The oil and gas industry is undergoing a digital transformation due to impact caused by advent of IoT and other cutting-edge technologies. These advanced technologies are digitizing legacy operations in oil and gas industry, leading in increased efficiency and optimized end-to-end processes.
Through IoT, the industry is beholding significant benefits in terms of increased operational efficiencies, accurate outcomes, and enhanced productivity. Various solutions of this technology collectively create an interoperable environment that allow refineries and oil companies to monitor all operations and collect insightful data. By processing and visualizing this data, companies can take steps to enhance their OEE and surge ROI.
Here’s a list to some of those solutions:
Types of IoT Solutions for Oil and Gas:
● Fleet monitoring solution:
Transferring crude oil and its products from one spot to another require stringent monitoring and control to protect them from theft and prevent disastrous conditions that can occur due to mishandling. By tracking fleet ships and trucks, oil companies can achieve this.
IoT enables just that through its real-time and remote monitoring capabilities. Various parameters that affect the fleet and the product they carry can be tracked live from far-away distances. This IoT-based fleet monitoring solution also allow selection of optimal routes that fleet vehicles can use to transfer oil and gas. With weight, volume, and temperature measurement sensors, a keen eye on amount of product carried by fleet vehicles along with its condition can also be monitored during transportation.
● Leak detection:
Detecting leaks in the oil and gas pipelines is crucial to prevent losses and accidents in factories. Petroleum products being volatile substances can easily catch fire and explode. With flow and pressure metering solution of IoT leaks in pipelines can be detected in real-time. This solution can also be used to identify leakage of toxic and combustible gases along with asphyxiants such as methane that are generally found in such industrial setups. IoT real-time alert system can alarm operators about these leaks and help them to take necessary actions to prevent any hazardous conditions.
● Oil tanker monitoring solution:
IoT-based smart oil and gas management solutions perform overall monitoring of oil tankers to curb industrial losses. Sensors installed on oil tanks send real-time readings of oil stored in them to a platform through gateways and servers. Hence, the amount of liquid stored in these tanks can be measured at all times.Smart oil tanker monitoring solutions hence allow refineries and crude excavating companies to keep a track of available liquid in their tanks and wells.
Benefits of implementing IoT in Oil and Gas industry:
Real-time field data
The key benefit of implementing IoT in Oil and Gas is the real-time data that can be fetched from the endpoints of all assets. The data is gathered from different sources with IoT sensors installed at various locations of an O&G plant. This data helps managers in decision-making process by monitoring the entire plant effectively. Condition of machines, efficiency of processes, on-floor activities can hence be effectively supervised and controlled properly.
Inventory management:
The real-time liquid level readings from multiple tanks in a tank farm of a refinery can be tabulated and read on a centralized platform. These real-time measurements hence allow companies to keep a track of fuel of different types they have available in entire facility. Hence, companies can effectively manage their inventory and stock levels, and also optimize their warehousing, distribution, and supply chain.
End to end connected pipelines
By connecting the pipeline network of an oil and gas company with an IoT based metering and controlling system, a refinery can manage and control the flow of fuels in its facility. This metering solutions hence creates a safer environment in the plant and reduce cost. Fluid parameters such as temperature, flow, pressure, etc. can be tracked from meters embedded on the pipelines. Hence, the real-time condition of oil and gas can be tracked while they are transferred. The flow of fuel can also be controlled through IoT smart valves as per requirement.
Predictive and Preventive Maintenance
IoT based smart solution is capable of overcoming the drawbacks of the SCADA system. The SCADA system can capture less than 3% of data from the asset but cannot send it to the manager on time. This impacts the operations and decision-making process negatively. IoT-based smart Oil and Gas monitoring solutions can increase efficiency, prevent failures, and predict future workability and performance of assets better than a SCADA system from its predictive maintenance features.
The data amalgamated over a period of time when processed and analyzed can help in identifying bottlenecks that cause malfunction and breakdown. This helps in predicting potential failure that can happen to any equipment in the near future.
Real-time Tanker/Fleet Tracking and Management
Sensors embedded in the tankers and vessels helps to track the location and health of fleet in real-time. This intelligent fleet management system allows the Oil and Gas industry to increase their work efficiency, reduce oil theft, and optimize supply chain while transferring fluid. The oil and gas data can be monitored ubiquitously with the help of IoT sensors.
Sustainable Environment Management
The oil and gas industry leverages various technologies to create suitable working environment and reduce negative impact on the environment. IoT with its gas detection and air quality monitoring solution enable identification of accurate and real-time impact of exhaust gases on the environment.
Summing up
Adopting IoT helps oil and gas industry to monitor all of its assets and processes in the operation field. Myriad range of benefits in real-time asset monitoring and management, appropriate asset utilization, and historical data management allow this industry to improve its operations, work efficiency, and productivity. The disruption that IoT brought in industries is taking their workflow and operations to the next level by upgrading them on every possible scale.
