Energy  

The oil and gas industry has made considerable advancements in safety and drilling that has allowed them to continue to prosper even among some of the stiffest competition in the world.

Have you ever wondered with all the new technology nowadays if it has ever reached other industries in the world? Well, believe it or not, the oil and gas industry has made some very exciting advancements in safety and drilling that has allowed them to continue to prosper even among some of the stiffest competition in the world.

How It Is Drilled

One of the most important technological advances that has helped the oil industry is the way in which the oil is actually extracted. New technologies in drilling techniques and equipment have helped to discover oil production amounts that double or triple that of older drilling techniques. The new modern horizontal drilling technique and advances in fracking practices have allowed oil workers to be more precise in their drilling techniques. They are able to make real-time adjustments in maneuvering the equipment so that they can reach the most effective and resource rich areas for drilling.

Related articles David Wood on the Lead Up to the Singularity  McKinsey & Company Report on 12 Disruptive Technologies Released  DARPA's Strategy For the Coming Years

Quality of the Pipe

Companies like Trailhead Engineering, LLC are continually making their equipment safer and keeping their employees up-to-date as new technologies arise although it can be costly. Preventing accidents is better than having to deal with the cost of cleanup later and shutting down the pipeline. One of the ways oil companies are making their environments safer is with the piping itself. Reinforcing the piping and testing it to make sure it withstands the external pressures is a way to ensure safer practices.

Use of Robots

Incredibly, the uses of robots or ROV's as they call them, are used now in deep-water oil drilling. The most difficult work is now being done by the robots and not humans, thus keeping them out of harm’s way. Many times, there are more than a dozen ROV's being used at once on an oil rig, which supports the human effort of extracting oil. They also have been the key in saving oil rigs from potential disasters as well as being available in the case of an emergency to help shut pipes down when disaster strikes.

Even with oil prices dropping, we are in a time when energy needs are at its highest, and oil companies are keeping up with the demand. These new technologies have allowed them to access more oil in a shorter amount of time as well as improve their drilling techniques to make it safer for workers to drill and work in a safer environment. Oil drilling will always be a very dangerous job, but thanks to technology, there are fewer deaths and accidents each year.

By Meghan Belnap

Embed

 Futurism  

Futurist Vivek Wadhwa predicts change "at a scale which is unimaginable before," thanks to advances in technologies like robotics and 3D printing. "New trillion dollar industries will wipe out out existing trillion dollar industries," he says. "This is the future we’re headed into, for better or for worse."

According to technology expert Vivek Wadhwa, "One of the things that has begun to worry me is the fact that I'm seeing change happening at a scale which is unimaginable before and that it's impacting industry after industry after industry."

"Every industry I've looked at I've seen a trend of major disruption happening," says Wadhwa in a new piece for Big Think.

Wadhwa is a fellow at Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, director of research at Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke, and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University.

 Wadhwa tells how manufacturing will be dramatically changed due to robotics and 3D printing. "As of this year, it is cheaper to manufacture in the United States than it is in China, he says.

Robots, like Rethink Robotics' Baxter have become very sophisticated with a cost of operation is less than the cost of human labor. "Give it five years and these robots will become ever more sophisticated. They'll be doing many, many more jobs, which means that the manufacturing industry is going to be disrupted in a very big way," says Wadhwa.

Related articles Nanoparticle Solar Cells May Drive Down Price of Solar Cells  Japan Planning To Harvest Solar Energy from Space  Elon Musk Discusses His Numerous Ventures

By the end of the decade you're going to see major upheaval in manufacturing, opportunities and problems. Wadhwa also goes on to say that the robotics revolution will be as short-lived as it is disruptive. Within 15 to 20 years we'll be able to 3D print electronics, he states. "Move into the next decade, these robots will probably go on strike because we won't need them anymore."

Wadhwa also talks about the impact of technology on the financial services industry, from Bitcoin to crowd funding. "We may not need the banks anymore. We may not need financial institutions the way we do right now," he says.

One of the biggest changes will be in the field of healthcare.  He talks of how Apple is focused on health and medicine. "They want all of this data being uploaded to the Apple platform. Do you think Google will be left behind? Do you think Microsoft will be left behind? Do you think Samsung will be left behind?" asks Wadhwa.

In healthcare the impacts will be truly profound, especially with near zero-cost genomic data. "We will have AI based physicians that can advise us when we're about to get sick, that can advise us on what we need to do to get healthy."

"We're going to now upend the entire healthcare system the way we know it all in the next five to ten years. People don't seem to understand this."

"The cost of human genome sequencing has dropped to $1000 over the last 15 years. At the rate at which we're going, the cost of sequencing will be practically zero, which means that we'll all have genomes done. Combine that with the medical sensor data, combine that with the data that we have in the cloud and you've got a healthcare revolution," says Wadhwa.

"We're going to now upend the entire healthcare system the way we know it all in the next five to ten years. People don't seem to understand this."

In energy other huge changes are already underway.  From the US adoption of fracking technolgy, to the rise of solar power. "Solar has dropped about 97.2 percent over the past 35 years in price. At the rate at which solar is advancing, by the end of this decade we achieve grid parity in the United States," claims Wadhwa. Grid parity means it's cheaper to produce energy at home on your solar cells then buy it from the grid.

"Move forward another ten years. It costs you 100th as much to produce your own energy then to buy it from the grid, which means that we have these grid companies now in serious trouble. This is why you have the utilities fighting solar."

The author of the new book, Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology, continues: "It's going to eclipse the fossil fuel industry. And solar is one of maybe a hundred technologies that are advancing, which will change energy industry."

"I can go on and on and on but every industry I look at I see a major disruption happening. So the world ten to 15 to 20 years from now is going to be completely different. We're going to be disrupting industry after industry after industry...This is the future we’re headed into, for better or for worse."


SOURCE  Big Think

By 33rd Square

Embed