Advancing BOP Reilability through IoT Technology

Abstract A blowout preventer (BOP) is one of the major pressure control safety devices used in the drilling of hydrocarbon wells. Hence, improving BOP reliability and reducing non-productive time has been always a concern to ensure safe and efficient operations. In the last years, multiple analytics tools have been developed by the Oil and Gas (O&G) industry to monitor the health of BOP components using the control system data. However, the ability of those tools to predict critical failures and establish a predictive maintenance strategy was constrained by the limited number of sensors and the inability to transmit higher fidelity data. First, this paper describes the state of the art of the BOP analytics, data transmission and instrumentation technology and points out its limitations. Different solutions are then proposed to leverage the IoT technology as a driver to enhance BOP predictive analytics capabilities.