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Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

bloomberg.com

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Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#11

Post by cdibona »

cloudwizard wrote: post #3

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

Tool pushing is an extraordinarily dangerous job. If it can be replaced by robotic handling equipment then good for humanity, I say.I'm honestly shocked there isn't more death on rigs...

I have a family member who was a tool pusher for a number of years. These jobs pay a lot because there's a lot of risk, a lot of pain and a real need to retire/transition early because of the damage to your body.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#12

Post by cdibona »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #4

3 Years and half the workers: "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." I'm more familiar with mining and it's fairly amazing the productivity improvements that went into that, those jobs are never coming back.

It is worth pointing out that it is the exploratory, fracturing and 'setting up' of a well that demands the most work and labor. Once they're pumping, you don't need nearly the same amount of help.

After the pricing downturn, the number of exploratory/new wells and re-fracturing of old wells declined remarkably, so it's not like they actually 'need' as many people on the oil field. If oil goes back above, say 60$/barrel you'll start seeing more hiring/exploration in ND. Right now they can profitably pump extant wells, but new wells will wait for demand...

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#13

Post by vkou »

screwston wrote: post #5

This isn't great news for those who care about global warming, nothing drives cleaner fuel technologies better than high hydrocarbon prices.

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

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#14

Post by porpoisemonkey »

kbenson wrote: post #6
digikata wrote: post #2

I wonder if increased automation means poorer responses to emergencies because you have fewer humans there to respond with. On the other hand, maybe it means fewer emergencies because the automation makes fewer mistakes, or makes hard jobs easier and more consistent.

Often overlooked is the type of mistake, which it seems you are touching on with "poorer responses to emergencies". If humans make 10 mistakes over a time period compared to 1 for the automated system, it might look as if the humans are worse, but if the cost of the human mistakes averages to 5 for some theoretical cost scale (so 50 overall), but the automated mistake costs 100 because there isn't a good dynamic resp…

> That's why we so often see automated systems backed by people, as we don't have automation that can respond as dynamically as a person.

I imagine there's specialized training involved to make sure that the person monitoring the machine understands the nature of how the machine operates in order to service it and know when it's making mistakes.

I wonder if the people monitoring the machines are the same ones that are being automated out of jobs or if it's an entirely different skill set?

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#15

Post by gjkood »

Informative article, but a picture is worth a thousand words. While I appreciate the picture of a drill ship in the ocean, it would have been more informative to see a single picture of one of these robots.

I guess since the focus of the article was the effect on related labor and not on the technology itself, a picture was deemed irrelevant. But when the title leads with 'Robots...' I want to see a picture of a robot.

You may ask why I can't just google them, but alas, I am too lazy to google for the robot in question.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#17

Post by Eridrus »

porpoisemonkey wrote: post #9
cloudwizard wrote: post #3

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

As I understand it the incentive to automate is to 1) reduce costs and to 2) increase quality by standardizing the execution of complicated tasks. If this is true then as a general rule automation is going to target jobs of highly payed, semi-skilled workers. I think we can expect that these positions will become scarcer and scarcer as automation technologies are adopted. One area where there's a glut of highly paid…

Both opportunities and challenges, but people are working on it: https://www.flexport.com/blog/port-automation-oakland-rotter...

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#18

Post by maxerickson »

cdibona wrote: post #12
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #4

3 Years and half the workers: "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." I'm more familiar with mining and it's fairly amazing the productivity improvements that went into that, those jobs are never coming back.

It is worth pointing out that it is the exploratory, fracturing and 'setting up' of a well that demands the most work and labor. Once they're pumping, you don't need nearly the same amount of help. After the pricing downturn, the number of exploratory/new wells and re-fracturing of old wells declined remarkably, so it's not like they actually 'need' as many people on the oil field. If oil goes back above, say 60$/bar…

The article is about drilling roles being reduced though, so those future wells will come with less jobs than new wells required just a few years ago (article claims 1/3 to 1/2 of jobs will not be there on new wells).

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#19

Post by Eridrus »

vkou wrote: post #13
screwston wrote: post #5

This isn't great news for those who care about global warming, nothing drives cleaner fuel technologies better than high hydrocarbon prices.

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.
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