In an Emerson Exchange America’s presentation, Cloud & Edge Computing for Autonomous Oil & Gas Production Operations, Emerson’s Julian Sanchez, Tanner Erickson and Cody Edgerton highlight ways to drive more efficient production operations. Here is their presentation abstract:
Autonomous production is the vision for operators that are seeking to digitally transform, with the greater goal of putting oil and gas on a better path of sustainability to ensure the world’s energy supply can be met well into the future. Join our expert panel to learn how to begin building an automation strategy using cloud and edge computing. The discussion will include how autonomous operations will evolve over the next few years, including advances in machine learning and AI, and why it is critically important there is a highly collaborative approach between end users and autonomous solutions providers.
After the presenters introduced themselves, Tanner opened describing the digital oilfield and autonomous operations. One major trend is that oil and gas producers are increasing investments in cost-reducing digital technologies. 61% of investments are cybersecurity related and key focus areas include artificial intelligences, data analytics and robots & drones. These investments are being made to improve competitive advantage, increase profits, and access talented individuals into the industry.
From a business performance perspective, the objectives are to reduce costs, increase efficiency, reduce risks, and improve and accelerate decision making.
Today, many existing producers have manual and disjointed processes:
The goal is a digital oilfield with more integrated and efficient operations:
Tanner noted that it’s important to assess where you are at in the digital oilfield journey and developing a roadmap to drive to greater performance. These steps include sensing and remote monitoring, a clear automation strategy, creating actionable data through advanced analytics and driver ever closer to autonomous operations.
He shared some very specific areas for production digital transformation:
Cody next came on to discuss autonomous rod pump management. He shared a story with an independent exploration and production company who engaged with the Emerson team on a 150 well production area. They employed the Zedi autonomous rod pump solution, Zedi self-serve commissioning and migration to Zedi Access, Zedi Go and Zedi Analytics with integrated analytics and dashboards.
These technologies enabled autonomous control and optimization to improve performance and safety, provided an understanding of digital transformation and continuous progression towards autonomous operations, enhanced decision-making through advanced prescriptive analytics, and provided better insights into the operations and processes. Overall, this project drove down lease operating expenses.
Julian rounded out the presentation by providing the levels in better understanding an IIoT architecture:
Visit the Zedi SaaS SCADA Solutions on Emerson.com for more on the technologies and solutions to enable your path to the digital oilfield and autonomous operations.
