While the worst appears to be behind us, the demand recovery for oil and refined petroleum products will likely remain slow and uneven. That has all of us continuing to scrutinize expenses and look for ways to operate with less. However, one place that you should think twice about cutting back is monitoring and surveillance. Time and again, remote monitoring and the ability to intervene remotely saves more than it costs.

A simple example illustrates this point.

A client recently received an alarm and called us to investigate. We were able to diagnose and fix the problem remotely, saving the customer the cost of a wellsite visit and preserving that day’s production cash flow. It only takes a handful of incidents such as this for monitoring and surveillance to pay for itself across an entire pad or lease and begin generating positive return. And that’s before we consider potential operational “saves” with optimization changes that either improve production or reduce LOE.

Monitoring and surveillance also plays an important role in ESG programs by reducing HS&E miles/site visits and vehicle emissions.

As you seek to be more efficient and do more with less, monitoring and surveillance is an important part of achieving that goal. Cutting investment in that area will likely do more harm than good.