How to Get Quick Wins with Oil and Gas Equipment Tracking Rastrac Team | Sep 27, 2018 4:04:02 PM

The oil and gas industry faces some severe challenges when it comes to finding new opportunities for revenue growth. As noted in the Deloitte 2018 Oil and Gas Industry Outlook, “the oil market is still challenged by high stocks and sluggish prices.” This can make it difficult to grow an oil and gas business in the current market.

However, there are some things that you can do to create some quick wins for your oil and gas business—such as using GPS tracking for your oil and gas equipment. How does GPS for oil help you generate quick wins for your business?

Here are a few ways that oil and gas equipment monitoring can help your business:

Reducing Oil and Gas Inventory Losses

In any industry, the theft of products and equipment is a major concern—and the oil and gas industry is no exception. While the theft of oil barrels and other oil and gas equipment isn’t nearly as prevalent in the U.S. as it is in some other countries, each theft that does occur hurts. Not only does the loss of equipment mean having to pay to replace them, such thefts also can mean missing service obligations to important clients as deliveries are delayed or deadlines are rendered impossible to meet.

Applying oil equipment tracking solutions can help oil and gas companies massively reduce the occurrence of theft—or even catch the thieves by giving their GPS tracking data to the authorities. For example, placing a small, portable, solar-powered GPS tracker such as the SX1 on an oil/gas trailer can help you locate that trailer if it is ever stolen. And, because this unit is solar-powered, there is no need to worry about it running out of battery power.

Because GPS tracking helps to speed along the recovery of stolen assets, you increase your chances of recovering lost or stolen product and equipment before they get used up or destroyed.

Optimizing Shipping with GPS for Oil

Distribution of product is a major challenge for the oil and gas industry. When sending out large shipments of crude oil or refined gasoline products, it’s important to ensure that:

• Drivers adhere to optimal travel schedules;
• Hours of Service (HOS) regulations are followed;
• Drivers follow local traffic laws and safety guidelines; and
• Fuel theft doesn’t occur.

Adding oil and gas equipment tracking GPS to your fleet of distribution vehicles can help you meet all of these goals. For example, with a GPS tracking history for each of your oil trucks/trailers, you can see when each truck started and stopped moving, where they went, what their maximum travel speeds were, and confirm their reported fuel consumption versus the average consumption amount that would be expected based on their GPS data.

This can help you reduce shipping costs and avoid delays from irresponsible use of your oil and gas fleet vehicles. It also helps to protect your company’s reputation by allowing you to enforce safe driving rules across your vehicle fleet (thus preventing headline-making accidents).

Reducing Oil and Gas Equipment Maintenance Costs

Oil and gas equipment tracking GPS can help you optimize your preventative maintenance scheduling for your heavy equipment and vehicle fleet. This, in turn, helps you minimize your maintenance costs while maximizing the useful life of your oil and gas equipment assets.

How?

With the right GPS tracking solution, you can collect key data about your oil and gas equipment, including:

• Equipment diagnostics data (engine RPMs, temperature, etc.);
• Activation times and total time active;
• Flow rates (for applicable equipment); and
• Distance traveled (for mobile equipment/vehicles)
• Driver behaviors (for vehicles).

This information can be essential for scheduling preventative maintenance that fixes small problems before they can become larger, more expensive ones. For example, by tracking miles driven for oil trucks, it is possible to estimate when the truck and its trailer will need an alignment—reducing strain on the vehicle’s wheels and reducing the risk of an accident or tire blowout on the road.

Total active engine time could be used to schedule coolant and oil changes so they take place as they’re needed—not so early that money is wasted, and not so late that engine damage is risked. By improving the timing of preventative maintenance, it’s possible to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for oil and gas equipment by prolonging its useful life and minimizing wasted parts and labor for maintenance.

Another benefit of using preventative maintenance paired with GPS equipment tracking is that it helps your equipment avoid sudden, catastrophic failures when in use—thereby improving equipment safety. For example, by preventing tire blowouts by performing regular wheel alignments and replacing tires before they become too worn, you can reduce the risk of your oil tanker/trailers getting into major accidents.

Need help setting up equipment tracking GPS for oil? Contact the experts at Rastrac for advice about which types of GPS trackers and software solutions are the best for supporting your goals as an oil and gas company. Or, download our Oil and Gas Feature Sheet at the link below.