Key of Technologies are Advancing Oil and Gas Drilling

Oil and gas (O&G) is still a thriving industry, managing $1.7 trillion USD per year and requiring over 94 million barrels of petroleum per day globally. It is expected that demand for fossil fuels would rise by around 25% during the next 22 years. As a result, in an era when automation, digital process control, and IoT are regarded as "common innovation processes," oil and gas companies have begun to adopt technologies that can assist them in gaining access to small isolated offshore reservoirs as well as areas characterized by extreme environments.

The 2016 Upstream Oil and Gas Digital Trends Survey identified eight critical areas in which the O&G industry should adjust in order to reap the benefits across their extractive environments. The fastest developing fields among them were robotics and drones, artificial intelligence, and wearable technology.

At the moment, more than 80% of Oil and Gas enterprises are undergoing a digital transformation that has the potential to unleash $1.6 trillion USD by enhancing reliability, optimizing operations, and creating new value. Furthermore, the adoption of "common innovation processes" can assist the O&G industry in gaining environmental credibility because robotics and drones, artificial intelligence, and wearable technologies offer tangible options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving water, and avoiding oil spills, for example. Finally, modern operational technology translates into more efficient and less risky operations, and has the potential to deliver a wealth of process data to optimize O&G extraction procedures.

A number of developing technologies can help the O&G business comply with health, safety, and environmental regulations while also being cost-effective.

Robotic drilling systems (RDSs) provide entirely unmanned drill floors for both land and offshore operations. RDSs can handle pipes and tools, as well as replace casing crews and tongs, and they can handle machinery that revolve. Furthermore, cutting-edge drilling technology provides self-moving autonomous drill rigs that may be transported around an oil field from one well position to the next.

In-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) can identify fractures, corrosion, and severe problems in pipes, which can cause pipe failures and halt output. These robots have nondestructive testing sensors that are embedded in the pipeline network. IPIRs operate autonomously at this point. They can send data and control signals; for example, IPIRs feature wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that can detect sand buildup, pipe damage, vandalism or theft, and fluid leaks in addition to monitoring pipeline integrity. WSNs are intended to communicate across the relay node, transmitting data to a single base station.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are another option for inspecting O&G facilities. Drones are increasingly being used to monitor tanks, pipelines, and refineries on a regular basis. Drones are frequently operated from a ground control station, necessitating the use of advanced flight control algorithms, inertial navigation, data fusion, and tracking control. These characteristics make drones useful for exploring O&G reservoirs in severe situations where human investigation is not feasible. To undertake faster and safer inspections, drones can be outfitted with a thermal camera, lights, and optical camera operators.

Aside from smart sensors and machine interface, recent advancements in 4D seismic data gathering and computer capacity are assisting O&G businesses in capturing more accurate subsurface geology for finding fossil fuel resources.

Oil and gas corporations who are already looking ahead:

Maersk Oil has established a new unmanned platform, the Tyra Southeast-B, in the Danish North Sea, following the operation of the first unmanned, fully automatic, and remote operating platform, the Norwegian Oseberg H, located on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Tyra's reserves are predicted to grow by 50 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMBOE) during the next three decades.

Statoil, Enegi Oil (Nu-oil), the Wood Group, and the China Offshore Oil Engineering Company are concentrating their efforts on operations to access more minor reservoirs. Small reservoirs have recoverable reserves of less than 20 MMBOE. According to Enegi Oil, there are 88 fields in the North Sea with fewer than 15 MMBOE that can be developed using buoy technology, for example. Others are taking notice of the region north of the Arctic Circle, which "may contain roughly 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of the world's unknown oil deposits."

In Canada, Statoil and Husky Energy are exploring drilling for oil and gas resources in deep-water, far-offshore oil 500 kilometers off Canada's east coast, in the Flemish Pass Basin, using ocean and subsea technology, remote sensing, and autonomous underwater vehicles.

To summarize, automation and digitalization may provide certain benefits to the oil and gas industry in terms of safety, environmental performance, public health, productivity, operations, efficiency, reliability, and investment. To remain competitive, oil and gas companies must evolve, as the means in which energy is generated, consumed, and distributed have changed tremendously. We are living in an era in which people have more decision-making power based on real-time data.