Changed Role for Wellsite Technology Providers

Q: How has Petrolink’s service provision changed considering that technology is increasingly fundamental to the oil and gas industry?

A: Since its foundation in 1990, Petrolink has provided technology and service support to its clients. Two years ago, we decided how we wanted to deliver our technology. This was based on the understanding that for some clients, the justification of paying for a service is not as simple as justifying the acquisition of technology. It was clear that many clients used our services in a user-driven sense, rather than requiring support from us, and so the company decided to apply a different strategy: to deliver data solutions and technologies to our users rather than supply a service. Petrolink customers could use our technology in a way that was unique to them; they no longer required the support of Petrolink staff. Petrolink decided to test this new approach in the Latin American market, including Mexico. This was driven by the fact that while clients in other parts of the world receive our technology predominantly as a service, our potential client portfolio in Mexico and the region was dominated by clients looking for technological solutions to operate themselves. This presented another opportunity to license our technology to vendors and service providers who, by adding our technology to their services, could expand our traditional client base.

Q: How do Petrolink’s technologies support clients?

A: At the moment, there are two main areas where Petrolink helps companies in Mexico. The oil and gas industry is one of the most expensive industries to work in, so we offer our technology to help operators keep costs under control. Our technology helps operators stick to time schedules by avoiding unexpected surprises. While this is valuable because removing further rental and other associated costs saves money, the real worth is in helping to drive wells into operation as planned or ahead of schedule, because operators lose money when a well is not producing. The second area in which Petrolink helps is in the offshore arena, where most Mexican production is expected to come from. Petrolink monitors the safety of operations and delivers real-time data to personnel, helping to avoid potential accidents and therefor the cost to operators and the environment.

Q: How prepared is Mexico’s local content to deploy Petrolink’s advanced data technologies, and how do you help?

A: The Mexican oil and gas industry must acknowledge that it has both strengths and weaknesses. One area to improve is its application of technology. To close these gaps, the industry requires a collective effort led by PEMEX, government entities and private companies now working in Mexico. This includes vendors like ourselves and independent oil companies. Mexico’s open market means more competition and a higher demand for specialized resources, which fosters an industry shift toward specialization for more efficient exploitation of resources. Meeting local content requirements is vitally important. To aid our clients’ entrance into Mexico and extend our portfolio, Petrolink has signed agreements with national partnering contractors working with oil operators. This allows foreign operators to access our technology while they comply with Mexican local content requirements.

Q: How has Petrolink modified its technologies to support the administration’s 2.6MMb/d production goal for 2024?

A: Petrolink technologies can now be managed and used by any customer, not just by Petrolink staff. This empowers oil companies and service providers to make use of our technology with their own resources. We have modified our technology to be involved in the decision-making process too. Our algorithms and solutions help identify situations that are not visible to a worker monitoring a screen. Rather than relying on an employee monitoring the right data at the right moment, our algorithms continually run in the background to ensure early identification of any well-site situations that could, further down the line, become hazardous. This area is where the majority of our new data-driven solutions are oriented: helping users make decisions based not only on data they are seeing, but on the information that can be extracted from that particular data.

Petrolink delivers advanced well-site data management software, real-time data solutions at the well site, engineering analytics and drilling optimization services to help oil and gas operators around the world stay safe and on schedule.