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How High-Tech is Transforming the Oil Industry

Posted: 15th December 2016 09:50
What comes to your mind when you hear the word, “High-Tech?”
 
For many people, computers, and smartphones come to mind.  When it comes to the oil and gas industry, however, High-Tech means something much more complex, geared towards improving efficiency and production within the industry.
 
A typical North American oil and gas well, for example, has grown over the past six years to become at least four times more productive, thanks to technological advancements. Here, we explore how high-tech is transforming the oil industry.
 
Exploration and Production
 
Technological advancements have improved our understanding of the earth’s subsurface geology by providing more and better information about what lies beneath. With this, you can find resources more easily.
 
This has been made possible by advancements in various areas such as:
Moreover, in the modern world, there is sufficient technology to store massive amounts of data, in petabytes. Likewise, the production is more efficient since the digital oil fields allow for remote monitoring of thousands of pieces of equipment across multiple continents in real time.
 
Marketing
 
The oil industry still relies on getting its message across to both suppliers, distributors, retail outlets and then the consumer, whether it be for fuel for their vehicles or a company that uses oil in plastic production. In this digital-age, a major portion of the market is going online.
 
Part of marketing to the right people will have you reaching out to companies that can get you to the top of the search engine list. Companies that use search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click, and having an active blog.
 
Another major point is video marketing and as Youth Noise points out, “Over 90% of all web traffic is video and billions of hours are watched monthly.” So when it comes to marketing in the oil industry having a top choice marketer to get you to the top is key. 
 
Automation
 
Technological advancements have enabled automation in the oil industry. This offers numerous potential positive impacts to the upstream value chain of exploration, production, and development. However, some of the prime opportunities are in the production operations, like minimizing unexpected downtime.
 
Considering the oil and gas industry’s considerable increases in upstream capital investment, enhancing the efficiency of production is essential. Automation presents several opportunities to this end:
 
Smart Grids
 
While this is still in the conceptual stage, Smart Grids could have a substantial impact on global energy demand. Theoretically, Smart Grids involve the use of digital communication technology to identify and respond to local changes in energy usage.
 
However, Smart Grid technology would also allow an energy supply network to become infinitely more dynamic, thereby allowing it to become smart and effectively self-healing.
 
As costs of energy rise, Smart Grids will allow consumers to optimize energy usage by shifting peak load to off-peak time. It will, perhaps most relevantly, make it easier to incorporate additional sources of energy into the network, especially renewables.
 
Conclusion
 
The rapid advancement of technology such as sensors, control systems, as well as big data and analytics has greatly transformed the oil and gas industry. In fact, the oil and gas companies that have capitalized on the opportunities presented by the high-tech have enjoyed improved overall efficiency and production.
 
Adoption of high-tech in the oil industry has also led to creation of new jobs, such as those of data scientists, which has opened a portal for new ideas to enter the industry.