Digital MagazineYear 2021

Hiber Hilo: an innovative solution for remote wellhead monitoring

Hiber-Hilo-an-innovative-solution-for-remote-wellhead-monitoring

Hiber Global has developed a simple, innovative, and affordable solution for remote oil and gas pressure and temperature monitoring at wellheads: the Hiber Hilo.

tom krikke – hiber

With Tom Krikke – Director of EMEA and Oil & Gas, Hiber Global

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Easy installation, easy monitoring

For most wellhead operators worldwide, several technologies for remote asset monitoring aren’t reliable enough since they can’t be installed everywhere. Only the highest producers can afford the most advanced technologies, and even in those cases, not all products are really affordable or simple enough for their installation everywhere.

On the other hand, for most operators, manual wellhead monitoring can cause incidents; and secondly, they also cost considerable amounts of money. For instance, travels to remote wells can cost thousands of dollars.

Furthermore, when you got your crew outside, the data that they’ll be capturing in that well is typically going to be unreliable. Indeed, at least 5-10% of all manual data is wrong. So practically 90% of the time, you’re blind.

Nevertheless, Amsterdam-based Hiber Global has developed a simple, innovative, and affordable solution for remote oil and gas pressure and temperature monitoring at wellheads: the Hiber Hilo.

Hiber Hilo: a data integrated solution

“At Hiber, we developed a wellhead monitoring solution that our customers can install on any wellhead around the globe, no matter how remote that well is. We connect it to our satellite network. We also aimed to make it as simple as possible. So, you don’t need many complex materials,” says Tom Krikke, Director of EMEA and Oil & Gas, Hiber Global.

Regarding the problems derived from manual wellhead monitoring – including safety and data reliability issues -, Mr. Krikke said the Hiber Hilo also looks to address those concerns: “What we can do, especially for those wells that are in remote areas, is that we can reduce the number of trips significantly. That means an improvement in safety and costs, but also your data quality.

Compared with traditional monitoring technologies, which are often complicated to use, the Hiber Hilo delivers out-of-the-box and straightforward solutions to its users.

“The traditional communication options – wiring, point-to-point radio, micro-links, and even several satellite technologies – are expensive, difficult to install, and still not scalable. However, we’ve been able to make that to be more comfortable. Thus, we’ve designed everything to be satellite-connected from the beginning. Therefore, from the moment you open up the box to install something, it’s done.

Addressing safety challenges

Hiber Hilo has also accelerated the installation process, which, according to Mr. Krikke, could previously take several hours, if not days: “With this new technology, we’ve done installations that would previously take days, and we can do that now within an hour or two.”

With the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the oil and gas industry – and, to all industries alike – safety and health concerns are currently at the forefront; “Just gathering people next to a well has become even more complex because of COVID. So, every team is looking to improve their teams’ safety.  And a lot of that can be done by automating monitoring, which you can do with Hiber Hilo,” noted Mr. Krikke.

The configuration options of Hiber Hilo are also crucial since, as Mr. Krikke said, the industry currently needs technologies that can be set-up for their situations. In this regard, “Hiber Hilo works like a menu. Therefore, you have several options, and finally, you can put and choose what you want.” 

Finally, Mr. Krikke recalled the reasons behind Hiber’s decision to develop the Hiber Hilo; “We saw a niche since we have a strong presence in satellite communications. And we noticed several of our customers were in the oil and gas space, and those were customers that wanted to monitor their wells.”

Therefore, “instead of building a customed product for each of them, or asking someone external to do that; we noticed this was an up-and-coming area for us to build something in-house,” Mr. Krikke concluded.  

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