Manufacturing and technology company Emerson South Africa (SA) is working with oil and gas companies to envision, plan and execute strategies to help them in their quest for digital oilfields.

“Oil and gas companies are becoming aware of the benefits of advanced information technology, automation and instrumentation technologies in making decisions faster and easier,” says Emerson SA GM Michael Eksteen.

He adds that oil and gas companies are aiming to include more collaboration in their organisations, whereby operations, maintenance and reliability are incorporated in an environment where field development teams work together and eliminate departmental silos.

Already working with mining companies to implement a solution that enables them to move to zero unplanned downtime and maximise production returns, Eksteen notes that by providing technology that ensures that each of the automation equipment is correct for application has assisted the company to support the oil and gas sector on its course.

Moreover, Emerson SA has been increasing its local capabilities by hiring more talented and skilled personnel to ensure that it provides industry with better solutions.

With Emerson SA also offering its services across Africa, Eksteen points out, it is important for the company to continuously improve its administrative, logistics, distribution, project management, engineering, training and life- cycle services to provide better solutions for the mining industry.

“Also, we have been strengthening our relationship with local business partners to further use local content and provide more responsive support for our customers that will be relevant to their operations,” he explains.

However, Eksteen states that workers in industry are ageing and there are fewer trained workers available to replace them, especially in South Africa, where more projects are being built.

Nevertheless, he indicates that with technology also being more economically accessible and more mining companies opting for digital solutions, fewer personnel are needed, which helps to mitigate the challenge of a lack of skills.

“We are seeing an increasing adoption of control and monitoring technologies to optimise process- critical operations and drive improvement in the areas of safety, reliability and energy efficiency. Owing to this, we are managing to service the industry with the technological knowledge we have,” Eksteen says.