Report: Robots May Replace 20% of Oilfield Jobs in next Decade
/Rystad Energy, a research and business intelligence company serving the global energy industry, estimates that robots could replace approximately 425,000 oilfield jobs by 2030.
The report hits hard as the oil and gas industry has already seen significant job losses. Nearly 60,000 oil exploration and production jobs (article behind paywall) in Texas were lost in 2020, as the global pandemic caused an unprecedented oil crash. Nationally, the oil and gas industry lost an estimated 107,000 jobs during the pandemic, according to global consulting firm Deloitte.
The report looked at the U.S., Russia, Canada, the UK, and Norway to identify areas of focus and levels of robotics replacing drilling, maintenance, and operational support jobs.
One of the segments with much to gain from the adoption of robotics is drilling—it is highly cost-intensive and involves carrying out dangerous tasks in challenging environments. Robotic solutions are continually being introduced successfully in drilling operations.
Applying current supplier specs, which suggest that robotic drilling systems can potentially reduce the number of humans required on a drilling rig by 20% to 30%, Rystad Energy estimates that such a reduction in drilling crews can bring cost savings of more than $7 billion in wages in the U.S. alone, based on present wage levels.
Inspection, maintenance, and repair (IMR) operations are also ideal for robotic operations and is the segment where adoption of robotics has gained the most traction among operators in recent years.
A notable example is the self-propelled robotics arms unit Eelume, used by Norwegian operator Equinor. With a snake-like design, the robotic arms have the flexibility and agility to transit over long distances and carry out subsea IMR activities such as visual inspection, cleaning, and operating valves and chokes in highly confined spaces.
While the emergence of robotics in the oil and gas industry seems inevitable, Rystad Energy believes that full-scale adoption is still a few years away as the long-term reliability of robotics in complex 3D environments, such as those found on offshore platforms, is yet to be tested.
From Equinor
Job cuts due to robotics are likely to be met with resistance from labor organizations, however technological advancements resulting in job cuts is not new to the industry, which has become more efficient over the years.
"We don't need as many employees to produce record and growing amounts of crude oil and natural gas, and potentially as much as we need," Karr Ingham, economist at the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, told the Houston Chronicle. "These efficiencies have been coming. They've been in place and growing for some time. All industries do this."
The industry, like its many robots, is being rebooted.
