In parts one, two and three of this series I discussed today’s Digital Oilfield, and how Cisco technology is helping transform and impact the oil and gas industry. From “Field Enablement” to enabling “field Automation,” connecting the unconnected through the Internet of Everything will be critical to evolving the Digital Oilfield.
The concept of the Digital Oilfield can be described best as ‘the end-to-end real-time interaction from down-hole in the reservoir to the sales meter, from a field engineer in a remote location to the Geoscientist in the head office’. Imagine people, process and technology all interacting in real-time for the purpose of extracting hydrocarbons cleaner, safer and more cost-effectively. It ultimately is a vision, not a destination, and there is a lot of value yet to be realized.
“Our vision is to create a digital oilfield, where all of our assets and people – both onshore and offshore – could be linked using the network as a platform to create a secure, converged IP infrastructure. By bridging the digital divide, we aimed to enable the paradigm of taking the problem to the expert rather than the expert having to travel to fix the problem.”
—Massimo Insulla, Drilling and Work Over Deputy General Manager, Petrobel
Collaborating within the Digital Oilfield is not new, but immersive and remote collaboration (anywhere, any-time, any-data, any-device, any-application) will be instrumental in addressing the challenges Canadian oil and gas companies face.
We have the opportunity to enable that vision with the Internet of Everything. We just need to call it the Digital Oilfield.
It’s an exciting time to be in the oil and gas industry in Canada. Stay tuned for my four-part series on cloud computing and the impact it will have on the Canadian oil and gas industry, and leave a comment below.
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