Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 177 posts

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#151

Post by slv77 »

robotresearcher wrote: post #135
slv77 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how it was earned and invested. For example assume that a new billionaire is minted by a lottery with 100 million people buying a $10 dollar ticket. Long term it's neutral but in the short term it effectively removes $1B in near term consumption from the economy and spreads it out over 100+ years. On the other side a million people will likely better invest and sound a thousand dollars than one person will…

But the new billionaire doesn't stuff her mattress with ten million hundreds. She buys investments, which go back into the economy. Or she puts cash in the bank, which goes back into the economy....

The money she collected from the lottery ultimately represent a call option on someone's future labor. After the lottery that call option has been handed to a single individual who may never make that call in her lifetime. The effect is similar to the coal mining town's company store where you can only buy what they sell at the price they set.

The effect is to concentrate economic activity in specific sectors where banks are willing to lend which means the economy is less flexible overall.

An economy with $1B of debt and $1B in savings spread over 10,000 people is going to be more diverse and resilient than 9,999 people who have $1B in debt and one person with $1B in savings invested in housing and car loans.

The best outcome would be if she invested in new equity in a company that created a positive ROI in excess of what the lottery ticket buyers would have produced. Anything else is a net negative.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#152

Post by SEJeff »

bduerst wrote: post #132
SEJeff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

So I have to move my entire extended family to an orbital? What if their demands aren't met there? You're missing the point about spatial scarcity and demand.

I'm guessing you've not read the series, because the context is seemingly entirely lost on you. Culture citizens are free to go anywhere they want and do literally whatever they want. Small orbitals are ~20x the size of earth whereas large ones are 200x the size of earth. Also, you can live on planets if you wish, but the idea is seen as very quaint and generally not a very "culture" thing to do.

When you can move literally anywhere in the galaxy, amongst virtually any galaxy that hyperspace ships can take you to, there isn't a scarcity of space and machines can create literally anything in this world on demand, so demand is also never a problem.

I think somehow we are misunderstanding eachother, but it makes it much harder to explain this VAST ecosystem when it does appear you might not have even read the series we're all discussing.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#153

Post by mitochondrion »

knn wrote: post #149
arjie wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even would someone against that be on HN? It's a place where people interested in startups are. Automating jobs away is always seen as a fantastic opportunity here.

It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists…

For the most part, automation doesn't create wealth. Sometimes it dramatically improves the functionality of an operation, but mostly it just lets private enterprise replace humans with capital. Thus, it enormously increases the wealth of the owners of that capital, and moderately increases the wealth of the managers of that capital, but overall wealth is not increased, only distributed differently.

Also, to the extent that Trump was elected because of economic factors rather than social factors, a cultural reaction against the rampant libertinism of late-stage liberalism, it was because their jobs were not automated but exported overseas. If their jobs hadn't been exported en masse, they would have been largely protected from automation for the last 30 years and until 10 to 20 years from now when things really get serious.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#154

Post by giggidygig »

hackuser wrote: post #148
giggidygig wrote: post #130

Having worked in the industry for 10+ years now, first on deepwater oil rigs (drilling), now working IT for a large oil company, some things i've observed/experienced first hand which could provide some color to the automation side of things: 1) The smaller the company, the more agile/nimble you are forced to be out of pure need (no money or resources), this means you have to look at automating things in order to jus…

Thanks for sharing your knowledge of the industry. One question: > The contractor/service companies (Halliburton, Schlumberger, BakerHughes/GE, Transocean, Nabors etc..) are probably the only ones in the industry that could successfully develop and use these types of automation technologies > The big oil companies ... simply don't have the ability to effectively produce/innovate internally as a smaller company would.…

They are large, but not as big as the Super Major Oil Companies (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP etc..).

Oil Companies think large and long term (10-50 yr cycles), meaning their payback/revenue period is also longer, and as a result their business strategy/forecasting is longer.

The cycle usually starts with a lot of upfront Capital to build up the capability to find/drill/produce/refine/sell the oil.

Once they have that capability, then the focus is on producing oil in the cheapest most efficient way possible over the 10-50 yr life of the oil field.

Compare this to the services/contractor companies, whose work is mainly fixed/short-term contract based, as a result their business strategy forecasting is alot shorter. It is also more competitive, so they have to constantly think up new and better services to provide the oil companies, while also trying to reduce their own operating expense to extract as much margin as possible.

So being smaller, with shorter business cycles, and more focus on doing things better, smarter, cheaper, the result is that the service/contractor companies really have more opportunity and an inherent need to innovate, simply as a way to survive and make profit.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#155

Post by mitochondrion »

logfromblammo wrote: post #134
mccoyspace wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." Which is why the growing wealth inequalities are bad for the overall economy. The rich can't spend their money with enough scale or velocity.

Which is something I don't really understand. In a sandbox game like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress, once I have met all the objectives built into the game, I can invent new and ridiculous objectives, such as "build a fortress entirely out of obsidian 200 z-levels high". Once you're rich, and can no longer spend all your income on everything you can think to consume yourself, you can buy a megaproject. Run a political c…

They didn't get rich by spending everything they had, they got rich by saving (and investing) everything they could.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#156

Post by abecedarius »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #110
arjunnarayan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably isn't something that appeals to the Hacker News community in general, but the first thing that comes to mind is large scale art projects, of the sort that take weeks/months to prepare (such as the big Burning Man installations).

Maybe something we can't even imagine at this point? Think about trying to explain animation to people in the late 19th century.

Actually that's a pretty fun topic in tech history. You could buy short animations cheaply then, as flipbooks, and there were fancier types: viewed through a spinning cylinder, or projected. There were even 3d animations. See samples on youtube.

Checking my memory just now I learned something interesting: the magic lantern was invented by Huygens in the 1600s, and he probably had a simple animation in mind -- he sketched a sequence of Death removing his own head.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#157

Post by jordanb »

fokov wrote: post #96
ryanmarsh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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", an…

We are already there in other sectors. I have worked in Workforce Management and Optimization (WFM/WFO) for the past few years. Scheduling is already common in areas where demand can be easily captured, for example retail banking and contact centers. We use the past data plus other "stuff" to determine the given workload for a position/activity and then schedule employees based on several factors among them are min/m…

Now you have a computer making sure nobody gets full time hours, schedules are different every day and change weekly making it impossible to plan a life around the job. And of course people need more than one job and the other jobs are doing the same thing.

You can see similar patterns with eLearning and performance management technology. The former decreases the cost of turnover for a firm, the latter eliminates the employee's ability to shirk which in turn frees the firm from having to offer Efficiency Wages. The firm is now able to adopt a policy of "burn 'em out and replace 'em" and offer the lowest wages legally permissible. Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#158

Post by jordanb »

mitochondrion wrote: post #153
knn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great opportunity for those automating. I'm totally for automation as it creates wealth and I think is good for humanity in the long run, but people suffer from automation (losing jobs, homes, provision for their families) in the short term. People suffering from automation is a major reason why Trump was elected. It's highly insensitive to not be aware of the pain that is caused by automation by technologists…

For the most part, automation doesn't create wealth. Sometimes it dramatically improves the functionality of an operation, but mostly it just lets private enterprise replace humans with capital. Thus, it enormously increases the wealth of the owners of that capital, and moderately increases the wealth of the managers of that capital, but overall wealth is not increased, only distributed differently. Also, to the exte…

Back when the labor movements were stronger it could be a good thing for (almost) everyone because in order to introduce new automation, management would have to offer employees something in return (high wages, benefits, shorter working hours, etc).

The end result is that everyone up and down the income distribution benefited from gains in efficiency. And those who were displaced had little problem finding new work because their former coworkers now had more money and/or leisure time to spend on new economic activity.

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#159

Post by giggidygig »

giggidygig wrote: post #154
hackuser wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge of the industry. One question: > The contractor/service companies (Halliburton, Schlumberger, BakerHughes/GE, Transocean, Nabors etc..) are probably the only ones in the industry that could successfully develop and use these types of automation technologies > The big oil companies ... simply don't have the ability to effectively produce/innovate internally as a smaller company would.…

They are large, but not as big as the Super Major Oil Companies (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP etc..). Oil Companies think large and long term (10-50 yr cycles), meaning their payback/revenue period is also longer, and as a result their business strategy/forecasting is longer. The cycle usually starts with a lot of upfront Capital to build up the capability to find/drill/produce/refine/sell the oil. Once they have that c…

Slightly off "automation" topic - but their are some pretty cool examples of service/contractor companies using/leveraging technology to do things better ( specifically in the drilling space), which the oil companies benefit from, but could never have developed themselves in my opinion:

1) Downhole Telemetry Systems (Communication for Downhole tools) - using EM, Fixed Wire in Drill Pipe and Mud Pulses (Pressure changes in Mud) http://www.halliburton.com/en-US/ps/sperry/drilling/telemetr... http://www.slb.com/services/drilling/mwd_lwd/mwd/powerpulse....

2) Point the Bit/Push the bit/Rotary Steerable Systems - ability to remotely point the drill bit in a desired direction http://www.halliburton.com/en-US/ps/sperry/drilling/directio... http://www.slb.com/services/drilling/drilling_services_syste...

3) Loggin While Drilling Technology - having inbuilt sensors of various types on the drill bit, collecting/sampling while drilling http://www.halliburton.com/en-US/ps/sperry/drilling/lwd.page... http://www.slb.com/services/drilling/mwd_lwd.aspx

Re: Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs

#160

Post by bogomipz »

jordanb wrote: post #157
fokov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are already there in other sectors. I have worked in Workforce Management and Optimization (WFM/WFO) for the past few years. Scheduling is already common in areas where demand can be easily captured, for example retail banking and contact centers. We use the past data plus other "stuff" to determine the given workload for a position/activity and then schedule employees based on several factors among them are min/m…

Now you have a computer making sure nobody gets full time hours, schedules are different every day and change weekly making it impossible to plan a life around the job. And of course people need more than one job and the other jobs are doing the same thing. You can see similar patterns with eLearning and performance management technology. The former decreases the cost of turnover for a firm, the latter eliminates the…

>" Amazon appears to be at the leading edge of this technology revolution."

Can you elaborate on this? In which parts of Amazon? Order fulfillment? IT?

Post reply on HN