BP Uses Wireless Technologies

In 2009 the giant oil company BP (www.bp.com) launched a wideranging information technology initiative. The initiative, which BP calls “Track and Trace,” involves deploying a web of networked RFID tags, cellular phones, and GPS devices to monitor key assets around the world. Its goals were to improve safety and compliance. Another goal was to save money by reducing BP’s asset loss and theft, employee downtime, and material waste. Track and Trace relies on a wide range of sensing technologies that had to be customized for the project. The technologies had to be safe enough to use around oil and gas and yet resilient enough to survive harsh conditions—from Arctic cold to desert heat to Gulf of Mexico humidity. For example, BP collaborated with a vendor to develop a GPS tracking device for pipeline inspectors, who often work alone in hazardous, remote conditions. To develop this technology, the vendor had to shrink its standard device and ensure that it would not emit sparks, so that it would be safe to use around combustible materials. Track and Trace technologies also had to be practical on a massive scale to influence the operations of a company with roughly 80,000 employees, thousands of facilities spread throughout the world, and millions of pieces of fi eld equipment. When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, killing 11 people and spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, BP faced one of the industry’s biggest and costliest oil cleanups. Track and Trace enabled BP to respond quickly in managing the cleanup, primarily through alerting spill responders about what equipment they had to work with and what condition the rig was in. BP deployed RFID-tagged Wave Gliders (self-powered robots that float around collecting data on air and water quality) in the Gulf of Mexico, and it tagged skimmers and other key assets across four U.S. Gulf states. Another example of Track and Trace’s usefulness is the role it played when BP had to perform routine refinery maintenance at the firm’s Gelsenkirchen (GSK) refinery in Germany. To accomplish this process, GSK technicians worked section by section, sealing off one area before proceeding to the next. To do that, they used what is called a blind to close off pipe ends at the flange. Blinds were inserted and removed in a precise sequence. Engineers had to place RFID tags on 100,000 blinds at the refinery. They used Track and Trace to track the blinds with handheld readers. SAP software analyzed the data from Track and Trace to automatically determine which flanges should be blinded, and when. In another Track and Trace project, BP outfitted oil trucks in Alaska with cellular equipment that transmits data to BP through the AT&T cellular network or, as a backup, through Iridium’s satellites. The system monitors driver activity and sends alerts through e-mail and text about a suspected accident or unsafe activity by their truck drivers such as speeding and hard braking. The system monitors about 900 trucks, and it generates roughly 500,000 messages per week. Sources: Compiled from T. Team, “BP Goes for Public Relations Makeover to Get Beyond Gulf Spill,” Forbes, February 7, 2012; P. McDougall, “Asset Tracking Aids Huge BP Cleanup,” InformationWeek, September 19, 2011; C. Swedberg, “BP Uses RFID Sensors to Track Pipe Corrosion,” RFID Journal, January 31, 2011; www.bp.com, accessed March 11, 2013

Questions

1.How did Track and Trace technologies help BP at least try to manage its catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

2.What other uses might BP have for wireless sensor technologies?