Russia's Gazprom Neft To Pilot Human-Less Onshore Oil Drilling In 2025

Russian state oil company Gazprom Neft is putting together a project of onshore crude extraction without human participation, to be piloted in 2025, a company representative said at the Russian-hosted Tyumen Oil and Gas Forum on Monday

TYUMEN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd September, 2020) Russian state oil company Gazprom Neft is putting together a project of onshore crude extraction without human participation, to be piloted in 2025, a company representative said at the Russian-hosted Tyumen Oil and Gas Forum on Monday.

The Oil and Gas Forum in the Siberian city of Tyumen marks its 9th edition this year. The forum began on Tuesday to run through Thursday.

"Beginning from 2023, we will be implementing pilot projects. In 2025, we will have the first such human-less asset. A sparsely populated field, one might say. We talk onshore," the representative said.

The automation of drilling will not lead to job cuts, according to the representative.

Instead, workers currently employed on drilling will be re-appointed to positions intending more complex intellectual labor.

"We are moving away from linear personnel who work directly on field equipment. These people will be moved to the remote production control centers," the representative said.

The company expects that such reorganization of work will reduce operational and capital costs of production by accelerating output on remote fields in additional to making work safer and getting rid of outdated operations. The expectation is that it will decrease labor input by up to 76 percent, of which around 50 percent will be due to digitization.