Midland Conference Promises to Reveal How Technology is the Future of the Oil Patch
How many of these concepts
can you define?
IIoT
Blockchain
Dashboards
AI
Datastreams
Industrial Machine Intelligence
Depressed already? Or just puzzled?
These and other machine-software concepts are rapidly moving into all types of industry, and the Oil Patch is no exception.
On the bright side, they’re bringing huge opportunities for boosting efficiency, improving
maintenance schedules and making workers safer, says Symon Rubens. Rubens, CEO of The Energy Conference Network, is bringing a conference on these topics to the Permian Basin.
It’s entitled “Oil and Gas Technology Gamechangers,” and it’s based on a similar series of conferences in Houston, which have grown dramatically in popularity in the last 2-1/2 years. The first conference there hosted 90 attendees—the second 240 and the third 400.
Those attendees were mostly from Houston and the nearby area, but Rubens said he heard many say that they’d love for colleagues in the Permian Basin to get this information. Hence, the conference scheduled for Tuesday, November 14 at Midland’s DoubleTree by Hilton.
The move to automation and IIoT (the industrial internet of things) was slow coming to the Oil Patch, but the downturn of 2014-16 forced many companies to become more efficient. They had to cut payroll because of reduced revenues but, for many producers, the same amount of work was still there.
Automation and information were the keys.
But simply remotely monitoring and controlling pumps, tanks and facilities was only the beginning.
Only the beginning.
Rubens is particularly excited about the possibilities of wearable technology for monitoring remote workforce safety.
“You’ve got everything from sensors to artificial intelligence (AI) to virtual reality and fomented reality. This stuff can be used so that remote workers can assistance from central locations as well.”
Specifically, he referred to a useful application of the recent Pokemon Go phenomenon. “You can overlay information onto reality so that workers can make better decisions,” he said. VR can also be used to visually train workers without them going to a remote location.
The possibilities for this will be addressed at the Midland conference.
Humans, he said, are often the missing piece. The integration of operational technology and information technology “is one of the things these conferences address. You have IT departments evaluating new technology, but they need to be working hand-in-hand with the engineers and the guys in the field to make sure that the technology is useful. And then you need to bring in the other departments—whether it’s finance, HR, Training—to make sure that it’s not just getting technology for technology’s sake.”
To register for this conference, please click the link below.
https://www.gamechangers-midland17.com/page/1305125/registration
