NERA announces latest Energy Tech Tour participants

National Energy Resources Australia (NERA) has announced the four companies that will take part in the second stage of its global technology exchange program.

Following a national EOI round, NERA has revealed the four Australian energy technology innovators that will be connected with global energy leaders and supply chains.

The companies taking part are Cumulus Projects, Frontier Automation, iSOL8 and Mapizy, each of which represents innovative technology products and solutions for Australia’s energy resources sector.

Now, through the global exchange program that has been developed by NERA in collaboration with The Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) and Station Houston, these companies will join NERA on a 10-day tour to Aberdeen and SPE Offshore Europe Conference & Exhibition in September to take their technology global by building international relationships and forging valuable supply chain connections.

The tour to Aberdeen and SPE Offshore forms the second of the three-stage energy technology tour connecting the global energy hubs of Perth, Houston and Aberdeen, which has already seen four Australian tech start-ups showcase their technology at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston — one of the world’s largest oil and gas conferences.

The four Australian tech innovators will be joined by their counterparts in Aberdeen and will together take part in a curated program of networking events and meetings with leaders from industry, academia, government and global energy technology ecosystems at and around the SPE Offshore Conference and Exhibition.

Miranda Taylor, NERA CEO, said the success of the tour to Houston alone demonstrates the enormous multiplier effects that can be achieved by connecting local energy innovators with global supply chain opportunities.

“One part of NERA’s role as the Industry Growth Centre for Australia’s energy resources sector is to support innovative, smart start-ups and scale-ups [to] get that global foot in the door,” she said. “We have some leading technologies and solutions right here and, through initiatives like this, we can share these industry solutions with the rest of the world and make their growth stories happen.”

Following the tour to Aberdeen, a selection of innovative start-ups from the OGTC will join NERA in Perth in March 2020 for the Australasian Oil and Gas Conference, marking the final leg of the international journey.

Taylor said that NERA hopes to build on this momentum and the success of the tech tour program, potentially adding more global partners, and continue to create opportunities for local scale-ups and start-ups to connect with international markets and showcase their innovative solutions on a global stage.

“NERA looks forward to continuing to bring together global energy hubs and create lasting connections for growth, not just for the benefit of Australia, but for the benefit for the global energy resources ecosystem as a whole.”

The selected participants

Cumulus Projects offers a digital twin ecosystem for the connected worker, including field technicians, engineers and managers. Cumulus brings together stranded, siloed data from all conceivable sources, from legacy enterprise systems to emergent deliverable file types, and makes it easily accessible to all users at the right time.

Frontier Automation has developed a fully automated movement measurement tracking tool for vessel operations near a facility or port. High-speed 3D machine vision sensors provide full vessel coverage with real-time reporting (including automated alarms) on vessel approach or departure speed and distance, as well as drift detection and measurement whilst moored, to enhance awareness of vessel movements, facilitate safe loading, unloading or other operations within acceptable vessel dynamic conditions, and eliminate the need for personnel to enter hazardous areas to perform mooring/drift checks.

iSOL8 offers an automated safety system for isolation processes that guides workers through isolation by using mobile devices, NFC technology and leveraging isolation information already stored in smart drawings or digital twins. iSOL8 uses the IoT and blockchain to automate the isolation process to eliminate paperwork, improve safety, save time, increase plant availability, reduce risk and provide real-time data for business analysis.

Mapizy focuses on quantifying the changing planet through image data and artificial intelligence (AI). The deep tech company uses remotely sensed image and video data from satellite, drone, terrestrial and underwater platforms to make sense of multisource image data to detect patter of changes, derive geospatial analytics and predict future events.

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