As more and more E&Ps look to digitally transform their operations for efficiency and profitability, it may be surprising to learn that the digital oilfield can also help the environment, employee satisfaction and retention rates. In other words, going digital can help you make significant gains in your ESG strategy.

Having abundant data from monitoring systems is great, and it’s even greater when that data is clear, useful and readily available to authorized users anywhere they may be, and at anytime. It makes your people feel—and be—more productive, able to concentrate on finding and producing oil and gas instead of calling around to see who has the latest production report on their laptop, digging through stacks of paper to find a missing truck haul ticket or wasting time and money to drive to a remotely located site just to 'check on things'.

The benefits of making oil and gas production autonomous are many. Production increases based on the ability to detect and remedy problems in seconds rather than hours is topmost, followed by safety, efficiencies when physical repairs are needed and more precision in PM schedules are among the others.

We’re not there yet—some would point out that the Oil Patch, due to its boom-and-bust nature, lags behind other industries in this area—but we’ve made big strides since the 2015-16 bust. Necessity being the mother of invention.