Reducing Costs And Maximizing Production Through SCADA And Automated Technologies

Hello everyone and welcome to our first ever podcast, for the Well Site Automation series. Today I’m joined by Ryan Hale, Ryan is an automation coordinator at Encana, so hi Ryan, How are you doing today?

RH Hi! Pretty good.

Great, so Ryan I'm just going to start off with an easy one. When did you first become interested in automation?

RH When I was in school, I did see that a lot of people were interested in the electrical side

of the world and automation. I started in automotive and diesel electronics and I just really enjoyed it from there and here we are now!

Excellent, and how did that transition into the career that you’ve built today?

RH From the automotive side of the world, tearing things apart and putting them back

together. I got a job doing communications and there was a lot of that - from circuit boards to actually installing radios and working for the oilfield in doing communications.

So from my point of view looking into this project and putting this together, it really feels like automation goes against the grain in the oil and gas space. It’s a tough time out there, everyone knows that for oil prices, but operators have actually invested 7% more in 2015 compared to 2014. So Ryan, why do you think automation is so important right now? Why does it go against that trend?

RH Everything’s based on your base production and trying to stabilize that, and if you can

find a better way to get more production, and automation clearly does that, then it’s a no brainer to go ahead and invest into it, it pays it back. Certainly, and what are the main areas where you’d see that payback? What are the main benefits?

RH More oil, more gas and a better operation of how to get it out of the ground and get it sold.

Absolutely, that is the main thing. And then, in terms of transitioning to a full automation program and fully automated operations, what are the main considerations there?

RH Just, what you need and having the forethought of knowing what’s going to benefit

you. Whether it’s going to benefit you from the production side, getting more oil and gas, or reporting, they all kind of go hand in hand.

And, on foot of this, I know I’m certainly looking forward to this congress at the end of January, I think it’s going to be great, but what are you most looking forward to at the initiative?

RH Just hearing from the other panellists and companies that are doing the same kind of

thing. I’m sure everybody thinks they have the best idea but there’s a lot of knowledge to be gained from the experience of everyone else.

Certainly, and in terms of the agenda, what part will you be most interested in hearing about?

RH I am absolutely interested in the reservoir engineering! [Presented by David Fulford,

Senior Reservoir Engineer, Apache]

I know that’s going to be an interesting one, I spoke with David there from Apache and he certainly loves his numbers, that’s for sure! I suppose when you look at that aspect, we know it’s slightly out there on the agenda, but what’s attracting you to it?

RH I believe that in order to understand and know how to optimize you’ve got to know

how to encompass everything, and that’s the one area that I’m absolutely lacking in!

No worries, and you’ve been there at Encana for how many years now?

RH Four and a half and I’ve worked alongside of them for another five and a half with

Questar, we provided all of their automation installs and alot of their programming. So almost ten years.

In the decade what would you say would be the most exciting or innovative project you’ve worked on?

RH They gave me two water plant projects to oversee and automate and commission from

the ground up. Very nifty!

And was that tricky or was that just a lot of fun?

RH It was both – the engineer in charge, while understanding and planning for a lot of it,

he had no experience of how it was really truly going to operate, so there was a lot of tweaking to make it operate the way he wanted it to. And there are so many things on this agenda, so many different applications for these new technologies, I guess it’s one area in oil and gas where there’s so much progress. But what do you see as being the next area of advancement in this space?

RH From my point of view, which is more the well head side, I think more cross-training and

getting the operators more up to speed to utilize automation to help make their job easier and reporting by exception.

Absolutely, I know that the operating by exception philosophy is such a huge thing. And do you think that people make an easy transition to that or does it take a little while and, if so, why?

RH It does take a little while and a big component in that is the trust factor of knowing how the

automation system works, and really trusting it.

I suppose getting from an old way of doing things to a new one and I suppose that leads to my final question – we all know that most of the majors are involved in large scale programs when it comes to automation, they’re really two feet in, but what would you say to smaller companies that are reassessing things and looking at getting involved in automation?

RH I would say to start small, know what they’re looking to get out of it at the end

of the day and then utilizing, I recommend an RTU if you have gas measurement versus a PLC. Having a PLC and an RTU to measure gas and the control, I use RTUs pretty much exclusively for all of the controls because I have to measure the gas as well. I would start small and then make sure that it’s scalable to expand later. You don’t have to go full tilt, just start small and see what it gets you.

I couldn’t agree more, scalability and that whole area is such a huge part of what we’re going to be covering. And just for everyone listening we’ll be having this on the 27th and 28th of January and that’s at the Double Tree by Hilton in Houston, and for more information go to our website, that’s www.wellsite-automation.com. Ryan, thank you very much for your time, looking forward to seeing you in January!

RH You bet, thank you, looking forward to seeing you too!

JANUARY 27 - 28, 2016 HOUSTON, TEXAS

www.wellsite-automation.com Congress Organized By:

I’m sure everybody thinks

they have the best idea

but there’s a lot of knowledge to be gained from

the experience of everyone else

Ryan HaleAutomation Coordinator

Encana