How Outdated Automation Systems Become Expensive Overhauls When Operators Wait Too Long
Most oilfield operators don’t plan to run outdated industrial automation and control systems. It happens the same way every time. One component gets patched. A workaround gets added. A firmware update gets skipped because the timing isn’t right. Three years later, what should have been a routine upgrade has become a project no one budgeted for.
David Thompson has been an Automation Manager at DSI for 19 years. He’s seen what happens when operators keep pushing the decision down the road.
“Oh, this has been working for 20 years. What can we do to update this now? And so then it becomes a very expensive one-time process.” — David Thompson, Automation Manager, DSI
The logic behind deferring feels sound. The system is producing. The drilling program can’t stop. This quarter isn’t the right time. But deferring doesn’t freeze the clock. It lets the gap between where your systems are and where they need to be keep growing.
When “Still Running” Becomes the Most Expensive Decision You Made
An automation system that’s running isn’t the same as an automation system that’s ready for what comes next.
Control systems built 10 to 15 years ago used serial communications as their standard. Modern equipment speaks Ethernet. Those two protocols don’t communicate without a bridge, and that bridge adds cost, complexity, and another failure point to your infrastructure.
When a new piece of equipment needs to come online, the assumption is that it integrates into what’s already there. In practice, the new equipment doesn’t speak the same language as the old system. Bridging them requires upgrading the communication layer. Upgrading the communication layer means touching the PLC. The PLC version needs a firmware update to support the new layer. That firmware update isn’t compatible with the HMI software version running on the operator terminals.
One addition. Four systems touched. A line item became a capital project.
That’s the chain-reaction problem that aging process automation oilfield systems create. And every year the upgrade gets deferred, the chain gets longer. It’s also why poor automation integration increases operational risk in ways that don’t always show up immediately.
What Deferred Upgrades Actually Cost
There are two costs. The project cost, and the production cost. Operators usually see the first one. The second one tends to go unnoticed until someone adds it up. For a baseline on what oilfield automation should actually deliver, see what modern process automation should deliver in oil and gas.
DSI tracks uptime across the operations it works on. Sites where automation and PLC systems have been patched together over years without a coordinated upgrade typically see effective uptime around 70% or lower. After a well-planned integration project, those same sites run at 90% or better.
That 20-point gap shows up as false alarms that send trucks out for no reason. Process trips caused by sensors drifting for months without anyone catching it. Hours a crew spends troubleshooting a system nobody ever properly documented because the person who built it retired four years ago.
Automation solutions for oil and gas work best when they’re designed as a system. Not assembled over time from whatever was available at the time. For a closer look at what that means at scale, see why non-standard automation breaks down in multi-well operations.
The Knowledge Problem That Makes Aging Automation and Control Systems Worse
The engineers and controls technicians who built the systems running on most oilfield sites today are, in a lot of cases, gone. The engineers and controls technicians who built the systems running on most oilfield sites today are, in a lot of cases, gone. Retired, moved to a different operator, or aged out of field work. The institutional knowledge they carried didn’t transfer with them.
What’s left is equipment that still runs, and a shorter list of people who understand why it was built the way it was.
Thompson sees the pattern across the industry. The hands-on experience that used to exist inside operator organizations is thinning out at exactly the wrong time. Systems are getting more complex. The people who understand both the old layer and the new one are increasingly rare.
“The experience is leaving. And if you don’t have people who understand the old systems and the new ones, you end up calling in whoever you can find, and that’s when you get Band-Aid solutions instead of real fixes.” — David Thompson, Automation Manager, DSI.
Every Band-Aid fix makes the next one harder. Every undocumented workaround is institutional knowledge that lives in one person’s head. When that person isn’t available, troubleshooting starts from scratch.
What a Planned Industrial Automation and Control Systems Upgrade Looks Like
The difference between a planned upgrade and a crisis overhaul isn’t always how much work is involved. It’s whether the operator is driving the timeline or the equipment is.
A planned upgrade starts with a clear picture of what’s actually in the field: hardware near end-of-life, protocols that will limit future integrations, and components manufacturers no longer actively support. That inventory makes it possible to build a sequenced plan: address the highest-risk systems first, phase upgrades around production schedules, and design each change so it supports the one that follows it.
DSI’s approach to industrial automation and control systems uses the Allen-Bradley and Studio 5000 stack as a standard across projects. That means one DSI integrator who knows the system can often solve in a single visit what three contractors, each owning a separate piece, couldn’t resolve across multiple trips.
“You’d have one company doing the electrical, one doing the PLC work, one handling the instrumentation. And none of them fully understood what the other had done. We can do all of that in one scope, with one team that has context across the whole system.” — David Thompson, Automation Manager, DSI.
The Right Time to Start Is Before You Have To
If your current industrial automation and control systems are more than 10 years old, run on serial communications, or include components that manufacturers no longer support, those are worth looking at now. Not because the system is failing today. Because a planned conversation costs a fraction of a forced overhaul.
Contact DSI to talk through your automation infrastructure before the timeline is set by something else: relyondsi.com/contact