Abstract
Under budget constraints, oil and gas organizations are turning to technology solutions to ensure greater asset integrity and improve operational safety. Purpose-built digital equipment, like mobile devices and IoT sensors that are certified intrinsically safe for hazardous environments, can do both.
Communication of precise/timely information in hazardous environments allows teams to make the best decisions possible, ensuring personnel follow safety procedures and processes meet regulatory requirements, while also driving improved performance. Accurate, real-time communication in combustible environments is only possible with intrinsically safe (IS) communications hardware, such as tablets and IoT sensors. These bring industrial applications directly into ATEX/IECEx Zone 1 hazardous areas to capture/share real-time information, making them more efficient, productive, and safe.
Performing inspection activities onsite with digital devices or IoT sensors reporting 24/7 helps organizations create live and dynamic workflows in real-time. Thus, maintenance, repairs, or further assessments can be optimally scheduled. Further, digital records validate compliance (i.e. location, date, time, pictures) while driving efficiency. Pervasive digital connectivity is expected to result in savings and improved asset integrity, securing healthier and safer operating environments.
We explore the potential benefits to asset integrity and HSE management from intrinsically safe technologies that help oil and gas teams communicate better. We look at use cases where personnel collect, share, and analyze IoT data in Zone 1 operations (industrial areas where ignitable concentrations of flammable gases, vapors or liquids are likely to exist under normal operating conditions), using devices that are certified to not ignite combustible environments. When such IS solutions are applied broadly across a hazardous area operation over a period of time, we expect them to help save time, improve accuracy, and monitor personnel's well-being so they can do their jobs better and more safely - and drive better results for their organizations.
The paper describes just some of the ways that IS-certified technologies have the potential for changing how oil and gas teams communicate, helping them drive better results through improved health, safety, compliance and efficiency. We suggest testing methodologies with IoT devices for organizations to establish their own HSE baselines that can be used for benchmarking improvements from the implementation of those devices. We also make predictions for future oil and gas operations based on ongoing development of IoT/machine learning technologies and call for further research and testing in realistic scenarios.
