American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2019 - 78

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78 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Taking design cues from smart phones and other consumer goods, the newest remote
monitoring sensors are small, low-cost and easy to use. Installation often is automated
through a phone application, and because sensors can attach magnetically or simply
be stuck into place using a weatherproof adhesive pad, ﬁeld personnel can install them
across a well site in a matter of minutes.

the pump. Once the pump comes up to
speed, the monitor times every stroke,
averages them over several minutes to
increase the accuracy and resolution, and
then sends the pump activity and stroke
time to the cloud.
With this precision, customers have
used the data from the beam pump monitor
to diagnose problems with slipping belts,
poorly configured time clocks and corroded
pipes. As these types of second-wave
products mature, more and more of the
data processing will be done on the edge
in order to send smarter data to the cloud.
Total Control
Second-wave sensors also excel in
their flexibility. One example of this is a
solution to a unique problem that an oil
and gas company was experiencing in its
California operations. During the winter,
as temperatures drop, the oil coming out
of the well cools as it passes through
aboveground pipes and forms thick slugs
that block the flow.
To remove a blockage, the operator
would have to stop production and inject
steam for a few days until the oil heated
enough to break through the slug. To
combat the issue, field personnel needed
to check all the wells being injected every
day or two until the oil was hot enough
to resume production. This operator was
searching for a way to monitor the wellhead pressure remotely so production

could be resumed immediately when the
steam broke through, and to minimize
the need for personnel to drive through
the field.
The answer in this case was a temperature probe IIoT sensor based on an existing small, low-cost sensing platform
that featured a universal quick-connect
port for designing and connecting new
types of sensors very quickly.
With this platform, a sensor was built
around a high-temperature thermocouple
and the first production units were
shipped to the field within four weeks.
The temperature probe snaps magnetically to flowlines so the sensor can be
moved to different well sites painlessly.
By using the temperature sensors, the
operator expects to recover a full day's
worth of production each time a well is
steamed.
In other applications, second-wave
sensors can measure data that traditional
SCADA devices simply cannot reach.
Consider, for example, the case of a large
waste management company that faced
challenges in monitoring waste pond levels. Regulations require frequent checks
to ensure pond levels are maintained.
The company had been unable to find an
affordable monitoring solution that would
work in its particular location.
Taking a standard IIoT level monitoring
sensor, field workers boarded a skiff,
rowed to the middle of the pond, mag-

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American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2019

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