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Canadian Nabors Company is a company that provides onshore drilling products and services. The company is using RFID technology to help it maintain and manage drilling equipment for oil and gas well fields nationwide. The system is provided by TrigPoint Solutions. With this system, Nabors managers can know at any time where the company’s equipment is, whether they have been overhauled, and even the time of the overhaul.
This system solves a labor-intensive problem of remotely tracking the locations, conditions and usage records of hundreds of assets. Most of the equipment, such as generators, water pumps, and motors installed on oil rigs, are tracked by staff at the drilling base filling out written materials, and then manually inputting these materials into the database of the Nabors office. Usually managers provide reports on asset conditions based on paper and pen records every week or every day. “What we want is a paperless system,” said Joe Bruce, chief operating officer of Nabors. He also believes that this system will give the company real-time electronic records of the location and maintenance history of each device.
Nabors operates 86 drilling rigs across Canada.
An average oil rig needs to maintain about one hundred parts on average. All the assets on each of the 86 different rigs in Canada need to be tracked, which is an arduous task for Nabors. These equipment can be moved from one drilling rig to another, or from one drilling rig to different parts of the drilling site, or from one drilling site to another. Because of people’s misplacement and theft, these devices often end up in loss, and are eventually written off and replaced. In addition, equipment often needs to be inspected by Nabors employees or third-party companies and sometimes needs to be verified for compliance. Nabors must keep records of these tasks.
Therefore, in 2008, Nabors of Canada conducted a six-month trial of the TrigPoint PROMPTT system in Edmonton, Alberta, and applied the passive 13.56 MHz label conforming to the ISO 15693 standard on two drilling rigs, and then used them. The handheld interrogator on the drilling site scans the tags. The success of this pilot has led to the full range of deployments the company is now carrying out. Bruce said that nearly 100 devices on each rig must be tagged with a total of 86 units. He expects that the full deployment of the system will end by the end of this year. He revealed that once the deployment is completed, the company will begin to attach tags to the equipment of each wellfield service rig, which is used to strengthen the drilling before the oil and gas are pumped out of the wellfield. It is expected that the labeling of these components will be completed by the end of 2010.
At the drilling site, Nabors field operators use handheld readers connected to the back-end server via satellite communications.
Greg Slater, deputy manager of TrigPoint’s business development department, explained that the tags were embedded in the polycarbonate packaging that TrigPoint made for drilling rig operations. Each tag is coded with a unique ID number, which is connected to the information of the tagged device. The tag ID number and device data are stored in the software on the website hosted by TrigPoint. Canadian Nabors company pays information usage fees. Although Slater refused to disclose the details of the payment process, he said that the payment of fees is based on a “pay-as-you-go model.”
Once the data is stored in the system, various data are connected to each other in the background system. For example, an oil pump installed on an oil rig can also be identified by its own RFID tag.
At the drilling site, Nabors field workers use handheld interrogators to read tags. Slater said that handheld readers have a wireless satellite communication connection to the back-end server, so they can exchange data with TrigPoint’s PROMPTT system in real time. (TrigPoint provides all the RFID software, but Slater did not disclose the names of the manufacturers of those tags or readers.)
The label is encased in a protective plastic
Nabors field workers regularly scan each RFID tag to provide updated data on the location of each device. If a device needs to be inspected or certified, the handheld reader will issue a warning when the tag of the device is read, showing the specialized services it needs. When an employee needs to check the equipment on site, he can use the prompts of the handheld instrument to instruct him how to proceed. The system can also be used to confirm that the device complies with the original equipment manufacturer’s regulations and regulatory requirements. The process involves testing the device within a certain range, and then printing a certificate showing that the component has passed the test.
In the future, the company plans to start using the system for maintenance tracking. For example, if a component needs to be transported off site for repair or repair, the label will be scanned, after which data will be entered to show where it will be shipped, and when the component is returned, the label will be scanned again to indicate that it has returned.
TrigPoint provides the initial configuration of the website used by Nabors, which can be modified later if needed. “We are responsible for configuring the entire system-fully integrating the website and handheld application devices-and handing over the system to the customer for continuous deployment,” Slater said. “Our system stores all the information related to the labeled devices, and works What tasks need to be performed by personnel — such as tracking maintenance, certification or determining safety — and by whom and when.
According to Bruce, Nabors of Canada has been looking for RFID solutions for some time. He said: “After finishing the TrigPoint pilot project, the company found that the system worked extremely well. What we want, the program can do for us. TrigPoint provides support in label location, as well as the use of software.”
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