Oil and gas industry deals with huge amounts of data from a network of thousands of motors, heavy duty mechanical equipment, electronic relays and sensors synchronized & controlled by complex systems. The industry demands to monitor thousands and thousands of parameters & signals in every moment. Electro-mechanical equipment needs frequent maintenance and often suffer an operational breakdown. Failure of a single unit or single process leads to consequent breakdown or stoppage of the process leading to huge loss of revenue as the oil company fails to achieve its desired sales target or market demand. Many players in the industry have invested in seismic software, visualization tools and other digital technologies long back itself to unearth new avenues of information in this field and make technical decisions based on this.
The rise of new age big data computing devices and advanced analytics tools are opening up new possibilities in this field. Big Data analytics has widely helped Geology Interpretation, New Well Delivery, Crude Oil Piping, Oil Storage, Operation & Preventive maintenance of Crude Oil Processing Plant & Supply chain management. However, for analytics to have a significant effect on the company’s performance, it must be integrated into day-to-day operations.
A holistic Big Data plan not only helps to achieve desired revenue & optimizes operational activity, but also to take into consideration the due scope for preventive maintenance activity & predictive overhauling without creating excessive pressure or overload on the equipment.
Big Data Analytics helps in achieving desired sales revenue and at the same time, it helps in information or insights on whether the process plant shall operate at an optimum level simultaneously reducing the probability of breakdown. Data from multiple sensors and programmable logic controllers is captured each second. These basic physical parameters or huge data points per second measuring temperature, pressure, vibration, etc. e can be mapped with their threshold value. This will help in identifying any unwanted breakdown and ensures the entire mechanism is working at an optimized point so that both safe performance of equipment, production targets and sales revenue can be achieved. Big Data Analytics create a perfect balance of top-down and bottom-up approach, in which the sales target, process productivity and equipment safety are balanced at an optimal point. In short, it enables the operation of the entire process at a safe point where sales target, process productivity & equipment safety will not have to compromise to achieve their individual target.
With the right big data analytical solutions, the oil and gas industry players can shift their focus from traditional monitoring processes to a more agile and real time process. This enables them to generate tactical insights for substantially improving the business performance at the same time preventing problems.
Koushik is a former Happiest Mind and this content was created and published during his tenure.
