Customer CARE- Going the Extra Mile!

Canary Labs has been known for its notable customer care since the start-up of the company. Being a software developer, Canary Labs understands dealing with other software companies and what makes Customer Care exceptional. No one likes hearing the message that someone will get back to you sometime in the next 3 days, discreetly meaning that they may believe it's not their problem and it will resolve itself in the next 3 days. No one likes having someone from a different country take you through the basic steps of reinstalling your original software, maybe because the person behind the phone believes that will fix your problem or at least make you go away. No one likes having to jump through hoops; it's inconvenient to be transferred from one department to the next before finally talking to someone who can even comprehend what you are talking about.

There are many frustrations that we have all encountered when working with a customer support department. At Canary Labs, we strive to make your Customer Care experience different. When talking with Canary Labs Customer Care, you are talking with experienced people that can quickly solve your problem, sometimes within minutes. If the problem is intermittent or requires more investigation, our support people have direct access to our developers. Problems are typically solved on the spot or within hours, in worst case scenarios it may take a day or two. Our longest outstanding item over the last 30 years took 3 days to solve, it was a difficult intermittent problem that was found to be a problem within a Microsoft operating system module. Our support team has a CRM database to track past problems and help our support team learn from previous experiences. Many times users will call Canary Labs first even though it may be another software’s problem, maybe because the user knows Canary Labs will talk with them and help confirm the problem. We treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Sometimes the problem is not our problem, but if it affects the operation of the Canary Software, our Customer Care team is diligent to check it out!

"Nobody raves about average." -Bill Quiseng

Canary Labs builds diagnostic tools into certain software modules and provides more tools for data management and analysis such as network communications and where your data is between Canary modules such as the sender and receiver module when connected to satellites or networks that are not consistently running. We know how valuable your historical data is, we want to provide reliable data and tools to notify users of what is happening within their system or if configuration changes are made unexpectedly.

Canary Labs is not out to gouge you on customer support costs. Our objective is to provide extreme value to our clients while exceeding their expectations. We have had customers report an excess of a 10-fold return on their Canary 20K investment within months. We do our best to live out the phrase, "Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you". At the end of the day, as a company, are we giving more than we take? Canary Labs Customer Care strives to be excellent in its services and do what is right!

Before Things Go Out of Control

Solutions Consultant, Don Mast, talks about providing more safety in oil refineries across the country. One way to do this is through the tools Canary Labs provides:

"With increased focus on the booming oil and gas industry by the media, the government, groups against anything gas, and health & safety industrial organizations, more needs to be done to prevent accidents upstream, midstream and downstream. 

Refineries convert raw materials into usable product.

Fact: Workers at American oil refineries die on the job about three times as often as their counterparts in other countries.  One example of this is Tesoro, a Washington state refinery that exploded in 2010, killing seven people. Recently the U.S. Chemical Safety board who investigates our nation’s worst industrial accidents says, that on average, across the nation there’s a significant accident at an oil refinery once every three days.  Companies’ report all the time that they are missing data or chunks of time and when that data is gone, bad things can happen including injuries, downtime and massive fines.  With all the technology available, this can be reduced and prevented. The answer is data.

Canary Labs, a leader in information solutions for the oil and gas industry, is working with global oil and gas companies, pipelines, drillers, and refining companies to protect workers and equipment, reduce production and exploration costs, improve process and production metrics while providing the data needed to drive crucial decisions before things at the job site go out of control.

Utilizing the latest technology, Canary Labs open, flexible and high performance enterprise software runs around the clock to monitor equipment and process metrics by collecting data via the Canary Historian and presenting both real-time and historical data trends, allowing operators to have a good understanding of the current plant / job site conditions. Similarly, Canary Labs software tools provide operators access to invisible variables that are not easily detected; providing early warning alerts to problems that can be resolved before they become a disaster. Solutions are deployed as a simple single site solution or as a complex distributed enterprise resource. 

Driving innovation in the data industry, Canary Labs technology allows operators to collect data from distributed or remote sites and safeguards that the data are sent to the historian in event of a communication outage. Furthermore Canary’s Axiom trending solution, AxiomTrend, is an intuitive and easy to use data analysis tool. It visually transforms process data into knowledge. It empowers operators, engineers, and managers to stay connected while using a common analytical tool for viewing data anywhere at any time via mobile devices. With increased scrutiny on the industry by governments and anti-gas groups, Canary Labs provides streamlined detailed reporting for regulatory compliance. 

“Canary Trending is an invaluable tool in our refinery. It runs around the clock, 24/7. Over the last 14+ years, Canary has provided quality products that utilize the latest technology.” Kevin Moran, System Engineer, Delaware City Refinery “As a trending tool, we like the flexibility in how it’s configured and the ease of use. Users can drag and drop to add trends to the chart and save charts for later recall. The speed is a big plus, allowing users to quickly scan and find historical data they want to see. Users can access overview charts and then quickly drill down to see detailed data. The user doesn’t have to be a genius to figure things out.”

Randy Walker, Control Systems Engineer says, “Canary is a valuable tool allowing us to graphically review archived data for maintenance issues and performance. Templates can be saved of commonly reviewed trends for quick future access. The export utility is used to generate viewed trends into reports for distribution. This trending software has proven to be a valuable asset in our day to day operations.” 

For nearly 30 years, Canary Labs has been a game-changer in the oil and gas, industrial automation, energy production and distribution sectors delivering world-class, real-time data historian and trending tools with a focus on safety and solutions." 

Can Data Historians Help Curb Spills From Saltwater Waste in the Bakken?

I am very excited to announce the first in a series of guest posts from different employees here at Canary Labs. Information Solutions Consultant, Shawn Ebersole, writes about an event that happened very recently in the Oil and Gas industry:

"I saw in the news yesterday that in North Dakota 1 million gallons of saltwater, the equivalent of 24,000 barrels, leaked from a pipeline.  This caused untold damage to surrounding vegetation, and much worse, the contamination of Bear Den Bay. Bear Den Bay leads to Lake Sakakawea, which is the source of drinking water for the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Fortunately, officials believe the drinking water was not affected, but this event got me thinking about how the oil and gas industry can do a better job in preventing this from happening. A big way to prevent this would be the use of a process data historian with real-time and historical trending.

Transporting liquids and gases through pipelines is a very
efficient way to move large quantities of substances from
one place to another.

Before getting into how to use a data historian to monitor saltwater pipelines, it is helpful to understand more about the type of saltwater in the pipelines.  Saltwater is a byproduct that accompanies oil and gas as it is harvested from a well. This type of saltwater is 10 to 30 times saltier than seawater, so if leaked or spilled from a pipeline, it poses a high environmental risk to soil, plants and freshwater resources.

Careful means are taken to properly dispose of this type of saltwater, but unfortunately spills like I saw in the news, have been happening frequently in North Dakota. The reason for the increased number of spills is relative to the growth of oil production in the Bakken.  As of November 2013, North Dakota had 515 saltwater disposal wells and 2,127 saltwater pipelines.  

A bill backed by the Northwest Landowners Association in 2013 would have required the use of flow meters and cutoff switches on all gas and liquid transmission lines, including saltwater pipelines; the bill was voted down 86-4. The opponents of the bill claimed the requirements were too complex and expensive. Further legislation surrounding saltwater pipelines continues to be debated as the subject is becoming a focal point during the race for the Agricultural Commissioner.

After understanding the background of the saltwater waste situation in the Bakken, both environmentally and politically, I feel there will be a movement towards closer monitoring of the saltwater waste pipelines. When this happens the ability to store, visualize and report on data obtained from the flow meters, cutoff switches, etc…will be crucial, and it will be important for the oil and gas companies operating in the Bakken to have a high performing data historian."

Using Data in the Drilling Industry

The use of data in today’s industries has greatly increased from what it once was. One specific industry is that of the drilling industry. What once was recorded only on paper by hand has now been passed to computers to manage and track. If I was in charge of keeping track of all that information, you can be sure there would be some mistakes made! Data is a big part of the drilling process and is used for a variety of reasons including for safety, management and analysis.

What once was all done by hand has now been passed to computers. This not only helps minimize mistakes, but it also allows more data to be produced. Now a timeline is available to the operation engineers and overseers to see what is happening at all times not only onsite but also remotely. In the past, this was done through fax or over the phone but the data was limited. However, today with the advancement of technology, all the data can be placed directly in front of you no matter where you are. 

One of the main reasons data is recorded, is for analysis. The data provides insight which enables the operator to see how to improve future well operations. 

In many regions, local and federal governments require well-operations and equipment reports to be submitted either electronically or through hard-copy. Tracking this data through historian software make this very simple for organizations to create these and manage these reports.   

So what does all this mean and how does it relate to you? Simple. If data has changed this one industry, improving and advancing it, don’t you think that data has the potential to improve your industry as well? We live in a world that is constantly changing and people are realizing how important information can be.

Data has the power to change. Change how we do things; change how we see things. We know that to improve something, we need to intimately understand how a system works. Data gives the understanding that companies need to profit and grow. This is what makes it valuable. This is why using data in the drilling industry has increased and made it the industry that it is today.

Source
http://petrowiki.org/Drilling_data_management

The Big Need for Big Data

The need for data may not seem large, but this is in fact a growing need in the industrial world. We want to know how to make our machines more efficient. We want to see a timeline of pressures and output. We want to know how to prevent problems from occurring. But most importantly, we want to know how to save money. These are needs that many industries face today and big data is the solution. Some of these industries are Gas and Oil, Industrial Automation and Energy Production and Distribution. 

The Oil and Gas Industry

Currently, one of the industries we are most involved in is the Oil and Gas industry. There are many options that we offer to these companies that have helped to reduce company costs by providing solutions that once were a major problems that companies had to face. Canary Labs provides solutions to such problems and makes the transition easy for the company so as not to disrupt daily flow.  

Industrial Automation is another industry that can benefit from the collection of data. When companies have this option it allows them to improve information flow. It also increases corporation knowledge so that future decisions can be made quickly and easily. Efficiency is also improved because having a timeline of all the data in front of you, highlights areas that need improvement. This educates you giving you resources you never had before.  Having all the information makes life easier on you.  

Another industry that finds the collection of data very useful is that of the energy industry. Many energy companies use our product as a means to measure energy production. Some of our software is used in wind turbines across the country. This real-time visibility and analytics are also useful in viewing distribution, consumption and maintenance management. All the while helping to lower operation costs.

These are just a few of the industries we are currently involved in. Some of the other industries are Water and Wastewater, Pipelines, Refineries, and Chemical plants. To see a full list of the industries we service visit our Industries page.*

*If your company’s industry isn’t listed, yet you feel like data collection might be a great benefit, call us at 814-793-3770 or email us at estern@canarylabs.com

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…