The Internet of Things for Oil and Gas
Although the oil and gas industry has been highly automated and connected for decades, the Internet of Things (IoT) will touch nearly every area of O&G operations and customer engagement. With IoT, the O&G industry could tap the utility of autonomous vehicles to explore, develop, and produce under the Arctic ice pack. IoT could help optimize injection and production across horizontal well completions for maximum recovery of original oil in place.
IoT is opening up opportunities for O&G companies to achieve safety, efficiency, and visibility across the enterprise like never before. Many facets of the O&G industry are ideal candidates for transformation. Think about evolving market and environmental conditions, the possibly severe impact of failures or delays, or the highly distributed, remote contingent workforce. What if you could assess asset conditions in light of maintenance schedules or logistical constraints? What if you could equip your contingent workforce to run immediate maintenance at a critical asset? With increasingly sophisticated technology, such processes are now significantly simplified and help you increase the capacity and performance of your company.
IoT is at the heart of this transformation. It connects assets, people, products, and services to streamline the flow of information, enable real-time decisions, heighten asset performance, improve process and product quality, empower people, and open up new opportunities for the industry. Leading O&G companies are already investing billions in IoT – and realizing returns in increased asset uptime, efficient predictive maintenance, reduced cost of compliance, and increased return on innovation. These companies are transforming their business practices, knowing that, in time, IoT will touch nearly every area of O&G operations and customer engagement. How can you successfully join this transformation? Check out a CEO Perspective on this topic here and let us know what you think.
I'm curious to know your opinion in how IoT will affect the downstream activities for the Oil&Gas Industry, and eventually how it will affect the service stations retail business itself.
I have the feeling that IoT embedded in silos or tank trucks will allow for improved reaction times for emergencies, better planning and delivery execution, and ultimately to a reduction in cost per gallon on the distribution chain.
Dear Alejandro,
let´s park the connectivity of things for a moment because
just connecting things will not generate value.
When you built an IoT architecture one main thing to be
considered is to decouple producers and consumers of data transforming a
business ecosystem into a collaborator model. This collaborator model needs to
be feed with the right services of all participants and let them act as value
adding partners.
In downstream, as mentioned in the CEO perspective,
BMW Group Research and Technology of BMW AG is working on
the future of the connected car by integrating vehicle-related services into
automobiles. Gas stations can target drivers with tailored offerings based on
their proximity to locations.
If we look at the service stations the connected car
approach will help to compare site traffic with road traffic to make better
decisions on the site portfolio to catch additional business. Inside the
service station iBeacon may change the customers experience and buying behavior
due to new ways and capabilities for marketing and price campaigns.
Connected tanks at the site, linked to transportation
capacities like trucks and to the existing stock at terminals or to contractual
agreements in correlation with site and road traffic leads to next level of
supply chain management improving all aspects demand (sensing, forecast) and supply balancing.
If we continue to climp up the value chain we will identfiy many more interesting areas for IoT in O&G.
In all use cases multiple players will be part of the game,
inside a corporate domain and outside a corporate domain. All of them will add
value using IoT architectures if they are willing to develop the right
services.
In the low margin downstream business IoT will lead to new
services, higher degree of automation and
less manual interaction. As a result of this costs will decrease and
shift to Opex.
I am excited about what future brings to downstream
business. In the past many companies divest their downstream assets; maybe this
will change into a wave of investments.
Regards
Larry