Oil Field Safety Now Being Aided by Intelligent Video Surveillance Systems

Managing safety and protecting workers in the oil and gas industry, especially given the rugged environment of the Eagleford Shale territory, has always been a challenge. Understanding a safety issue in real-time, as it is happening, is critical in creating a safe environment for the men and women who work in this vast – and dangerous – part of the country.

A breakthrough technology being deployed for some of the most active oil and gas companies in South Texas is the use of Smart Cameras. The high tech video systems are solar powered, and use a private cellular network canopy that has been deployed over the vast majority of the Eagleford area. Using special analytics, the cameras can be installed anywhere, and do not require power or Internet connection. Using the camera’s analytics, it is “taught” to only detect what its told to, such as truck traffic into leases, over bridges, into tank fields, pad sites, etc. This new technology extends the reach of O&G field managers by allowing them to “see” multiple locations at once and detect any safety issues which might be happening.

Ignoring everything except the presence of human or vehicular traffic, the Smart Camera – upon detecting a vehicle entering the detection zone – records a video clip of the event and instantly transmits it to the cloud-based system provided by Security Technology of South Texas, Inc. and then the video event is sent to the end-user’s smart phone, tablet or PC.

Marketing this technology as “Camera Anywhere”, Security Technology can deploy the system to a site within one day and be tracking and sending video notifications from the site that same day. And because the system is completely self-contained, it can be relocated to other sites should the need arise. Some of the critical areas O&G companies that currently use this system to cover are:

– Entrances to leases (it can even incorporate a keypad and electrically control a gate while sending video clips)
– Pad Sites (employee can see what is happening at the pad site before arrival. Also, by doing remote video tours of multiple sites, cut down on travel for routine inspections)
– Tank Fields and SWD (be alerted to vehicle traffic as they pull oil and help mitigate oil theft)
– Monitor traffic on critical areas inside of lease, i.e. one lane bridges and other areas where traffic safety is a concern