Low weight cargo items for offshore oil platforms/ rigs?

[bollox]

Howdy folks:

I'm not a pilot, rotary wing or otherwise. I know some folks who have a drone delivery startup. Their technology is theoretically capable of delivering items up to 30 lbs autonomously within ~200 miles or so. I have a background in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and I was asked how often an emergency comes up that idles the rig or shuts in production that requires delivery of a 30 lb or lower weight item to remediate. I've scratched around in my own memory and consulted with colleagues and those instances are exceedingly rare. Any Drill Rep or OIM that ends up in a situation where a critical spare is not on site once does not typically let it happen a second time. All that said, I'm sure some of you that have worked the Gulf have some stories of extremely poor planning by oilfield operators that resulted in "hot" deliveries of this nature and I'm hoping you will be kind enough to share some of those with me. Knowing how often this happens would be extremely helpful. Thanks everyone in advance. Hope you can help.  

[Discap]

I've been involved in the drilling side of things for 40 years.  I cannot think of anything that weighs less than 30 lbs that would keep a rig down.

[Disguise Delimit]

A drone, with some 30lb item on a sling below it, flying 200nm out to a rig, hovering for the delivery, and then coming home again, with reserves for running in a 40-kt wind...tell him he's dreaming...

[Nearly Retired]

I flew in the GOM for a number of years.  A roustabout's *lunch* weighed more than 30 pounds.  Just about everything offshore weighs more than 30 pounds.

[bollox]

Thanks for the replies. I can think of two instances personally that might get the juices flowing for others. Once, on a job cutting and pulling casing only hardened steel knives were sent out with the casing cutter. Turns out that the surface inside the casing (probably due to corrosion) was causing the knives to break before a good smooth profile could be established for those knives to engage in. What we needed were tungsten carbide knives that are slower to cut but more robust and able to deal with irregular ID surfaces and we had to wait until morning to get them out on a chopper. We didn't idle the rig but we did make another run with steel knives while waiting on the TC knives knowing that the probability of success with the steel was very low.

The second instance I can think of was fighting with persnickety hotstab receptacles and the dummies in the equipment sent subsea with them. It was just bunch of brainstorming and throwing ideas at it until we were successful. Seemed like every chopper flight for the better part of a week had some combination of all thread, hole saws, o-rings, washers, etc on it for the next set of "ideas".

These were both "one-off" occurrences. They were impactful enough to the folks involved that I don't think anyone even marginally related to allowing them to happen the first time will ever allow them to happen again. That said, they show the potential for needing a hot delivery of <30 lbs is non-zero.

Thanks again for the replies. Hope others will chime in.  

[bollox]

OK. Anyone want to venture a suggestion at what payload limit the idea begins to be economic? 100 lbs? 200 lbs? More? Still hoping for some help here. 

[Disguise Delimit]

If you build it, they will come....

[SBuzzkill]

You’re asking a bunch of pilots who fly to rigs for their living, to help you research a way to fly their cargo to the rig without them.  
 

Man I’m surprised you haven’t gotten more help!