Technological Advances in Hydraulic Fracturing

I have recently come across some very interesting facts that could become very important for the energy industry. Hydraulic fracturing has become more and more common in the world today as a method to create an oil or gas well. There is much effort that goes into creating just one of these wells. So companies that have multiple fleets to produce these wells have a hard time keeping track of all the sites and the information produced from them. These companies are becoming more and more reliant on the data that is compiled from these locations.

Fracking fleet. Photo by Kansas Geological Survey.

One fleet is usually composed of multiple trucks. Some of these trucks house multiple pieces of equipment including engines to run this equipment. That’s a lot of data to keep track of; which is why there is a separate vehicle called a data van that has the sole purpose of keeping track of the data. There are not many companies that take advantage of collecting this data. It gives a company the opportunity to speed up the production of the well and also save time and money. 

The benefits that come from collecting this data are great. Access to the time series data makes it much simpler to track down the source of a problem when it occurs. It also makes routine maintenance checks much easier to track. This allows planning for future checks to become almost effortless. Canary Labs has developed a solution to effectively manage these dynamic assets as they move around the country between different fleets. The AxiomTrend allows the data to be collected with no loss and sorted by fleet which shows the individual trucks associated with that fleet at a centralized corporate site by satellite or cellular connection. All this data can be accessed offsite and can be viewed anywhere. The end result is a more efficient, easy to maintain fleets that speed up the production process and allows better utilization of equipment, resources and most importantly increases profitability.

This is just one of the many industries that is being shaped by the collection of data. It leads me to wonder how time series data can change other industries as well…