# [Case Study] Shell Petroleum Enhances Oil Facility Monitoring with DJI Dock

- Event: NestGen ’25
- Published: March 7, 2025
- Length: 31:40
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/948YmvT5W94/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## Transcript

**[0:20]** my name is Rohan your moderator for today and we are diving deep into a real world case study on how shell petroleum is leveraging the DJI dog for oil facility monitoring oil and gas facilities operate in highrisk environments wherein safety security and operational efficiencies are top priorities traditional facility inspections often involve manual patrols costly helicopter flights and human exposure to hazardous conditions but now with the rise of autonomous drones along with the docking stations companies like shell petroleum are now shifting to to fully automated realtime monitoring using drone in a box Solutions but before we begin let us first go through some housekeeping rules feel free to drop in your questions in the Q&A box anytime and we will tackle those in the Q&A segment feel free to engage with us share us your insights in the chat and let us know where you are joining from if you face any kind of technical difficulties do

**[1:22]** try refreshing your screen once or try rejoining the meeting please note that this session is getting recorded So if you miss anything you can always revisit it later also you can take it to social post your key takeaways on LinkedIn or Twitter with hashtag nesen and give our speakers a quick shout out and also a huge thank you to all our nesg 2025 sponsors the ones who are leading the way and the industry forward last but not least uh I'm thrilled to invite Peter Franken QSC and compliance manager at Sky NE land and Vincent Van shindel CEO of droneland Netherlands who will walk us through how shell petroleum deployed the DJI dog in Rotterdam to enhance their safety optimize operations and set new benchmarks for oil facility monitoring Peter and vinsel wish you a very warm welcome and with that let's get into today's session Peter and wiinston the stage is all yours thank

**[2:23]** you for the introduction Roan yeah yeah if you can start the presentation yeah so let's kick this off a little bit I'd like to shortly introduce ourselves and tell you a bit more about why docks are changing the industry we from droneland are founded in 2024 and we have offices in Netherlands and Belgium we are a full service drone provider so we're trying to support our customers from A to Z with anything they need for the Drone operation we're the largest Enterprise drone reseller in the Benelux and we also have our own operational authorization to perform boss flights this enables us to help our customers in testing use cases try out new situations and help them get into the operational process we have a lot of Benelux European clients that we support and obviously we are a DJI doc one and Doc 2 certified

**[3:25]** partner can you do the next slide R yeah our surch portfolio is consistent of a lot of different operations of course it all starts with drones and the applicable advice we support our customers and advice them and which drones they can use which payloads are available but also the accessories like the docks or software that could be necessary for the operation we also have our own maintenance and Technical departments which we use to do a lot of repairs and maintenance on all of our clients drones and we also have a lot of parts in stocks which ensure that we can do a quick turnaround time for repairs and of course with the DJI docs we also perform the full installation and configuration on site together with all those equipments we also need a bit of training so we can assist our customers in the licenses for the open in specific category but also practical trainings in how to use their drones in their operation and also specifically operating beef loss separate to that we also have a rental Fleet so if

**[4:27]** our customers temporarily need equipment will be able to assist them in 2024 the industry has changed with a lot of DJI docks we did over 30 installations last year and what we noticed is that with the whole dock there's a new challenge and a new way of using a drone where for the last years everyone was used to having a drone in a case which you bring to a location unpack and fly as a pilot on site the whole industry is changing towards a more autonomous and automated workflow where drones are controlled remotely from a docking station and from the office this imposes new challenges of challenges where you can install a DJI dog and how to use it whether it's on top of buildings in a more mobile situation like on a trailer or with custom platforms like you see in the examples here it's a more combination and ecosystem that's required with which of s starts

**[5:31]** with the hardware part where you have a DJI doc one doc 2 or any of his predecessors but also software is a very important part where obviously something like Fleet base comes into play because you're no longer using a remote to control your drone but you're using software to operate it remotely over a computer you're using your arrow keys a joystick and a computer screen instead of a remote and watching to the sky this opens up also a lot of possibilities in Integrations where there's more more work to be done in integrating it into VMS systems combining it with alarm sensors or having thirdparty Integrations to support this operation to show some of the custom Solutions and give you some ideas of the possibilities we've did an integration with special perimeter sensors as you can see here on the left these are customized sensors that are put up onto fences which enables us to see the exact location if someone is touching the fence or climbing

**[6:32]** over it based on this alarm and integrating that into Fleet base we can trigger an alarm where the Drone flies to that alarm location or triggers a pre-programmed Mission based on this alarm secondly we've also created the Drone hop the Drone hop you see here in the middle and it's basically a vandalism proof enclosure with a DJI dock inside the dock is mounted on a lift so it can be raised on top of the platform but also lowered for transport or in case of any emergencies there's a big battery pack inside which allows you to operate the DJI dock without any power at site and there's solar panels to recharge his battery this is an ideal solution for locations where you need temporary deployment or where fixed installations are hard because of the regulations a third integration that's quite common and more and more becoming a thing is the integration of a parachute system with an fds especially for flying over more populated areas the addition of this system makes it possible to expand

**[7:33]** the operations into areas that we have not been able to fly be loss before there's also some other additional stuff that comes into play when using a DJI doc okay you do the next yeah connectivity is a much more important subject where the dock is connected to the internet to communicate with software and Equipment but also on the client side the pilot needs to be connected to the same internet as well that's why for instance we offer our own SIM cards and APN so we can offer our customers with dedicated Network Security even when connected over LTE also the addition of being able to fly over LTE is a very welcome addition for the DJI dock usage when flying the drones over LTE even when the radio signal gets dropped the Drone is able to continue his flight with the connection to the dock over LTE and especially in industrial areas where flying low to the ground and possibly behind buildings this an essential piece in extending the operational range

**[8:36]** of your DJI Dock and the same goes for communication when you have multiple operators possibly people on site or external parties you need to communicate with even if you're a lot of kilometers away LTE communication can be a real GameChanger we've done a use case where we have a dock at an airport which was operated by the ATC about 100 kilometers away with our specialists in the neers monitoring the flight and they were all in the same LTE comps to make sure the communication was smooth and in line but with the DJI Dock and this new form of operation also come certain challenges and what we see is that the biggest challenge Still Remains regulation there's a lot of situations and use cases where a DJI doc can be a real game changer but most of them are held back by regulations either by the fact that it's not possible at all or by the fact that it takes a lot of time to get the approvals and

**[9:36]** get the proper licenses to operate dock in those areas what we also see in that regards is that even though we have European regulation there's still some differences between countries and how they have implemented certain aspects this changes makes differences between certain countries which can make it more difficult to operate if you're operating in multiple countries we've also notice that a dock is not just a dock it's not a drone as you would sell to a customer that they pick up and start using it's a whole infrastructure and ecosystem with installation connectivity software and Integrations so there's just a lot more to it it's also a different approach to drone flying when you're used to fly a drone manually in Voss conditions and now move towards a computer in the office maybe hundreds of kilometers away from the Drone it's a completely different way of operating and there's also a lot of Integrations that can be done this can be challenging but it can also open up a lot of possibilities and in general that's the whole case for

**[10:41]** these DJI docks it can open up a lot more possibilities but it does take a little more preparation and planning so I'm hoping to have given you a bit of an Insight of what can be necessary for operating a DJI Doc and one of those key customers of us is Sky and they have very cool use case where they use the DJI docks in the locations of shell so I'd like to hand it over to Peter to give them a brief introduction and tell you more about how they use the docs in their operation yes thank you Vincent excellent introduction um before I want to talk about the um quickly about the what I'm what we are doing at the Shell petroleum is to give a quick introductions to our company um we've been around since 2013 and we're the first um company in nland to receive uh commercial licenses to operate drones and the first um company in nland to receive the Lu which allows us to um operate drones and self

**[11:42]** approve our operations in Europe all EU member states we have uh roughly over 30,000 flights logged till till date we work a lot onshore and offshore and we work for a lot of international clients amongst which are sh but also the likes of eii and um um and other big oil companies and next slide please so what we do basically three main things uh the company was um grew largely because of our um expertise in survey mapping which both photogrametry liar and all other techniques um we do a lot of asset inspection that's both onshore offshore think about um container crane inspections uh Offshore platforms wind turbines um all that and then we have the environmental and Marine support and environmental

**[12:43]** think about gas emission measuring um next slide now before coming to Shell specifically this is an overview of some of the systems that we've um tested and tried and software that we've tested and tried and any system that we've um that we've tried and that we that we um acquired we put it to really rigorous tests at our office and and these tests go to we really need to know everything all the safety features because you will see later on that within shell is such a complex environment that we cannot leave anything to chance so when we're testing drones during the flight we'll pull out internet cables pull out the power plugs uh shut down the software um we'll just try anything to deregulate the system and see see what happens and then um only when we're 100% and

**[13:45]** satisfied that we will then deploy and some of these systems that you see here were not um good enough to to be deployed at the Shell at Shell site and we um and and we chose to use different systems next slide please so the shell Netherlands project um this is basically two locations on the map at the bottom you see um the Rotterdam Harbor area Rotterdam Harbor area is about 50 60 kilometers length of um Port area which is the largest port in uh in Europe we were once probably the biggest port in in the world but um a lot of Chinese ports have overtaken us since then um on the left where you see the tank farm that's a big tank farm roughly about 50 big oil storage tanks the europort and on the right is Peres which is about 20 30 kilometers away from each other um

**[14:47]** you see the um the the the refinery of um of peris next slide now from a Shell point of view is that shell is looking at how to integrate drones more and more into their use into their day in day out workflow and the video that you'll see shortly is called um is is made by shell is called round by exception and the round by exception philosophy means is they only want people to walk around the site by exception so they want drones to take over the main tasks for example walking around inspecting tanks walking around inspecting valves checking for leakage all these kind of um things are now uh for a large part being taken over by drones this is from tank roof inspections uh top deck um even emission

**[15:49]** detections um one of the um people in the Q&A asked is there any customers custom sensors being used yes we also use uh gas emissions sensors um on the in the Drone in the box so that in that way we can U map emissions and emergency response is of course a big a big thing if there's any big incident at Shell then uh we've been trained also to use the Drone in the Box to respond immediately and give an overview to the um emergency response Services next slide yeah this the video just um have a look at this welcome to part two of the HSB exception series and today we're going to talk about the drones we have three drones at s side uh located in drone in the boxes and there was a very nice question one one of our viewers about use case or the direct value

**[16:51]** of the drones one example is the uh roof drainer contract that we have at the aort so twice a week a contractor had to go outside to check if there's water on the tank roof and we replace that round now with a drone inspection the Drone operations are actually executed by Sky which we're going to see now today we're at the offices of Sky we wanted to come here today to take this opportunity to show you how we're using drones not only from the planning to the execution uh we chose to partner with Sky because of the complexity of our site and the efficiency of flying Beyond visual line of sight uh this was to ensure that not only we're receiving data but also that they are managing the flights to the highest level company Sky we started back in 2012 and we were one of the first companies to get the um licenses to operate in the in the Netherlands um and currently we have a special license Lu which allows us to operate in all European countries and self approve these licenses um for Shell to fly the Drone in the box systems is quite

**[17:58]** another challenge took about uh six to seven months before we had all these uh new permissions in place and we operate also within the controll airspace of rdam airport which causes some other challenges that they have to coordinate all the flights but I think all in all we've been quite successful and we've been operating these drone in the boxes now for over a year and we've had extremely little downtime in terms of um weather down time technical downtime or um regulatory downtime so now we are in the sky operations room uh where we execute our flights for the shell the Drone in the Box flights on these six screens we execute our flights for Shell uh europort and penis and the beef loss flights uh we do this uh every day seven days a week 12 hours a day so uh after finishing our flights um we send the data to Shell and that can go up to like thousands of pictures uh per month at this point after Sky captures the data they load it into

**[19:04]** our shell servers and we apply Machine Vision models to each picture in in each inspection and then we generate results to deliver to the operator in the control room via utl for 2025 we plan to scale up the uses of drones and really harness the value out of the sky from emergency response to asset protection to any of our ad height inspections if you have any ideas how we can use drones around site please drop your ideas in the comments yeah so the um you saw is actually already um um yeah a couple of months old by now we're actually um ramping up to 24 hours a day with um five John in the Box systems on site um now the requirements that we have as an operator for a drone in a box system I

**[20:08]** show I showed that we tested quite a few systems and one of the main requirements for us is that we need to do the flight planning in a 3D environment that's a must because as you see in the in the photograph below the environment is extremely complex so um yeah we we cannot just do it an aerial photograph it needs to be really done in 3D and another item was the the fact that um the explosion proof zones on site where we cannot fly we had to make sure that in in in no case no matter what happened to the Drone that that drone would never go back into uh that atex zones even if it takes the shortest SPS in the return to home mode it was not allowed to go in there so that's the kind of things that we needed to to test we're always flying Behind These complex installations so we will use the radio line of sight continuously so we needed that 4G LTE which Vincent was talking

**[21:10]** about we're also operating in almost coastal region and um and because shell needs round by exception it means that we have to be there every day all the time rain wind um snow most of the time they they need us out there so we need a drone that's very high resistance to to wind and and Rain rtk very important for us because um if we need to photograph valves or little parts of the plant routinely for AI every day from the same angle same position rtk is needed um yeah and we need of course need to to to be able to comply with all the regulations that the asasa and the Sora Etc has posed on us but on top of that the customer um you know they pulled out the um the Yus nxe for the cyber security requirements that the system has to um to meet all those requirements so we were

**[22:12]** able to um uh to do that um so one of the questions that um Vincent asked there is there any aex limitation uh how do we solve them yeah we do not fly in aex zones so we fly around them and we Define all the atex zones in 3D on a map and we just make sure that we fly around it and we test the drones so that they hit to return to home so we we fly around them in the future stage now we're talking to people we're actually going to do some spark testing of um of the drones to see if there actually are a source of ignition during flight and see um and shell wants to know that maybe they can relax the rules a bit we all know if a drone crashes um the spark will come off so that danger can never be overcome but maybe um for the flights alone that' be good enough next slide ran so our remote flight center that you saw in the video it's basically

**[23:17]** um different workplaces where we use a minimum of six screens per per operator and what we've done is we have like the double redundant internet connection so we have have uh internet by Cable in the office if that um gets interrupted we switch to 4G and if that interrupts then we can switch to star link that's all done automatically so we have a continuous internet connection then we have backup power in the office all the computers are um protected um we're in the process of installing um uh a diesel generator to back up even longer at the moment we can back up to about 30 minutes just enough to ter to finish the flights but we want to be able to continue flying for a number of days um and then inside the room we also have the communication equipment to talk to the air traffic control um which is a requirement when flying in control

**[24:18]** airspace um the yeah I I'll go to one question that the minimum response time for for the ATC um in the Netherlands we need to plan a flight 24 hours prior to Flying but what we actually do is we reserve blocks So within those blocks we can we execute several flights so that allows us to fly and basically we've blocked every day all the time so um we we can actually execute operations quite um qu quite quite quickly and here you see a picture on the on the bottom right you see how complex the environment is and you see the flight plan that we do and this is like a flight plan in um in 3D and um and this shows the reason why we need a 3D environment next slide yeah and some probably one of the last slides are the challenges that we came across um the first is whenever we go to a new site you know

**[25:23]** we have to make very good 3D models for the deployment location because the environments are comp complex um cyber security is a major concern it's a major concern to Shell it's a major concern to all the big oil companies it's um and we're one of the people that are testing with DGI at the moment the on premise so we actually run the full DGI Flight Hub software on our own servers in that way we can guarantee 100% that none of the data goes anywhere to anybody um and and and that caused some some big [Music] um um yeah one other question doesn't flight have create some cyber security concerns yes it did and it certainly did and at the beginning of the project we had to make a balance and saying listen we can either go for a full cyber security

**[26:24]** safety but it doesn't at the same time guarantee flight safety and I said let us concentrate on the flight safety first and we'll tackle the cyber security in a second step because the flight safety we think is more important because some of the packages that offered 100% cyber security safety were not offering 100% flight safety for example they weren't able to guarantee the fact that the Drone would not cross an aex Zone on the way back on a return to home um but now we've solved this um cyber security around flight up to with this on premise thing obviously the whole um Dutch civil aviation regulations EASA regulations remains a major challenge even though we have the Lu we can self approve and we can self approve within any EU member states all our operations um there still are some challenges with a lot of locations and the Dutch

**[27:26]** government has put some strict boundaries on where you can do be loss and where you cannot and that's hampering us and then even shell regulations even at some point we had all the um the regulatory things in place from the CIA and then shell said yeah but now you guys are going to work on our permit without being there how does that work with a work permit that took them another two months to um to figure that one out so that was one of the other challenges and the last one is the training program a lot of training facilities offer training for Beav loss or things but we found out that those training institutes don't have any experience themselves we doing this so they weren't able to train our people properly so we have to set up all the training programs for the staff itself for example at the moment we're expanding our pilot uh Fleet with about six new pilots to fly the Drone in a box 24 hours a day and um so all these people do we have to train them internally and and do all that so

**[28:29]** that's that's quite a challenge um yeah so a question by Vincent is it connected to intrusion alarm uh no not at the moment that's uh that's not something that we've tackled yet that's um there not been on the the wish list of shell um and the other question by um Anonymous I cannot see it fully and the sky offer integration service to Shell petroleum yeah for integration with scada or any iot devices um no at not at the moment no no no it's not not been a question by was that the last uh slide ran or not I think yeah yeah correct yeah yeah thank you so much uh Peter and Vincent for uh sharing how drone automation is revolutionizing safety efficiency and especially risk management in the critical oil and gas sector and especially this particular case study is quite enlightening uh I

**[29:32]** think there are some other questions as as well uh we can just quickly run down through those we have another one to two minutes left so there was also a question uh I think any third party softwares being used if you can name a few which are being used daily for your everyday operations can you help me help the audience with it as well Peter yeah we well we use a lot of things like flight trackers and ship movement trackers Radars um weather information so that's mostly what we use um and we use a lot of software in the background to make the 3D modeling and and and all that but that's more like photogrammetric software um yeah so that's the that's mainly the software that we use at the moment perfect perfect I think we were able to cover all those questions but y thank thank you so much Vinson thank you so much Peter for taking out those time taking out your time and yeah oil facilities nowadays will actually check this particular

**[30:37]** case study they will be able to adapt this for their everyday operations and yes thank you so much everybody for joining in from different parts of the globe and we really hope that these sessions will uh help you can say provide you with some insights and make sure that you are able to get some idea on how to use drone dogs for your Enterprise use cases and yeah feel free to you can say share your comments in the comment box below and also if you can drop in some kind of post on social media handle tacking negen so that should be also great but yeah thank you so much and hope everybody has a great time uh any closing thoughts Peter and Vincent that you would like to thanks for having us and see you next time yeah thank you very much Ron and pleasure to being on next Chann really appreciate Peter thank you so much vincon thank you so much Peter and yep have a great day take care byebye