Field Engineers will soon be obsolete. Already Slb are moving to running wireline jobs with the Engineer sitting in an office on the other side of the world and operators only in the wireline unit. Luckily I retired before all of this started but Ive had long conversations with several fellow Geologists still in the game and they all agree its a bad move. On one recent remotely run job the wireline crew at the rig had to shut down the operation as the communication link with the Remote Engineer went down. The rig sat for 2 hours doing nothing while Slb worked on their malfunctioning coms modem. On another job the Operator was having major issues doing his job as it was his first time running open hole tools resulting in significant lost time.
My main concern with running an open hole job using a Remote Engineer is the wireline crews ability to react in timely fashion to the first indications of a tool about to become stuck in the hole. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive had my Field Engineer leap to of his chair and react immediately to a blip on the tension display or a shudder of the winch. Good FEs are in tune to the sounds and vibrations that go on during a logging job and some seem to have a sixth sense that allows them to be in touch with whats going on down hole .
I can't see a Remote Engineer sitting in an office running multiple wireline jobs at the same time can react quickly to the early indications of hole problems and potentially a stuck/lost tool string.
IVZ Price at posting:
13.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
