Objectives of the service
Terrabotics’ Energy Supply Chain Observation & Understanding Tool (Energy SCOUTTM) uses cutting-edge satellite remote sensing and advanced image data analytics to shine a new light on oil & gas and energy supply chain activities around the world. This provides new, unique, and more timely information intelligence for market analysts, traders, investors, energy operators and regulators to enable better decision making, due diligence and reporting on an energy sector that is in a state of transition towards new diverse energy sources.
Developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency, Energy SCOUTTM is a modular set of services which transform daily and weekly feeds of raw satellite sensor and spatial data into a series of value-added information products, targeting different activities along the oil & gas supply chain.
Application modules available to customers are:
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EmissionsAnalyst™ Field/facility emission monitoring
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ShaleAnalyst™ Shale well-level activity and event tracking
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FlareAnalyst™ Oil & Gas flaring activity monitoring
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TBX Basin Production Index™ Oil & gas proxy production index
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RefineryAnalyst™ Oil refinery activity monitoring
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TBX Pipes™ Pipeline construction & operation monitoring
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CarbonAnalyst™ Nature-based solutions/Carbon Offset mapping
Users and their needs
The global energy supply chain is massive, globally distributed, dynamic, complex, and ultimately poorly understood. Furthermore, in the context of climate change and the energy transition it is undergoing a major transformation.
Analysts and decision-makers working across the energy sector have a vested interest in understanding the state of the global energy supply chain to ensure their organisations operate efficiently. Energy sector investors have a keen interest in ensuring their portfolios are fit for the future. Regulators need to be able to corroborate reported versus observed activities for compliance. All these users have a common need for accurate, up-to-date, and unbiased information and many of them need this on a global and real-time scale.
The Energy SCOUT™ modules serve clients such as ESG investment groups, oil & gas companies, private equity firms, commodity traders, regulators, and NGOs.
Current information sources are highly localised, focus on narrow parts of the energy supply chain, and can be biased and/or subjective. By placing space-based observation at the heart of our solution, and using these observations to corroborate conventional metrics, Terrabotics’ Energy SCOUT™ platform aims to overcome these issues and provide a superior and objective information service to analysts, decision-makers, traders and regulators.
Service/ system concept
Terrabotics’ Energy SCOUTTM platform breaks the energy supply chain down into discrete activities. For each of these activities the conventional reporting mechanisms are mapped to establish the information baseline.
Next, Terrabotics consider the remotely measurable impact of the activity on the Earth, including both the technical and economic aspects of the approach. Approaches that are technically and economically viable using existing space-based sensing technologies have been developed into information analytics pipelines, while emerging technologies are closely monitored for future compatibility and integration. Finally, space-based observations are integrated with conventional Earth-based reporting and metrics to provide validated and enhanced insights.
As new energy supply chain subsets are added, Terrabotics review the potential additional value of combining these insights to better understand the overall energy supply chain.
Space Added Value
Global energy supply chain activities have a wide range of effects on the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Subsequently, Terrabotics employ a highly diverse array of space-based sensors to map, measure and monitor them. Earth observation satellites are the primary tools used to gather the data that drive Energy SCOUT™. These include imaging radars and imaging spectrometers for measuring surface and atmospheric phenomena associated with energy sector activities.
Space-based satellite Earth sensing assets deliver a truly objective and global data source, providing Energy SCOUTTM with the ability to remove bias from conventional industry reporting and the capacity to scale globally. Overall, this approach increases the transparency of a traditionally opaque supply chain.
Terrabotics are also working in partnership with OpenCosmos on the UK Space Agency funded and ESA supported MANTIS project. MANTIS will be a small AI-enabled satellite designed specifically for acquiring low-cost high-resolution satellite imagery over energy infrastructure. Imagery data from MANTIS has been specifically designed to match the needs of Energy SCOUTTM and will be used to further increase the value of Energy SCOUTTM insights to end users.
Current Status
Energy SCOUTTM modules are now actively servicing commercial clients across all major customer segments in the energy and oil and gas sectors. New users are continuously being added.
Energy SCOUTTM services, such as EmissionsAnalystTM, ShaleAnalyst™ and FlareAnalyst™ continue to be improved in both functionality and geographic coverage with each new release, based on continuous customer feedback.