New Technology. Legacy Issues.
Purpose-built drone solutions for the autonomous location and air quality/site assessment of buried oil and gas infrastructure.
Buried Asset Identification and Assessment Mapping Solutions
Traditional ground-based locating of known and unknown wells and pipelines is a bottleneck for the energy sector. It is labor-intensive and costly, puts personnel at risk in remote or hazardous terrains, and better suited to coverage of small areas.
Sawback Technologies eliminates this bottleneck, using our drone agnostic sensor package that integrates advanced near-surface geophysical and gas (methane) spectrometers. Having multiple sensors deployed in the same drone flight empowers regulators, operators, and drone service providers to locate, map, and assess buried assets with sub-decimeter accuracy, over large and complex areas, cheaper and faster than conventional approaches.
Solving the Challenges of Legacy Oil and Gas Locations
Managing legacy infrastructure requires more than just a map. High quality aerial data, real-time data analysis and processing, and actionable visualizations help regulators and operators solve:
The “Lost” Asset Problem: Locating abandoned or undocumented wells and pipelines that appear on historical records, but have not been digitized to modern GIS standards.
Regulatory Compliance: Providing auditable documentation for liability and environmental purposes, when residential and commercial development occurs in legacy oil and gas locations.
Operational Safety: Removing field technicians from the hazards posed by steep and difficult terrain, environmentally sensitive areas, and dense vegetation.
Our Technology Suite: Data Fusion for Deep Insights
We don’t just fly sensors; we fuse data. Using the Sawback EdgeFuse™, we synchronize multiple sensor types to provide a comprehensive view of the subsurface.
1. Drone-Mounted Magnetometry
The Sawback EdgeFlux™ magnetometer is ideal for detecting metallic assets, including steel pipelines and well casings. Our high-sensitivity magnetometers identify magnetic anomalies to pinpoint exact coordinates of legacy infrastructure, either above, or below the ground.
2. Gas Spectrometers (methane)
For measurement of hydrocarbons, incl. natural gas, methane, as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide. Having the gas sensors deployed simultaneously with our EdgeFlux™ allows for efficient data fusion with magnetic data, allowing for rapid assessment if identified wells are emitting methane, without needing to dispatch, or perform another drone flight.
3. Automated Data Processing
All sensor data is processed through the EdgeFuse™, in near real-time, using our proprietary algorithms, transforming complex geophysical signals into visualizations by the drone operator and back-office engineers within minutes, not weeks.
Key Applications for Energy & Infrastructure
Abandoned Well Discovery: Rapidly clear thousands of acres to identify “orphan” wells. The Sawback Technologies platform has been proven to work at scale, over large and difficult terrain, with hundreds of undocumented wells that were leaking methane, detected in a fraction of the time that ground-based inspectors would have taken.
Pre-Development and Construction Clearing: With the rapid expansion of municipalities and commercial areas in historic oil/gas sites, regulators require documentation showing that the area has been cleared of legacy pipelines and wells, that pose a liability and hazard to the general public.
Post-Reclamation Monitoring: Confirm the removal of all buried debris and verify site restoration.
Let’s connect
Their commitment to providing a better way of doing things is palpable in every aspect of their work. By seamlessly blending their diverse skillsets and extensive work experiences, Sawback Technologies has crafted a cutting-edge solution that addresses and diminishes the pain points inherent in the near-surface industry.
Sawback delivered on their commitment to providing a better way of finding abandoned wells, and making the data easy to use and read..