Removing salts from produced water can be one of the most challenging and costly endeavors facing those in the oil and natural gas exploration business. While “saltwater” has always been a by-product of traditional oil and natural gas production, shale gas production has created excess water volumes sufficient to support a wastewater treatment industry all its own. Not only does…
Corrosion Control in Hydrocarbon Facilities
This article focuses on the corrosion control techniques to be applied in hydrocarbon facilities and its implementation by proper materials selection and requirements for new project installations. This includes flow lines, production lines inside process facilities including all associated utility pipelines. The primary objective for establishing appropriate corrosion control strategies and materials selection is to ensure the safe and profitable…
Engineering and Maintaining Pipelines with Software
In today’s modern and more-complex-than-ever oil and gas fields, pipelines are the backbone of the industry. Pipelines allow for the most efficient transport of gas and oil, eliminating costly and environmentally unfriendly trucks and rail cars to get the hydrocarbons from points A to B. As the digitization of the oilfield is now more prevalent than ever, pipelines are seeing…
Heavy Oil Production and the Low Quotes of Petroleum
There is no doubt one of the biggest challenges in the oil world is to put a barrel in the surface of API (American Petroleum Institute) low gravity oil. If the oil well has a natural flow, it may be observed, as time goes by, that its natural decline will show a more prominent tendency than the one we find…
Interview: Ashley Gilmore, CEO, Tracts.co
Below is an interview with Ashley Gilmore. The interview text has been left in tack, with only minor grammatical adjustments. Tonae’ Hamilton: What is the overall mission of the company and how do you hope to benefit other businesses with your products? Ashley Gilmore: Our mission is to help our customers improve their business by providing the most timely and…
Interview: Arun Santhebennur, CEO, Petasense
Below is an interview with Arun Santhebennur. The interview text has been left in tack, with only minor grammatical adjustments. Tonae’ Hamilton: How/why was Petasense created and what is the overall goal of the company? Arun Santhebennur: My cofounder, Abhinav Khushraj, and I saw that the next wave of connectivity was going to help “things” in the real world get…
The Revival of Oil Rigs and Platforms through Reefing
In our oceans stand hundreds of massive oil rigs and platforms. While many of those oil rigs produce millions of barrels of oil, there are many other oil rigs that have been abandoned. In the Gulf of Mexico, alone, sits 27,000 abandoned oil rigs. With many abandoned oil rigs in the sea, there has been much debate about what is…
Oil & Gas Companies are Becoming More Agile and Intelligent by Embracing an Enterprise-wide Digital Approach For a company whose parent has a reputation as a technological innovator, Shell Aviation was an anomaly, a business that continued to rely heavily on the archaic, paper-driven processes and practices that many of its siblings under the Shell umbrella had shed in favor…
Subsea Technology: Innovation on the Horizon
A test question for third graders studying about the universe asked what color the Earth appeared from space and why. The answer to this question is simple to an adult, it’s a widely known fact. It’s blue. The Earth from space appears blue, as it primarily covered by water – approximately 71 percent of it, in fact. It is one…
2019: Diversify or Disappear for Energy, Utilities and Resources?
Renewables accelerating even faster than previously predicted, customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) driving demand for more diversified energy, business and payment models: In 2019 energy and utility companies face the challenges of an industry rapidly diversifying, decentralizing and digitizing. The sure-fire way to keep up? Make sure you stay ahead! Prediction 1: By 2040, 66 percent of the…
Feature Podcast: Subsea Technology: Innovation on the Horizon
A test question for third graders studying about the universe asked what color the Earth appeared from space and why. The answer to this question is simple to an adult, it’s a widely known fact. It’s blue. The Earth from space appears blue, as it primarily covered by water – approximately 71 percent of it, in fact. It is one…
Letter from the Publisher (March-April 2019)
There has been political discussion about drastically changing our energy market as we know it today. The Green New Deal has surfaced to the forefront of American politics. A scaled down version of the plan was introduced recently and calls for transitioning the United States to 100 percent renewable, zero-emission energy by 2030. The framers of the resolution ultimately want…
Critical Success Factors for Field Service Apps
In 2018, America became the world’s top crude oil producer for the first time in 46 years, and the country is on track to become a net energy exporter by 2022 for the first time since 1953. That phenomenal growth also extended to the U.S. natural gas industry, which became the world’s fourth-largest last year. What’s been dubbed the American…
Texas Railroad Commission Rings in New Year with OIL Database
With the new year, a much anticipated online tool became available for those interested in statewide inspections and enforcement information within the oil and gas business in the state of Texas. A searchable database was launched by the RRC (Railroad Commision of Texas) on January 23, 2019 and is aptly named RRC OIL (Online Inspection Lookup). RRC is the Texas…
Winds of Change: How Big Oil Will Profit from Offshore Wind
Offshore wind is new to the energy party. The first offshore wind farm was installed off the coast of Denmark in 1991. Less than three decades later, the industry is making big waves – and starting to turn big profits. Capacity is ramping up quickly and cost is dropping fast. Europe increased offshore wind capacity by 18 percent in 2018…
Behind The Scene: The Iron Orchard
Referred to as The Wildcatter’s Bible, The Iron Orchard was a classic Texas novel. It spans three decades of the life and inner workings of the oil industry in the Permian. Written in 1967 by Edmund Van Zandt under the pseudonym of Tom Pendleton. The Van Zandt’s were a prominent Fort Worth family and fearful of his tell-all story, he…
The Oil and Gas Industry Takes a New Approach to Alleviate Truck Order Backlog in 2019
Truck attainment has been a key challenge for private fleets, for-hire carriers and organizations that rely on trucking across many industries, including manufacturing, oil, energy, and gas. This challenge has been accentuated by the backlog of orders for Class-8 heavy-duty trucks, largely stemming from an American Economy that has been booming ever since the Great Recession ended in 2010, and…
Hustle, Innovation are Showing Profits While Reducing Flares
If this year’s NAPE is any indication of what the energy marketplace is looking like, then companies have their work cut out for them this year. NAPE saw a huge increase of vendors and attendees, exhibit space filled to the max and over 12,000 energy enthusiasts showed up. “The first thing I noticed was the booths. It seems like every…
MFG Chemical CEO Keith Arnold Talks About New Plant and MFG’s Future
Below is an interview with Keith Arnold. The interview text has been left in tack, with only minor grammatical adjustments. Eric Eissler: Could you give me an overview of your operations in the Oilfield and Lubricants and additives? For the oilfields could you provide our readers some perspective as to where you operate and in what sector of the industry…
Promoting Water Management: How Technology and Eco-Conscious Drilling Practices Can Conserve Water
Water plays a key role in the production of oil and gas. In fact, unconventional oil and gas exploration typically relies on vast amounts of water. With water being utilized so frequently in the oil and gas industry, it is important that water is used efficiently and wisely during production processes, as to not disturb or deplete the natural resource.…
Quality AI is Transforming the Oil Industry
Quality governs what crude oil is worth and where it can be delivered. What is often described as a uniform commodity actually has a range of qualities that impact the end use and ease of transport. Despite the importance of quality and the long history of the industry, product qualities remain difficult to measure accurately and in real-time. It’s a…
Building Business Relationships One Name at a Time
Walking around NAPE in February, it seemed like everyone had the same idea: Stay Positive. The teams I met with were ready, willing and able to stay to course, and no matter the price of oil, they were going to stay upbeat. The booths filled the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, and according to reports, about 12,000 people…
America’s Energy and Environmental Stewardship
In 1992, I founded the IEPC (International Energy Policy Conference) with the theme being “Striving for Energy Efficiency and Environmental Preservation.” This underlying theme has been part of each conference event which has been held in Tulsa, Norman, OK, Stillwater, OK, Washington, D.C., Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, and other locations. Twenty-seven years later, from the first IEPC conference, America’s energy…
How Much Has the Oil Industry Been Robotized and What Would It Gain in Taking This Further?
The continuous changes in the oil industry lead us to start searching for new technologies, and one of these is the processes automation in oil facilities. Automated drilling systems mitigate the risk caused to drilling equipment, reduce costs and improve efficiency. Operating these systems remotely will be the next step in the oil industry, allowing operators to use their most…
Why “Lesser” Injuries Matter: The Case for Hand Safety
Oil and gas workers and employers are well aware that jobs in this industry are notoriously dangerous. In fact, the oil and gas industry is so dangerous that most workplace safety reporting focuses on severe injuries and fatalities. It’s understandable that so much focus is directed at preventing major accidents. But, unfortunately, that means that the prevention of less severe…
