From 1859, when Colonel Edwin Drake successfully drilled America’s first oil well in Pennsylvania and over the next several decades, the oil and gas business was primarily driven by manual labor. 

This meant high vehicle mileage, and lost production time because pumpers and engineers were constantly needed on location, which resulted in operational inefficiencies and many safety issues. Until the introduction of automation technology into the oil and gas industry.

As automation technology has progressed, from cable tools to rotary drills; from car phones to palm-sized smart phones; from desktop computers for accounting to ubiquitous sensors sending big data through the cloud to smart devices; oilfield efficiency has continued to cut costs, save time, boost production and improve safety.

What if your pipelines or wells could call you up and tell you they were sick before they went down?

If you’ve ever gone to the doctor to get some medicine at the first sign of a fever—to try to shorten the illness—you understand what I mean.

Albert Einstein, as you may recall, was pretty good at understanding complex stuff like, say, the makeup of the universe, quantum physics and the like. It’s interesting that he’s the one who said that if you didn’t understand something well enough to explain it to your grandmother, you didn’t really understand it.

Well, I like to think of myself as knowing a thing or two about tech like IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), SaaS (Software as a Service), and even SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and I‘m even able to successfully explain it all to a Grandma without issue. So, if you're interested in learning three easy steps to help your operations digitally step up to the plate read on...

What if we could help you know about production issues instantly, anywhere in the world? 
What if all relevant personnel got that information in an easy-to-read dashboard at the same time? 
What if that same information system helped valves and pumps self-monitor so they required less oversight?

You’re probably familiar with remote monitoring and control through hardware and software that collect and analyze data then issue reports. Collectively this is known as the Industrial Internet of Things, or IIoT.  It allows people and machines to maximize efficiency, boosting production and reduce the people hours involved so you can focus on more important things.

There has been much discussion through the years in many sectors of the economy around what the “Internet of Things” (IoT) can do to transform the way we work and live.  In brief, the IoT is about networking “things” like devices and even life-forms so that information may be collected from these things over time and form the basis for in-depth analysis and better decisions.

SCADA and other remote monitoring systems introduced a step change to the industry in the area of operational efficiency by providing a positive impact on run-time, production and reduced operating costs. However, with low commodity prices and lower producing wells, there is still a challenge for business cases to justify putting monitoring on all assets.