Harnessing data potential

Digital transformation efforts continue to be top of mind for many industries, but while some organisations have a plan in place, many remain in the dark. McKinsey¹ reports that while many companies have been running digitisation projects across various parts of their operations, 70% of them have not moved beyond the pilot phase due to management that is unwilling to commit necessary resources.

Without data analytics tools in place, employees waste valuable time on manual tasks, an ongoing challenge in the upstream and downstream markets. One of the costliest issues is human error, which can easily occur when manually inputting data and having to analyse datasets.

The best way to ensure organisations meet their operational efficiency is with a robust gas and liquid measurement data management system. Gas and liquid measurement software helps streamline the measurement process and optimises data integrity. Let’s take a look at several key issues that the oil and gas industry is currently facing, and the role gas and liquid measurement software can play in alleviating them.

The way it has been done

To this day, many operators do not have robust measurement software in place and continue to utilise decades-old home-grown databases to source their data. This is true for companies of all sizes – but they cannot keep up with it forever as the amount of data exponentially increases. Major pain points relate to Excel entry, which is overly manual and doesn’t reflect rapidly changing industry regulations. These systems need to reflect those updates, which can be very time-consuming if they are manually handled.

Therefore, implementing a robust measurement software helps power a data warehouse capable of serving the needs of the entire organisation. Most employees are not meant to stay in the same role forever, meaning those who initially built the system are faced with the challenge of having to teach the next person overseeing it. Companies who have robust measurement software in place, backed by third-party expertise, automatically have their systems updated based on new industry standards, saving time and effort. From upstream to midstream markets, ensuring compliance and accuracy for gas and liquid measurement data is critical.

Compliance with industry standards and regulations

Maintaining compliance with industry standards is a priority for oil and gas companies, including compliance with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM Regulations) and the liquid and gas industry calculation standards of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), American Petroleum Institute (API), and the GPA Midstream Association. Compliance audits are especially strenuous for oil and gas companies, and when using software that isn’t up-to-date with industry standards, they become even more challenging. Both midstream and upstream products have different density ranges and diverse ways they act through different pressures and temperatures.

American Petroleum Institute (API) MPMS Chapter 11.1 is the established industry standard outlining the procedure for crude oils, liquid refined products, and lubricating oils for the correction of temperature and pressure effects on the density and volume of liquid hydrocarbons. The API standard ensures that transactions are performed dependent on calculations, and also provides a high level of participation for both parties. Implementing a gas and liquid measurement software helps validate and identify errors and anomalies, as well as offering tools to run recalculations according to these standards. This global standard is updated at least once every five years, and it’s imperative to ensure…

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