How IoT Is Fuelling Digitalization in Oil & Fuel Sector?

The trend of Internet of Things (IoT) is now changing how people are living and working, connected to the internet, today every device is turning into smart ones. In fact, the development in technologies is making its way into the industrial sector conducting commerce, and IoT is the core of that transformation.

With the digital transformation, the gathering of data and quick communication has helped in various ways. The understanding of IoT within the industry is growing faster. The key objective of IoT is improving data access and data relevance in monitoring the real-time changes that enhance maintenance and inspection regimes. Today, the usage of wires or physical connection to enable machine-to-machine connection in transferring data has become a complex task.

For years, the constant change and growth in the Industry have provided various opportunities to fuel the digital transformation. It is important to understand that with access to quality data, one can create a big data ecosystem in corporate solutions.

Presently, the oil and gas industry is beginning a transformation of their own, boosting towards a data-driven solution to enhance the performance, efficiency and ultimately, to reduce costs.

The IoT helps in optimizing the offshore production of oil and gas supported by secure communications and centred around the key modules of compression, power generation, power distribution and automation. Digitalization of offshore operations also reduces the production cost.

Various studies show that the advanced condition-monitoring technologies and analytical expertise optimize the maintenance of critical equipment in offshore environments besides lowering costs and improving safety. For instance, pipeline asset tracking via cloud-based tools can access the real-time, geo-based status of more than 1000 individuals, with highly sophisticated components and a lifecycle management task.

Digitalization brings various benefits to day-to-day operations and cost reduction. During the process of drilling and operations, IoT helps in detecting the anomalies, which enable an effective decision. In the past few years, fuel industry had experienced 20 per cent lower productivity due to adjustment for the lower ore grade. This assists the fuel industries, to switch into the digital platform.

The fuel industry is equipped with different set and flowsheet that helps in the production flow. In many cases, the data-gathering devices like sensors are placed at pre-determined locations in the flowsheet, based on speculation during the initial design. Later, these wired devices become static, making it difficult to add or modified due to the capital-intensive and time-consuming process. With the help of IoT, it has become easier to shift the sensor around and decide which location is optimal for data collection during production.

Building an IoT ecosystem in the fuel industry is strengthening the damage control system with its seamless movement, detection equipment, and sensors across the plant. The centralized solution assists in connecting the surveillance and aggregated data in real-time to provide geologic information in comprehensive dashboards and reports.

Based on the data generated from oil well conditions, equipment performance and production process parameters that enable a significant improvement of production planning accuracy, the advanced analytic method optimizes the cost of the production process.

Condition-based maintenance solution assists in monitoring and analyzing the condition of the refinery equipment that operates in a large network of sensors to detect and prevent the potential threats.

In the coming years, digitalization will add value to the business operations by increasing the productivity of the workforce, improved decision-making process, overrun on time and cost in the fuel industry.

Abhishek Agarwal, Senior Vice President Judge Group