigeria were designed to further investigate the implementation and potential advantages of UAS technology, as Schiebel says that its vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Camcopter S-100 UAS offers a “substantial enhancement” for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions in an oil and gas production environment.

“Monitoring and maintaining remote oil and gas facilities is a challenging and dangerous task that can derive considerable benefits and cost-savings from the use of unmanned systems,” says Hans Georg Schiebel, chairman of the Schiebel Group.

“As a proven and reliable platform, the CAMCOPTER® S-100 is perfectly suited for supporting key aspects such as infrastructure inspections, emergency response, security and surveillance.”

During the trials, the Camcopter S-100 successfully completed several day and night flights monitoring pipeline Rights-of-Way (ROW), inspecting oil and gas wellheads/facilities. The UAS also performed first-line maintenance checks, including detection of leaks and fluid levels of storage tanks.

Additionally, the Camcopter S-100 detected a number of third party illegal activities on the client’s pipeline ROW.

Schiebel notes that this beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operation was supported by Kongsberg Geospatial’s IRIS UAS situational awareness application.