Mar 16: Drilling wells is going to get more sophisticated -- self-regulating, sensing and reacting to the reservoir, automatically optimizing production, minimizing intervention requirements, and lowering overall costs per barrel.
8Inspection and maintenance can also benefit from automation and digitization. Today, many inspection tasks are carried out manually but that will change soon.
8Robotics, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence are extending the range of tasks machines can do better than humans.
8A drone system recently reduced inspection time from over a month to a few days, eliminating the need for a rope crew and cranes.
8Looking to developments in infrastructure, non-metallic flexible pipes made from composite materials are offering game-changing advances in the ‘risers’ that transport oil and gas from offshore fields to the surface, with reductions in weight (lowering by 30%), system complexity, and cost (lowering by 20%), as well as risk.
8Elsewhere, as renewables generate more capacity, there will be increasing need for storage systems to cove their intermittency. Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems can provide large scale, long duration energy storage that can deliver 5–200MW of power.
8These disruptors represent just a few of the emerging technologies now starting to have an impact.
8Others include additive manufacturing or 3D printing, molecular and nanoscience, novel forms of carbon capture, and advances in energy recovery.
8Taken together, these technologies are set to modernize working practices, increase efficiency, lower costs, and change the face of the oil & gas industry.
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