IOT as it Relates to Oil and Gas

TAMPA, Fla. - Sept. 11, 2014 - PRLog -- The Internet of Things (IOT)
IoT (the Internet of Things) like ‘The Cloud’ is a new buzzword, but IoT represents a concept that has been talked about for decades, whereby Every-Thing is connected.  The ‘things’ that are connected are not merely computers connected through the Internet, but every “thing” (watches, toasters, thermostats, doorbells, tables, glasses, sump pumps, grain dryers, coffee makers).  Through technical advancements in computing and communications, IoT will make its way into every ‘thing.’  For oil and gas industry, it enables a new era of situational awareness at a time when it is needed more than ever.  Less experienced field personnel can step into the ranks faster when they are supported by sensors and information presented to them in real time when they walk onto a well pad or into a processing facility. Technology will find a way to connect and share information.  IoT is a huge, topping out at 2 trillion and estimated to reach 7 trillion by 2020.  IoT will touch every industry, including oil and gas.  IoT in the consumer market will make good on concepts such as:

- A thermostat that learns your routines to optimize energy consumption
- A refrigerator that orders milk when you are getting low

Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)
For oil and gas, it is necessary to take IoT one step further and call it IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). This is because the consumer device side of IoT just cannot stand up to the conditions that Oil & Gas will expose such devices to. The roots of IIoT are already prevalent in oil and gas today, in things like Coriolis meters that have their own processing and computing power to handle all calculations within the meter itself. The results of its calculations can be read via Modbus in most cases and stored in some other device.  IIoT will make it possible for each meter to communicate its information not to some other local ‘dumb’ device like an RTU or a PLC, but rather push it to the cloud for immediate availability and processing. Once this information is in the cloud, automation and control takes on a whole new meaning, potentially at a global scale.  Most SCADA systems do a really good job at a facility level where they have direct access to devices based at that facility but are limited once you move to devices outside the facility. The IIoT and the Cloud enable each facility to work in unison with other facilities and remote devices, even sites owned or managed by partners.  An example of how this can make operations smarter is in the case of a gas processing facility that serves many multi-well pads.  As the gas processing facility gets backed up, it can have a domino effect on all of the upstream pads.  If each upstream customer was able to subscribe to the events generated by the gas plant and back off the flow rates at their respective pads both upstream and midstream could maximize throughput. Each Upstream pad would be provided enough  information to be able to automatically adjust processes and/ or call out to the appropriate personnel with voice and text message alerts that can facilitate expedited manual reactions.

The Cloud
The fabric that brings all of this together is the cloud.  There are many definitions of the cloud, but simply put, the cloud is all of the services that make the internet work. In this case, the cloud is providing the support for these devices to push data out so one or more people or applications can get to it and utilize it. The cloud also provides the means of being able to scale at levels that are completely out of the reach of all SCADA systems on the market today.  In the world of SCADA, there is a lot of data.  The hub and spoke nature of large SCADA systems are there because all SCADA systems today are limited in the amount of data they can process and store in any given location as well as the devices they can communicate with.  The cloud delivers the scale that is needed for any company looking to have a single platform to manage all devices and assets in an efficient, economical manner. If the cloud can scale for Google and Facebook, trust me, a 15000 well SCADA system can be handled with the right platform.

Why aren’t all software solutions converting to IIOT compatible cloud solutions today?
The trend is clearly moving in that direction; traditional software applications are caught in a tough spot. For software to run at cloud scale, it needs to be completely re-designed to do so.  Anyone simply ‘upgrading’ legacy software is putting lipstick on a pig. These companies need to complete re-write their software to effectively work on the cloud. Many traditional software companies would incur a huge development cost burden just to retain a client base they already have and that means less profit.  Some will simply host their current software and try and fake their way through the appearance of being a true cloud solution via a hosted approach. The fact is most traditional software companies would rather fight the cloud, retain their customer base, and win a war of attrition than face the daunting (and risky) task of rewriting their entire application to work on the cloud. The challenges are steep but the advantages for those brave enough to accept the challenge are huge; just ask Google, Facebook, and Amazon. These companies all pioneered and operate most of the cloud architectures so they can scale and handle broad user access and processes without the limitations of traditional installed software systems. These same advantages will extend to Oil & Gas companies that want to scale across tens of thousands of devices in the IIoT, or even smaller Oil & Gas companies that simply want to operate without a ridiculous IT and SCADA Engineering overhead that is required to keep traditional software operating and integrated. There is certainly a lot of talk about what the new devices can do, but what is not being addressed in oil and gas is what we do with all of these legacy devices. Do we expect all of these devices to be replaced?  If you manufacture the hardware, you hope so; however, we know this is not the reality of the industry. The hardware winners in the IIoT will be the smart device manufacturers that provide a way for their customers to leverage and even enhance legacy hardware to communicate directly with cloud applications while also creating new “smarter devices” that can coexist in legacy facilities.

The oil and gas software platforms that will prevail in the IIoT will be those that are vendor neutral and support both legacy, legacy modified, and new smart devices (‘things’) in such a way that all ‘things’ can be interacted with, leveraged, and shared via the Internet (“Cloud”) with the proper permissions, security, and mobility.