Role of automation in oil and gas industry

Oil and gas industry was one of the first to embrace digitisation in the 1980s. But the second digital spring it is sadly lagging behind. In one of the striking contrast with the efficiency debate, it is interesting to note that we, as an industry, are ignoring the role of automation in oil and gas industry.

Before we list down the areas where automation can do wonders before coming to proper details how we can achieve high-impact opportunity with automation, let us learn what are the problems, which can be addressed by automation.

A study by McKinsey & Company clearly states the following:

1. Benchmarking analysis exhibits that, in the last decade, the average production efficiency in the industry has considerably dropped.
2. Among the industry leaders and other oil and gas companies there’s a performance gap of 18% points between 2000 and 2012.

Incorporation of automation in the oil and gas industry can help increase efficiency across the industry’s supply chain. Be it upstream, midstream, and downstream. It can help:

1. Increasing oilfield recovery
2. Increase profitability
3. Decreasing performance gap between industry leaders and other oil and gas companies
4. Increased health safety and reducing environmental impacts by oil and gas companies
5. Addressing the talent and experience gap

Automation needs, what we can say, food for it: Data. There is a linear flow process involved in understanding how we can make the best use of data for letting automation achieve the above-listed advantages of having automation in oil and gas industry.

The process is:

1. Data Capture – Close to every offshore rig has employed innumerous numbers of hardware sensors which are collecting huge data. This data can be helped to reduce the unplanned downtime.
2. Data Management – All the data that has been collected needs to segregated and hence, we can understand the sense it is making. Some of it can help us take a decision which can avoid safety hazard offshore, some can help us take an informed decision like replacement of an equipment, or merely help us learn the overall process without much of an effort.
3. Visualisation and Clustering of Data – There is a serious need to visualise data. What is more challenging for the industry is that there are more 40,000 used or unused data tags which are, we can say, a waste if we cannot visualise where and how we can use this piece of information. A meticulously organised data can help us make an informed decision.
4. Data Analysis – There is a need to analyse this chunk of data. Many oil and gas companies are hiring data scientist and analysts whose role is to make sense out of the data which the industry is receiving every second.

Several areas like seismic analysis – deployment of RFID sensors to collect meaningful information – and reservoir modeling can be benefitted with the increasing use of automation.

Automating various equipment in the oil and gas industry can help us minimising the time for resource allocation, reduce the time to of planning and execution, effortlessly manage the documentation which is a tedious job for an average employee, increase capital productivity. An overall increase in efficiency can be increased when we plan to appreciate the relevance of automation in our industry.