Finalist Spotlight: Safe Influx Limited
March 2020
We spoke to Co-Founder and Managing Director, Bryan Atchison at Safe Influx, about how it would feel to take home the Emerging Technology award trophy on the 19th of March.
Technologies are transforming different industries, reflecting on workforce development, productivity and safety.
“Many high risk domains in aviation, nuclear and rail signalling, for instance, have successfully introduced automation to provide a better managed outcome to lower the risk and produce more consistent and efficient results.
“As in other industries, we believe that the advent of automation in the area of well control in the Oil & Gas industry enables an increasingly larger number of operations to be controlled in a safe, consistent and effective manner, substantially reducing the risk and cost of well control events.
“Within well operations there is significant complexity to the variety and types of operations that can be conducted and automation enables a range of potential value-adding features to be added. To date Safe Influx has identified over 50 additional modules that can be implemented using the same Automated Well Control technology to cover every facet of the well construction and decommissioning operations. So we believe in the potential of automation to lead to a safer future in the Oil and Gas industry, with a massive emphasis on saving lives.”
In the Oil & Gas industry, well control is a Safety Critical process that requires a high cognitive workload on an individual job position.
“It has been proven that Human Factors play a major part in incidents. Given the complexity of the required tasks and the ever-increasing demands on our drillers, it is understandable that up to 67% of blowouts are caused by Human Factors issues, according to studies and reports.
“Automation can dramatically reduce the risk of major accident hazards in well construction by almost eliminating the Human Factor elements that create most of the issues resulting in blowouts. The Automated Well Control technology is a tool for the driller, enabling him/her to perform tasks in more reliable and efficient ways. Automation has a potential to enhance real-time decision-making in critical well control situations, thereby reducing the risks, saving millions of dollars per well, reducing environmental impact and preventing loss of life.”
The risks of well control have been a challenge to the Oil & Gas industry.
“By far the greatest risk is that of managing the Human Factor elements. Our Automated Well Control technology eliminates that risk and save lives; and saving lives is something we feel passionately about.
“It is wonderful that SPE recognises this significant contribution to the industry by nominating Safe Influx for the Offshore Achievement Awards in the Emerging Technology category. Winning this award would represent a significant milestone for Safe Influx and a recognition for the hard work and effort that the team is putting into the company, and underlines our view that Safe Influx technology can dramatically improve our industry.”
To book your table at the SPE Aberdeen Offshore Achievement Awards, sponsored by TAQA, visit our tickets section. The black tie ceremony will take place on Thursday 19 March 2020 at P&J Live, Aberdeen.
Sponsorship opportunities are still available. Contact us for more information:
- HSE Innovation Award
- Great Company (Large) Award
