It is well-recognised that the oil and gas industry, persistently faces challenges in cost management, extraction of high value from current assets, and maximisation of the up-time.
Advancement in technology has led to a connected enterprise, which helps the sector to move closer to operational excellence. Cloud, mobility, and analytics offer an actionable view into real-time production data.
The corresponding response to issues can thus be made as soon as they arise, from anywhere in the world. Improvements in exploration and production can eventually boost efficiency and productivity. The role played by automation technology in the industry is getting complex by the day, as initially, it was limited to just machine controls, while currently, and in the future, automation techniques are anticipated to control and manage assets. However, considering the fact that automation helps achieve reduction in energy consumption and make optimum use of the generated data, there is ample scope for this industrial concept to grow in scope within oil and gas.
The global market for oil and gas automation is estimated to grow from $10.29bn in 2016 to $15.94bn by 2021, at a CAGR of 7.57%, according to a report by Mordor Intelligence. Currently, North America is the largest regional market, while the US also takes a major share of the global production in this region. Additionally, the market in wider Asia-Pacific region is also estimated to witness a tremendous growth in demand over the coming years.
“We have seen a significant uptick in automation in upstream (sector) across the Middle East,” Andrew Dennant, Oil & Gas director for the MEA region at Emerson Automation Solutions, says.
Traditionally, wells were not instrumented and operators travelled to the wellsite to check the well status. Now almost all new wells are specified with measurement instrumentation and several clients are retrofitting existing wells to monitor pressure and temperature of the wellhead, annulus and flowline. Some more forward-thinking clients are installing Multiphase Flow Meters on wellheads to gain an insight into changing production characteristics as they happen.”
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“These changes have been enabled by a combination of advances; reliable wireless transmission of data enables cost-effective implementation of measurement, and visualisation and workflow software handles a vast amount of data and puts it into the right context for all users to make better decisions.,” Dennant maintains.
Luc Chantepy, regional sales vice president for MENA at AspenTech, says in agreement: “Automation in the oil and gas industry is not entirely new, but in 2017, the industry is responding to the new reality of oil and gas prices. The focus is on achieving sustainable profits by using technology to change the profit equation to drive down the breakeven cost of producing crude oil and natural gas by up to 30-40%.”
“Adoption is more rapid today than yesterday, because software is available at lower costs, on more affordable computing platforms, with more accessible user interfaces,” Chantepy says. “In addition, most primary control systems now include simulation modules and more people are exploring their use. Technology investments have increased, and some companies are planning to spend millions on new technologies over the next two years.”
It is worth noting that the deployment of automation reduces the need for human intervention, thereby making a sizable portion of the labour force vulnerable to the risk of retrenchment by the management of the operating companies. Dennant says automation technology is only meant to assist workers and not replace them.
“There is no doubt that our clients have a strong desire to ‘do more with less’, and that has led to significant retrenchments. However, we feel that our technologies and services open the door to repurposing the people that work for an organisation. Instead of travelling to dangerous and distant places to perform work like reading gauges, we enable our clients to work in a collaborative way to make better decisions using workflow visualisation that is role-based with one relevant window onto a single version of the truth.”
Next up: Emerson shares insights about its automation technology portfolio, as the Knowledge Partner…
