Equipment and service outsourcing offers a cost-effective solution.

In the gas compression industry, rapid advances in computer hardware and software, wireless technology and the Internet have produced stunning results in keeping gas production on line while effecting significant production cost savings. Continued advances in these areas promise an even brighter future for the industry.
Several elements are driving this technological revolution:
• data digitalization;
• standardized, open architecture software;
• rapid advances in wireless communication;
• unprecedented access to information through the Internet; and
• dramatic cuts in hardware, software and wireless costs.
What does a world that couples gas production with new technologies look like? The effects of some technological advances are obvious, as in the case of the Internet. However, other technologies, although less visible today, are certain to have a major impact on gas production operations as the industry continues to move toward the "electronic gas field" of the future.
The Internet continues to be the standard for information exchange. Gas producers will continue to reap benefits from the Internet, making it simpler for them to access information about their producing fields. This will speed their ability to get updates on production from any place at any time.
But to succeed in the highly competitive energy marketplace and capitalize on opportunities for growing future gas demand, producers must keep pace with the latest technology advances in other areas, particularly those that include remote field monitoring.
The transition to remote monitoring can be cost-prohibitive for some midsize and smaller producers. Even larger producers, faced with smaller fields, find it difficult to justify remote monitoring on a cost vs. benefit basis.
However, all producers can mitigate the high front-end costs of remote field monitoring by outsourcing it. They can, for example, use a gas compression service leasing company. By doing so, producers can become more cost-efficient, which has bottom-line benefits. An additional advantage of outsourcing is the leasing service companies' ability to give their customers the next increments in equipment supply and technology advances. Anticipating market demand for new technology is a major part of the leasing service's business.
For example, producers can lease remote field-monitoring systems installed on custom-designed, larger-horsepower compressor packages. As a part of this service, a series of skid-mounted, programmable logic controllers - ranging from simple to sophisticated, depending on customer needs - gather and measure gas flow and fuel consumption continuously. They also analyze overall engine and compressor efficiency. What's more, a compatible well-monitoring data analysis software program allows the leasing service's technicians to spot real and potential field problems.
Such remote operations can be connected by wireless onboard satellite radios to relay field data to a central control center via low-earth-orbiting (LEO) and geostationary-earth-orbiting (GEO) satellites. The leasing company's e-technicians analyze these data for deviations from the normal. Add the latest hardware devices and the power of the Internet, and producers have a truly powerful tool for increased manageability and improved overall operating economics and efficiencies.
Remote compressor monitoring
If the compression side of the natural gas business were analogous to the human circulatory system, compressors would constitute the heart. That's why compression services leasing companies make a significant investment in new compressor-related technologies, particularly in the field monitoring area.
Under a compression equipment leasing arrangement, should a problem arise with a field compressor, the leasing service knows about it immediately - day or night - and its e-technicians know why the problem occurred. They can dispatch service technicians immediately to the field with the right parts to correct the situation, usually before automatic shutdown occurs.
And while they're in the field, service technicians can access computer technology - linked by wireless communications - even to view bulky parts and service manuals that once had to be consulted back at the shop.
Another emerging monitoring technology - streaming video - also is offered for lease. Streaming video gives the leasing service another set of eyes with which to inspect remote well locations for telltale problems such as minute oil or coolant leaks.
Through leasing, producers can, in effect, integrate compression equipment monitoring with computer technology linked by wireless communications to form distributed "smart" gas control systems. Such systems permit an unprecedented volume of understanding at the field level. That impacts the way gas fields are manned, produced and managed. Also, broader bandwidths, coupled with ongoing communications cost reductions, allow for more cost-effective increases in data sampling rates.
Personnel shortages
During the past decade, the energy industry has undergone significant personnel shortages. However, with energy demand growing almost geometrically, the industry faces a critical need to meet the staffing requirements for finding and producing new natural gas reserves. As a result, the industry is well on its way in automating the exploration and field development process.
Once gas production goes on stream, however, the need for more sophisticated remote communications and control technologies grows quickly. From a staffing perspective, leasing services can help improve customer productivity and do more with less. What's more, they can convert raw data, not readily available before, into useable information that can be disseminated broadly to almost any staff level. This allows the customer's full-time employees to stay focused on their unique core competencies.
More technology advances
The personal computer, telephone and facsimile machine soon will be absent from the business environment. Personal workstations and portable palmtop computers will have replaced them all. The global Internet communications network already is powering that revolution, and it's making a profound impact on all aspects of society. The natural gas industry and its related workplaces are no exception.
A big part of the future for gas production includes data digitization. Soon, all information will be represented by the strings of zeros and ones we call digital data, a development being pushed along by the Internet. Some leasing service providers already employ digital technologies, and as more and more of them go digital, the benefits to gas producers will be stunning.
Standardization of information software formats and open architecture (how computers communicate with one another) also continue to advance. Eventually, this will make all computers compatible at the communications level. That means better integration between computers that use different operating software. Even today, an Apple computer can easily translate e-mail sent from a PC, and that trend will continue as advances are made in open architecture. Gas producers will benefit from open architecture through software that gives them instant access to production information about their wells via the Internet. All the data will be accessible by workstation and palmtop.
Also, developments in artificial intelligence such as neural networks will free even leasing service technicians from mundane, time-consuming tasks because the software will "learn" how they do their work and duplicate it without need for human input. Add to that better development tool sets linked to more advanced database technologies and the industry will see less costly, more effective data analysis tools that will continue to improve performance at the wellhead.
Producers' ability to amortize the massive investments in electronic technology makes the cost of duplicating more units negligible. Gas field leasing service companies that continue to take advantage of those cost reductions will provide better service to their customers at reduced costs.
Look for more cost breaks
As wireless and satellite transmission technologies continue to emerge, cellular, LEO and GEO costs will continue to drop as coverage areas will continue to expand and improve. Those improvements translate into better monitoring capabilities, even from the remotest of areas.
More compact radio transmitters and antennae, already the size of a deck of playing cards, will make remote monitoring systems more functional and easier to adapt to a variety of environmental conditions, particularly when coupled with more powerful microprocessors. In addition, the power requirements for such systems will be less. Meanwhile, bandwidths continue to broaden even as their costs dwindle. And while today's satellite-based paging systems provide good service, improvements in those systems continue at a rapid pace.
Watch the hardware changes, too
Computer hardware improves daily. Already, the falling costs of PLC panels make them competitive economically with conventional compression monitoring methods. Remote well monitoring that was cost-prohibitive just 5 years ago is easily affordable, and the costs of the equipment and technology continue to decline.
In addition, the compelling need for more real-time information from the wellhead has resulted in more compact PLC units that incorporate more memory and processing power. That trend will continue. Adding to those improvements will be reduced power requirements, as well as increased unit ruggedness and greater tolerance of such environmental problems as rapid temperature swings. Better graphics will result as display technology continues to advance. Here, too, costs will begin to fall.
Finally, the necessity for more real-time information continues to be the driving force behind development of the Internet, wireless communication, software and hardware. However, as the Internet rapidly adds to our abilities to access information, data overload will become a significant problem. That, in turn, will drive the need for more intelligent processing capabilities in order to reduce all of the data into information that eventually becomes knowledge, the key component of successful business. The gas service industry has recognized this trend and pledged to incorporate new technologies as they become available.