In its second year at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), which begins today and continues until May 3rd in Houston, Texas (USA), Ouro Negro, a Brazilian technology company focused on the development of intelligent solutions for the oil and gas industry, will present its Tatui inspection robot, which is part of a product portfolio aligned with global industry 4.0.

The Tatui robot is equipped with a self-propulsion system and designed for use in unpiggable 2.5 – 21” diameter pipes. The Ouro Negro robot is remotely controlled, does not need pressure or flow in the pipes and can perform “back-to-back” 1.5D radius curves. The auto-adjustable locomotion system enables it to inspect multi-diameter pipes in any direction. The Tatui, which generates and records data in real-time, can be used in the maintenance of drilling risers. The latter is one of the main requirements of the oil and gas industry, which has been operating in increasingly severe conditions.

“These characteristics enable the Tatui to be used in a wide variety of applications, such as the monitoring of drilling risers, due to the robot’s ability to inspect auxiliary lines, including the smallest diameter choke and kill lines. Thus, the compulsory inspection of drilling risers becomes simpler and more economical, given that the Tatui provides the operator with the possibility of offshore execution”, highlights Eduardo Costa, Ouro Negro’s executive vice-president and CEO.

Intelligent solutions focusing on asset integrity

The Robotic Systems Unit, together with Data Intelligence, which were both created in 2017, have increased Ouro Negro’s capacity to provide innovative technological solutions to help the oil and gas industry achieve more efficiency, productivity and safety, at a lower cost and with less risk.

Created in 2010 as the result of the incorporation of four spin-offs of PUC-Rio’s (Rio de Janeiro’s Catholic University) renowned laboratories and with seven patents deposited in Brazil and abroad, Ouro Negro’s portfolio includes the MODA (Direct Optical Wire Monitoring) system. It is part of the set of pioneering solutions for the development of the pre-salt fields used by Petrobras, which received the Offshore Technology Conference’s (OTC) Distinguished Achievement Award in 2015. “We have already supplied more than 200 MODA systems for platforms that operate in the pre-salt fields”, reveals Eduardo Costa

Developed in partnership with the Leopoldo Américo Miguez de Mello Research and Development Center (Cenpes-Petrobras) and PUC-Rio, this flexible riser integrity monitoring system was presented at the 2017 OTC. With the capacity to generate a large volume of data in real-time, the MODA detects the rupture of the flexible riser wires that transport hydrocarbons from wells to FSPO-type platforms. “With systems that use Data Analytics techniques, we support the decision-making process, minimizing risks of accidents and reducing costs due to production stoppages”, concludes Eduardo Costa.