Skyports, TFG Marine “Complete Singapore’s First Ever Drone Operations For Bunker Tanker Vessels”

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has suc­cess­ful­ly and safe­ly com­plet­ed Singapore’s first Shore-to-Ship Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) deliv­er­ies and col­lec­tions of bunker fuel sam­ples to and from tanker ves­sels, reports a press release.

Car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TFG Marine, CBS Ven­tures and Mar­itime and Port Author­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore (MPA), the tri­al aimed to review safe­ty when employ­ing drones to improve tanker oper­a­tions. 

The flights showed that these craft can be safe­ly used in marine fuelling envi­ron­ments such as around bunker tankers, under strin­gent safe­ty require­ments.

The release explains, “Tri­als con­clud­ed with the drones suc­cess­ful­ly trans­port­ing bunker fuel sam­ples to and from TFG Marine’s ves­sel MT Dili­gence. This pro­vides a faster, safer and more sus­tain­able alter­na­tive to in-per­son deliv­er­ies made by TFG Marine’s launch boats, which involve less effi­cient ves­sel-to-ves­sel cross­ings of deliv­ery per­son­nel.”

Alex Brown, Direc­tor of Drone Ser­vices, Sky­ports, com­ment­ed, “With Sin­ga­pore see­ing over 130,000 ves­sel calls annu­al­ly, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the MPA, drone tech­nol­o­gy has real poten­tial to reduce the risks asso­ci­at­ed with ves­sel-to-ves­sel trans­fers in Singapore’s port waters and enhance oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy.”

He con­tin­ued, “After exten­sive research, train­ing and prepa­ra­tion by our team, these tri­als pro­vide a proven roadmap to drone oper­a­tions around marine refu­elling envi­ron­ments.”

The release con­tin­ues, “Oper­at­ed remote­ly from MPA’s Mar­itime Inno­va­tion Lab (MIL) 3.0, the Speed­bird DLV‑2 drone depart­ed Sky­ports’ des­ig­nat­ed Take Off and Land­ing Pad (TOLP) at the Mar­itime Drone Estate, fly­ing BVLOS to the ves­sel. Once at the ves­sel, the drone descend­ed above the deck, low­er­ing a car­go box on its winch, to where trained TFG Marine crew loaded the bunker oil sam­ple.” 

It goes on, “Sig­nalling to the remote pilot, the crew vacat­ed the area to a safe zone, with the remote pilot retract­ing the winch and fly­ing the drone back to the TOLP. From there, TFG Marine per­son­nel col­lect­ed the oil sam­ple, tak­ing it to its lab on land for qual­i­ty test­ing.”

The tri­als involved exten­sive research and reg­u­la­to­ry dis­cus­sions over the course of near­ly two years, includ­ing pre-tri­al checks on elec­tro­sta­t­ic dis­charge from the drone, and  per­form­ing real-time gas and ves­sel drift mea­sure­ments pri­or to oper­a­tions on MT Dili­gence. 

In flight route plan­ning, the drones also approached the tanker per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly to the winch area with a struc­tured flight sequence, avoid­ing the most haz­ardous areas. In the unlike­ly event of a sig­nal loss, the craft is also pre-pro­grammed to exit the way it approached the ves­sel.

Ken­neth Dam, Glob­al Head of Bunker­ing, TFG Marine, remarked, “We’re always look­ing to improve oper­a­tional per­for­mance and make bunker­ing ser­vices eas­i­er with a focus on trans­paren­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty through dig­i­tal solu­tions. We’re excit­ed to part­ner with Sky­ports and the Mar­itime Port Author­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore on a new drone deliv­ery ini­tia­tive in one of the world’s busiest ports.”

Dur­ing the tri­al Sky­ports pro­vid­ed a full end-to-end ser­vice, includ­ing route plan­ning, reg­u­la­to­ry approvals, drone oper­a­tions, train­ing to ves­sel crew and data col­lec­tion and analy­sis.

Fol­low­ing the tri­al and analy­sis of the results, Sky­ports will con­tin­ue to work with MPA and the tanker com­mu­ni­ty to expand the tri­als and strength­en safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Back­ground

TFG Marine is a lead­ing marine fuel sup­ply and pro­cure­ment joint ven­ture between phys­i­cal com­mod­i­ty trad­ing com­pa­ny Trafigu­ra Group Pte and ship own­ing com­pa­nies Front­line Ltd and Gold­en Ocean Group Ltd. 

Formed in 2020, the com­pa­ny sup­plies over 10 mil­lion met­ric tonnes of marine fuels per annum across 35 strate­gic bunker­ing hub loca­tions glob­al­ly.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://skyportsdroneservices.com/

www.tfgmarine.com

(Images: Sky­ports)

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