The global oil producing industry spends millions of dollars every week on preemptive well monitoring—sending technicians to remote sites to check wells for operational faults. Though the idea of operating oil wells with the help of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is catching on, labor costs still dominate operating expenses. Not only does the typical oil company still send field technicians out driving from well to well to regularly inspect the equipment and report back on findings, even using IIoT technologies in many cases does not resolve issues with labor costs, argues Nav Dhunay, president and CEO of Ambyint.
“If you just analyze the data, all you’ve done is push the problem around,” Dhunay says, arguing that the main expense is still labor, albeit a different kind. “Now you have people staring at screens, looking at graphs, trying to understand the data. It just pushes up the labor cost.”
Ambyint, based in Calgary, Canada, focuses on taking labor costs out of operating oil wells by removing the manual component of data analytics, using Big Data to create intelligent, high-functioning wells. Its latest product, launched last week, is AmbyControl for EPM (Electric Prime Mover), which links any oil well operated by electric motor to the Ambyint platform. Through Ambyint’s data algorithms, well managers are provided with detailed real-time well analysis along with operational recommendations to optimize the wells. Well managers are also given the ability to remotely control each of their well assets directly via the Ambyint mobile and web app.
This puts an end to the preemptive labor costs that oilfields typically face. “Through leveraging sophisticated technology to connect these machines and effectively make them smart, our AmbyControl device is able to entirely change this model, putting detailed, real-time well performance data and remote well control directly in the palm of every operator’s hand,” Dhunay says. “Using our technology, operators are able to monitor their wells 24/7 and receive instant alerts of any faults or interruption to onsite operations, which they can react to quickly, and from wherever they are.”
AmbyControl for EPM features include remote start/stop of electric-powered pumpjacks; access, via mobile or web app, to real-time torque information, including trends; access to insights into the on-time performance of individual wells; instant notifications of any abnormal pump activity or shutdowns; and instant torque violation alerts to help avoid costly workovers.