NEL, the institute which provides research, consultancy, testing and flow measurement services to the oil and gas industry, has invested £400,000 in a flow meter data capture and analysis system that it claims could save the sector of billions of pounds.
The joint project between NEL, Robert Gordon University (RGU) and The Data Lab, a Scottish government funded innovation centre, will upgrade the institute's data acquisition infrastructure system, allowing data to be analysed across 30 years for the first time.
It combines the data science expertise of RGU and NEL’s flow measurement capability, allowing for the development of state-of-the-art data mining software tools to monitor ongoing performance and trends. It is believed the checks can potentially save operators billions of pounds per year from unnecessary calibrations, maintenance and shutdowns.
NEL group manager Muir Porter said: “This is an industry-first that will deliver operators the ability to analyse data on very large complex data sets to better inform decisions that have huge potential for cost optimisation.
"NEL is the UK’s National Measurement Institute, responsible for maintaining the flow measurement national standard. By delivering this unique capability, we will also be able to feed into high-impact industry research and guidance going forward.”
John McCall, director of the Smart Data Technologies Centre at Robert Gordon University, said: “Our data science knowledge, combined with NEL’s flow metrology expertise, creates the opportunity to analyse data in a novel way, enabling us to provide previously unobtainable insights.
"We will uncover hidden data trends and relationships that will help operators to better understand and predict the condition of their meters, allowing them to minimise operational costs and maximise well revenues.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here