How Developing Technology Can Improve and Resolve Safety Issues in Oil and Gas Industry
Successful digital transformation can boost the profitability of Oil and Gas firms, improve workforce safety, and benefit society through reduced emissions and water consumption, as well as savings for customers.
This article looks at how new technology is becoming an increasingly more important part of our everyday lives and some of the benefits that are making it more worthwhile to safety in the Oil and Gas industry. This includes the improvement of Oil and Gas safety, often involving real-time communication and a drop in the time and costs spent. Small companies could find the implementation of new software a difficult, perhaps unnecessary process but this article discusses:
- Accident Prevention through Real-time Communication:
Concentrating on the oil and gas safety benefits and how workers now have access to real-time communication, often to experts who can give them advice on any recognized safety issues. It also investigates the benefits of new technology that can now be used to carry out jobs that once included unsafe manual labor.
- Unsafe Manual Labor Now Performed by Machinery:
Concentrating on a case-study of Jim Freemyer, a man who died while manually extracting samples from a tank in an oil rig in Colorado, this provides an idea of the life-threatening accidents caused by oil and gas safety issues that new technology such as automatic sensors of gas and oil levels can prevent.
- New Technology Dealing with Detected Oil and Gas Safety Issues:
It then goes on to discuss how some forms of new technology can be used to deal with accidents that have already occurred. Perhaps, a piece of machinery to investigate a contaminated area before any workers must enter, perhaps wearing expensive PPE.
The problems introducing this new technology into the workplace are also discussed.
Problems Incorporating Digital Technology into the Workplace
One doesn’t have to look too hard in most companies to find business operations that still employ outdated means of data entry, simply because that is the way it has always been done.2
First discussing the thoughts of often ageing workers, this section concentrates on two beliefs that are still popular and can be applied to oil and gas safety issues:
- Old habits die hard
- If it’s not broke, don’t fix it
The opinion of some companies is often based on the costs involved in the introduction of new technology but, between 2016 and 2025, the digital transformation of the US Oil and Gas industry is estimated to add approximately $1.6 trillion of value to its customers, the wider society and the industry as a whole. A complete article could be dedicated to some of these benefits and the problems with money, but a few points discussed include the work that machinery can now carry out, without workers even needed to be hired for the job.
Sometimes shocking true stories on ineffective oil and gas safety, such as the death of Jim Freemyer are the best way for companies to understand why new technology is becoming a more important part of the heavy industries, but the costs involved will always be just as important to attract them.