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Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

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Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#61

Post by SEJeff »

bduerst wrote: post #51
msandford wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it true post-scarcity like everyone has their own mostly automated Starship Enterprise / Battlestar / Star Destroyer? I always get kind of agitated at the notion of post resource scarcity because if you took someone from 1000 years ago and dropped them into today they'd be amazed at how much everyone has. If everyone had 11th century desires but 21st century technology we'd be there. But we're definitely not. I si…

Same here. It's a nice notion to think about, but even if we could produce everything at the moment it's demanded, there is still spatial scarcity for goods and services - i.e. there are only so many ocean front homes near where my extended family lives.

Not true, think about a place where we are capable of building proper Dyson Spheres... Most "Culture series" humanoids (they're genetically modified for health reasons) live on very large artificial planets called Orbitals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_(The_Culture)

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#62

Post by cestith »

pm90 wrote: post #29
Eridrus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's becoming less and less obvious that anyone in a position of power advocating for fossil fuel energy actually cares about the jobs.

It was always rather transparent that the "jobs" angle was a play by big oil to stoke populism for an objectively unpopular agenda (i.e. more drilling, extraction pollution). Once automation removes the need for low skilled laborers I would think this tactic would not be available anymore (but who knows, in this era of alternative facts).

Lots of jobs in gas and oil are very highly skilled jobs. Automating the stuff that's high paying because it's risky, dirty, and far from the workers' homes will increase pay imbalances as the software developers, automation folks, sysadmins, robotics engineers, mechanical engineers, petroleum engineers, geologists, executives, et al will continue to get their pay and probably more while anyone automated away who doesn't retrain will make far less in another role.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#63

Post by SEJeff »

twoquestions wrote: post #49
SEJeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do consider reading the entirety of Ian M Banks's Culture Series. It is some fantastic Scifi that literally explores humanity in a post resource scarcity world.

Reading Consider Phlebas now. I've heard it's the weakest book in the series, but I'm loving it thus far!

Consider Phlebas is like an action movie with a few parts that could be omitted entirely (the eaters of filth) and the book would be just as good. That being said, it far and above gives you a full background in the entire culture universe so the rest of the series makes much more sense.

I actually really enjoyed Use of Weapons and think Player of Games (the ending at least) might be one of my all time top 5 favorite books I've read. Brilliant stuff, keep reading it!

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#64

Post by drzaiusapelord »

cloudwizard wrote: post #3

Those are very high paying jobs. It is very unlikely that the displaced workers will make anywhere close to that.

Except they were artificially high paying because of the massive risk and shit work. Human labor in such an environment was just a stop-gap solution until automation took over. These are not "good" jobs, they were high-risk gambles masquerading as jobs. This is a bit like saying that its unlikely kids who work in coal mines will find paying jobs when we outlaw kids working in coal mines.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#65

Post by SEJeff »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #43
SEJeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do consider reading the entirety of Ian M Banks's Culture Series. It is some fantastic Scifi that literally explores humanity in a post resource scarcity world.

If anything, it seems to me like IMB doesn't even begin to scratch the surface in imagining the true impact of ASI.

Care to elaborate? He does a pretty good start.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#66

Post by ryanmarsh »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #58
ryanmarsh wrote: post #52

Where my Houstonians at? > "Rigs have gotten so much more efficient that the shale industry can use about half as many as it did at the height of the boom in 2014 to suck the same amount of oil out of the ground." Drilling rigs don't suck oil out of the ground, they drill a hole... that's why they call them drilling rigs not sucking rigs. Also, we don't call it sucking, rather "production", and that's handled by othe…

Sadly the media still likes to portray Houston as a town where everyone wears cowboy hats and that oil comes out of the ground Jed Clampett style. Literally all of my surrounding neighbors are mechanical engineers for oilfield service companies and the common thing we've talked about recently IS automation. However the reality isn't robots but better engineering/process that lets a part run 50x as long with a greater…

> You don't have to keep 100 hands on a drilling site for the peak demand if you can effectively schedule.

Exactly, which is why automation is going to kill so many white-collar jobs. "Effectively schedule" means let a computer do it, not Sally Scheduler who has been doing it in Excel only because they forced her to stop using paper and pen.

This article is basically saying "the planes practically fly themselves", and I'm like "yah but do you still see two pilots in the cockpit?".

There might be 50 extra people on a drill site but there's 5,000 in the back office whose jobs could be replaced with some quick programming and no robots.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#67

Post by philipkglass »

msandford wrote: post #44
SEJeff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do consider reading the entirety of Ian M Banks's Culture Series. It is some fantastic Scifi that literally explores humanity in a post resource scarcity world.

Is it true post-scarcity like everyone has their own mostly automated Starship Enterprise / Battlestar / Star Destroyer? I always get kind of agitated at the notion of post resource scarcity because if you took someone from 1000 years ago and dropped them into today they'd be amazed at how much everyone has. If everyone had 11th century desires but 21st century technology we'd be there. But we're definitely not. I si…

The Culture is true post-scarcity in that basically unlimited matter and energy can be manufactured along with the objects made from matter and energy. By clever authorial fiat this doesn't lead to mega-terrorism from rare unhinged individuals, though. The real decision makers and guardians of the Culture are Minds, super-advanced AIs that can keep watch over millions of biological passengers and react to any problem a million times faster than biological entities can act. All manufactured objects in the Culture beyond a certain level of complexity have their own lesser AIs embedded in them. A space suit can advise or even argue with its user; a powerful handgun will refuse to fire if it thinks its user is misbehaving. (This is a minor plot point in one of the stories where somebody destroys a ship with a very old Culture gun from before the AI safeguards were built into objects.)

As for the real world you can observe demand satiation right now among different ranks of the rich. Look at billionaires. They consume much more than the man who has only a few million in the bank, but sub-linearly more. From millionaires to billionaires you don't see a thousand-fold increase in consumption as measured by house size, food, beverages, clothing, medical care... Billionaires are three orders of magnitude separated from millionaires on the basis of control, not consumption; the richest will feel ill long before they consume all the champagne or caviar they could afford to buy.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#69

Post by vkou »

Eridrus wrote: post #19
vkou wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't great news for those who 'don't care' about global warming - people hungry for fossil fuel jobs, either.

It's becoming less and less obvious that anyone in a position of power advocating for fossil fuel energy actually cares about the jobs.

Well, of course. Jobs are a cost center - and the people advocating hardest for fossil fuels are resource companies.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#70

Post by cyrks »

noobermin wrote: post #41
pizzetta wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about this industry --as in I know nothing, but I think some of the costly parts are "exploration rights" as well as regulatory hurdles and costs. If you own some land with mineral rights, then you can do some of this but if you don't have land then obtaining that land and getting permission to explore is not a trivial task, I think.

I see, so the regulatory hurdles to even get started are more of an expense than labor and equipment?

No. For offshore, the major expense for the driller is in the drilling rig or drillship which can cost upwards of $1B. For the operating company, it is the dayrate that the driller charges the operator which can be from $75k/day to $450k/day. Onshore rates are The offshore leases are expensive, but in the economic models they are not the primary driver of costs associated with the project. Same goes for onshore, but with less cost for the land rights and fewer regulatory hurdles.

https://www.ihs.com/products/oil-gas-drilling-rigs-offshore-...

https://rigdata.com/rigdata-insights/blogpost?BlogName=plumm...

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