October 2019
Company Spotlight
SitePro
For this Company Spotlight, we interviewed SitePro Co-Founder and Co-CEO, David Bateman, about how they are making the upstream oil and gas industry more efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly. SitePro provides a digital automation solution to “sites” across the oil and gas industry, including saltwater disposal wells, produced water pipelines, and production facilities. For more information on SitePro, please visit www.sitepro.com.
Background: Upon visiting a West Texas wellsite in 2011, SitePro Co-Founders, David Bateman and Aaron Phillips, were shocked to see several archaic processes taking place (e.g. paper field ticketing, manual equipment monitoring, and underpowered control equipment). They knew that by leveraging automation and software, they could create a solution that would greatly improve on-site operations in the oilfield and started developing the SitePro platform. Approximately one year later, SitePro landed its first customer, an owner of a portfolio of saltwater disposal wells (SWDs) in Texas.
Value Proposition: Once fully implemented across a customer’s organization, David mentioned three ways SitePro enhances operations compared to conventional methods:
Increases Control/Monitoring Capabilities: SitePro utilizes rugged industrial PCs (IPCs) instead of programmable logic controllers (PLCs). IPCs contain chip-based processors that can monitor numerous variables and make complex decisions on how to control equipment to attain the desired results whereas PLCs rely on ladder-logic functions that limit what can be automated.
Decreases Personnel Requirements: Traditionally, each site requires at least one pumper/operator to oversee the operations. However, the deployment of IPCs has enabled SitePro customers to significantly increase the number of sites each pumper/operator can manage. Furthermore, SitePro offers a subscription-based, fully managed solution through its Remote Operations Center (ROC) where a dedicated team provides 24/7 remote monitoring and troubleshooting, which has decreased customers’ personnel costs by 60-80%.
Minimizes Human Error: SitePro’s platform also automates the ticketing and regulatory filing functions of customer sites by using equipment and software to measure/record transactions and volumes that would otherwise be entered in manually.
Impediments to Industry Adoption: While SitePro has been successful deploying its solution on over 400 customer locations (i.e. SWDs, produced water pipelines, oil and gas production facilities, etc.), the oil and gas industry is known as a notoriously slow adopter of new technology. This is especially applicable to anything that is not the “tried and true” way of managing production facilities and sites downstream of that production, as those in charge of managing production facilities are asymmetrically incentivized. They get minimally rewarded if they find ways to increase production or decrease lease operating expenses but could lose their job if the reverse occurs. SitePro has been able to break through this psychological wall by finding the early adopters and using network effects of actual customer results to “cross the chasm”.
Closing Thoughts: Today, SitePro has over 130 employees with customers across the country. With plans to grow its offering to include predictive analytics and business intelligence products, we are excited to see how data analytics and artificial intelligence will continue to change how this industry operates.