It’s pretty amazing to watch the pace of mergers and acquisitions these days. Oil and gas producers are working hard to maximize investments in an economy that’s better than it was, but still not where everyone would like it to be.

Even so, it’s one thing to sign a contract to acquire a new field, and it’s another thing to handle the new field’s SCADA systems, data and controls. The question is, do you accept the system that’s there and train your people on yet another software package? Or do you spend possibly tens of thousands of dollars and weeks of time replacing their system with your own—and if you do that, what happens to the legacy data they’d already collected?

As oil and gas producers look to find efficiencies in their production operations, the first and best solution to discuss is adding automation to their well site operations. Traditionally, some may be hesitant to implement a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, due to the initial capital costs involved and complexity. However, when one is looking at reducing total operational costs and increasing recoverable reserves, the positives from investing in SCADA become clear, especially when one considers the increased affordability brought by modern technology.