Use of IoT in Oil and Gas Drilling and Exploration

A quiet revolution is currently under way in a number of asset-intensive industries, primarily thanks to the advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT). Being among the most asset-intensive industries in the economy, the modern oil and gas sector is all set to be one of the largest beneficiaries.

In recent years, the Internet of Things has evolved into an important tool for ambitious enterprises as well as critical industries like energy, oil and gas production. It is helping organizations create revolutionary technologies while improving end-user experiences.

Upstream oil and gas could benefit significantly from IoT. These operations are responsible for identifying deposits, drilling wells, as well as recovering raw materials from underground. In addition, this important sector also covers related services, like feasibility studies, rig operations, extraction of chemical supply, and machinery rental.

With IoT, upstream exploration and production businesses would be able to make their operations more productive and safer, and extract resources from more complex and challenging environments. Deep drilling is one of the areas of oil and gas exploration that require a better technology. It is worth mentioning that deep rigs are used for drilling resources that are hard to reach. That being said, the deeper a rig goes, the more dangerous it can become.

This is why the rig operators need to be accurate in terms of their measurement during the drilling process.

RFID (Radio frequency identification) and IoT can help reduce risk as well as non-productive time and conduct operations that are difficult with conventional tools. For instance, companies can easily adapt their drilling and exploration strategies after comparing accurate real-time down-hole drilling data with information from production of nearby wells.

As per Bain & Company, this high level of visibility and precision can help oil and gas companies in improving production by 6% to 8%. And that is not all as the gradual shift to data generation through the cloud allows for more expansion of the number of possible transactions that can be executed all the way down the supply chain. Also, the important thing here is that most companies need a well-designed IoT platform that can help them convert huge amounts of data into relevant and useful information.

In this regard, a great benefit for oil and gas companies nowadays is the great ability of their pumpoff controllers that can speak legacy protocols in order to participate in the IoT and enjoy the full benefits of modern web services.

Digitizing drilling, exploration, transmission, and production systems leverages IoT’s ability to considerably expand both the monitoring as well as the remote use of various functions that can lower operational cost for oil and gas companies.

Automating certain high cost functions, like drilling, considerably benefit from near-zero unplanned downtime along with running oilfield equipment much closer to optimal specifications.

Many IoT use cases that are now generating the most value for many oil and gas companies are centered on reducing non-productive time (NPT). NPT has a considerable impact on revenue, and accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of drilling costs.