Energy operators have entered a new world as AI, long-range cargo drones, and task‑specific robots now do the work once reserved for helicopters, scaffold, and people in harnesses. In the recent Full Crew’s Energy Ops Month episode hosted by Nate Ernst (Tactien Group and Autonomy Global Ambassador – Energy), panelists Gabrielle Wain VP of Regulatory, Policy, and Government Affairs at Skyways, Julien DuPont Director of Partnerships at InnovateEnergy and David Cole Co-Founder and CEO of FlyFreely the technology all agreed that the tech is finally ready to move from pilot projects to business critical operations…but only if the culture and regulation can keep up.
When AI Pilots Become “Proof Of Concept Graveyards”
Ernst opened the conversation around UAS trends and technologies in energy and infrastructure with a simple framing: energy and infrastructure operators are no longer experimenting with drones and robotics in isolation, they are trying to wire them into real‑world operations at scale. Cole, co‑founder and CEO of FlyFreely, anchored that shift with an AI trend article drawn from an energy conference that distilled the top themes into people, process and technology.
Cole noted that AI in oil and gas is moving beyond “safe confines” into production environments. Predictive maintenance has been a promise for years, but the data sets are now rich enough for AI systems to move from predicting failures to prescribing specific maintenance regimes and actions. “The AI is actively suggesting what the prescriptive maintenance actions should actually be, and then go and doing that,” he explained. Operators are starting to treat AI as an active participant in maintenance, not just a reporting tool.
The reality check comes with what the article calls “proof of concept graveyards,” where AI pilots fail to deliver operational value and simply die on the vine. Ernst suggested this seems to be a replay of early commercial UAS programs around 2012–2013, when utilities rushed to run drone pilots and then discovered that scalability, fleet selection, and economics were far harder than the marketing decks suggested. Cole agreed. “The same patterns, right?” he said. “The same patterns, different technology.”
For asset owners, Cole emphasized, technology alone does not fail. Governance, data quality, and workforce adoption determine whether a program makes it out of the sandbox. “This relies on adoption from people at the front line to not only adopt it, but to train it,” Cole noted. The burden for success falls squarely on change management.
Wain has seen some of those graveyards pile up from the regulatory side. Early UAS concepts, she argued, needed to optimize for regulatory breakthroughs first and put economic scalability second. “We unblocked the regulatory, but the scalability part needed more work,” she reflected, citing her previous work supporting beyond visual line of sight concepts.
Dupont took aim at AI hype itself. “Everybody is just… tacking AI onto everything,” he said. “It’s like the catch‑all for everything. It’s like, I’d go to McDonald’s, I’m gonna have an AI burger.” For him, the graveyard is inevitable, because only a small subset of AI‑branded solutions will actually survive the transition to durable, operational use cases.
Offshore Logistics Beyond The 12‑Mile Line
Wain’s article selection shifted the focus from data pipelines to sea lanes. She highlighted Wilson Sons, a nearly 200‑year‑old Brazilian port and maritime logistics operator that has secured approvals from ANAC and DECEA, Brazil’s Civil Aviation Authority and Department of Airspace Control respectively, to run commercial drone deliveries between a Rio offshore support base and platform supply vessels in Guanabara Bay. These short‑range, 5‑kilogram payload missions cover roughly 8 kilometers each way, but represent a mature operator (Speedbird Aero) working with regulators to normalize offshore drone logistics.
The story matters because of who is doing it and where. An incumbent maritime operator is integrating autonomous drones into offshore workflows with full regulatory sign‑off. Wain connected this to Skyways’ own offshore operations, including long‑range cargo missions to wind farms in the Baltic and medical deliveries across Japan’s Okinawa islands with ANA, where drones are already flying “hundreds of miles” with “meaningful payloads” in conditions many smaller UAS cannot tolerate.
The real unlock she sees is not another near‑shore delivery, but consistent access to assets beyond 12 nautical miles offshore, where operations shift from clearly defined national airspace into the more complex world governed by ICAO.
“The 12 nautical mile boundary is the limit of a country’s territorial sea under international law,” she explained, “and inside it, you’re operating in this clearly defined national airspace, but outside of it, you’re in this completely different regulatory regime.” In the United States, an executive order is pushing the FAA to create a clean pathway for drone operations beyond that line to US‑owned offshore assets, but the framework is not fully established yet. (See prior AG coverage of the 12nm issue).
Ernst pressed on whether novel concepts of operations could sidestep some of that ambiguity, such as “sea to ship” logistics between a floating offshore base and nearby vessels that never touch land. Wain laughed at the idea as a tempting but ultimately incomplete workaround. “You’re operating under somebody’s rules, always,” she said. “Either it’s the National Aviation Authority or it’s ICAO.” In practice, even clever sea‑based launch points still have to navigate a patchwork of overlapping jurisdiction and authorization requirements.
Dupont brought the conversation back to the balance sheet. In offshore oil and gas, every hour waiting for a helicopter or tool boat to deliver a critical part is expensive, visible downtime. He sees cargo drones as an obvious fit. “Time is money, and if you need something hot‑shotted out there, a solution like a cargo drone makes a hell of a lot more sense than… waiting for the Bell helicopters… or even worse, waiting for a tool boat to come on in,” he said. For him, the constraint in deepwater energy ops is regulatory, not technical. The aircraft and autonomy can already do the job.
Cole added that Brazil’s drone regulators have been progressive, including work on a type‑certification process for drones that, while limited, offers a structured path forward. Combined with work in places like Singapore and Skyways’ offshore wind pilots, he sees a pattern of regulators who are willing to “give these concepts a go,” then iterate based on real‑world operations.
Robots That Touch The Asset, Not Just Scan It
Dupont’s article choice pulled the discussion directly onto the steel. He spotlighted Qlayers, a Dutch company building robotic coating systems that can climb large industrial structures such as tanks, ships and wind turbine components, then apply protective coatings with high precision.
“When we started our Energy Drone and Robotics Coalition, most of the solutions were all drone‑based,” he said. “Most of them were inspection‑related.” Qlayers’ robots and similar systems represent the next phase, where platforms do not just see the problem, they fix it. They capture high‑resolution data, feed digital twins and asset lifecycle systems, and then execute surface preparation and coating in environments where corrosion is constant and access is risky.
In corrosive offshore and petrochemical environments, he pointed out, operators live in a constant cycle: prepare surfaces, paint them, then repeat. Robotic coaters reduce the need for scaffolding or rope access and dramatically cut overspray, with some deployments reporting paint savings of up to 50 percent, while keeping people out of hazardous conditions.
Dupont broadened the view to include aerial tools like Skygauge and Valo Aero, which can physically contact structures, and payload systems from companies like MontiPower that allow drones to grind and prep surfaces at height. Platforms such as Pelic’s spray‑painting drone extend that continuum by turning drones and crawlers into a combined inspection, maintenance, and repair ecosystem rather than a one‑way data collection stack.
“Utilizing these bots and drones [is] safer, faster, cheaper, and they’re getting to the point that ultimately they’re gonna be running pretty much autonomously,” he explained, with direct integration into enterprise asset lifecycle management. For owners and operators, that means maintenance planning and execution can converge, with digital twins that not only flag risk but trigger concrete, robotic action on the asset.
Ernst seized on that framing to revisit the economics that doomed early drone programs. Many organizations tried to justify drones or robots on a simple capex‑to‑capex basis, but found that advanced systems were not cheaper than traditional methods. The real story, he argued, only emerges when you account for fully burdened cost: hazardous labor hours, consumables, rework and the true price of downtime. For him, articles that declare “robotic solutions are the future” are compelling not because robots are cheaper on day one, but because they make the most sense at operational scale over the life of the asset.
Wain extended this to multi‑role platforms. Once a long‑range cargo drone is certified and embedded in operations, it can just as easily be configured to carry a heavy sensor for inspection as it can a critical spare. “Once…the tech is built and it’s starting to be operationalized, all of these different use cases and uses for that aircraft or…robot” start to open up, she said. For owners, that flexibility helps make the capital story work.
Cole offers a parallel example from building‑washing drones. When operators hear that these systems “eliminate people working at heights,” cost becomes secondary. They cannot find enough qualified people, risk and insurance premiums are rising, and the cost of assets sitting idle while waiting for crews is catastrophic. Even if robots are more expensive on paper, the total equation favors them when they unlock throughput and reduce exposure.
Culture, Silos and The Full‑Stack Energy Ops Future
Culture ran through every article. Ernst argued that many energy operators still organize around siloed budgets and narrow departmental tools. A single high‑end drone might serve transmission line inspection on Monday, tank inspection on Tuesday and offshore logistics on Wednesday, but if each function has its own budget, the business never sees the cross‑utilization that makes the investment work.
“Siloed should be a banned word, in my opinion, at an energy [company],” he argued. He believes that when organizations justify technology based on cross‑departmental value, reductions in hazardous labor and shared data deliverables, “95 percent of the time that model gets you a significantly cheaper, fully burdened price.”
Cole agreed, noting that even very capable drones are expensive, but could pay off quickly if companies and departments share them rather than treating each system as a private asset. The sticking point is not hardware, it is “where do the budgets sit?” and whether leadership is willing to rethink ownership models for critical tools.
For Wain, a big part of breaking silos is telling better stories about impact. Many people, she noted, have trouble imagining what AI or advanced robotics can do until they see a specific, relatable use case. “What really helps with that is… articulating what using that kind of technology can do and the impact it can have on people and on how things are done,” she said. As Skyways scales operations, she continues to see new missions emerge simply because customers finally see what “flying robots” can unlock.
Dupont reminded owners that many of the jobs robots are taking are not ones people are fighting to keep. Cleaning sludge out of petrochemical tanks that once held xylene, or hanging off rigs in storms to paint steel, is not aspirational work. “These are jobs that nobody wants,” he noted. “So it’s… saving money and saving lives. I think that those types of adoptions are going to be embraced.”
Cole offered a final image of where energy ops may be heading: “We’re gonna have the flying drone delivering the crawling drone, which then uses AI to make decisions as it’s doing its job. There we go, we’ve tied it all together!” That encapsulated the episode’s core message that the future of energy operations is not a single breakthrough technology, but a layered stack of AI, air and ground systems, orchestrated across organizational silos and regulatory boundaries to make work safer, faster and more resilient.