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oilandgasmiddleeast.com AUGUST 2019
Monitoring & response: A growth strategy
Investments into monitoring and response should be part of a wider growth strategy for
oil and gas companiesEDITOR’S LETTER
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T
he oil and gas industry has never
been afraid of data. Because opera-
tions upstream are so complex, and
involve so many different assets, it
is crucial for operators to understand how
their assets work together and impact one
another.
The first step for oil and gas companies
was to sensorise their fields. With everything
being monitored, they had half of the equa-
tion down. The other half, and the true value
of this endeavour, is what you actually do
with that data. Knowing what a certain asset
is doing is important, but predicting what it
will do is far more valuable.
There has always been an unspoken step
in between monitoring and response; it is
actually monitoring, analysis and then re-
sponse. Analysis could mean the one second
it takes to see that an asset is no longer
functioning, or it could mean hours spent
poring over data to understand how one as-set has been impacting another.
Machine learning, artificial intelligence
and the internet of things have the potential
to completely change this segment, and
some companies are taking note.
The Market Focus this month takes a look
at some of the innovations in monitoring
& response, and some smaller companies
taking aim at this segment to make it better.
Although some of their technologies appear
unrelated, together, they could form the
basis for an entirely new form of monitoring
and response system.
Our Knowledge Partner is the Internation-
al Energy Agency, which has taken monitor-
ing and response to a global level with its
online tracker which monitors methane
emissions in the industry across the globe.
On a smaller scale, oil and gas companies
can use monitoring and response tech-
nologies to lower their emissions and track
potential sustainability issues.In our Tech Focus, Bart Cornelissen of De-
loitte Middle East takes on digitalisation, and
why the industry is lagging behind despite
the clear importance of digital technology in
improving the oil and gas sector.
The Last Word sees HID Global discuss
data security; while digitalisation and the
internet of things can unlock value for oil and
gas companies, they can also unlock added
risk, and operators should be aware of the
appropriate measures to combat those risks.
In times where money is tight, effective
monitoring and response can help opera-
tors avoid unnecessary costs and tighten
the screws on their operations. Even in lush
times, finding the right monitoring and
response solution simply helps to maximise
profit and control cost; something which
every oil and gas firm should strive towards.
For companies with an eye on growth, it
is not optional and could spell the difference
between success and failure.