Finland Times

Photo taken from ont.oulu.com website.

BusinessOulu sees a lot of opportunities for Oulu-based ICT companies to offer advanced radio technology for the oil and gas industry.

 

Specially, the recent expansion of North American shale gas and oil mining using hydraulic fracturing has augmented the demand for more accurate pressure and seismic measurement in wells.

 

BusinessOulu has already developed a collaborative project with Alberta Innovates that now the offers the ICT companies an opportunity to meet their Canadian colleagues in Alberta.

 

Four companies are participating in the first trip. They include Navicron, Creowave and Haltian who will get a first-hand opportunity to sell their services to the oil and gas industry and the constantly increasing service industry surrounding it.

 

The location itself is good news for the Finns: vast areas of sparsely populated land offering excellent opportunities in terms of Finnish ICT knowhow, especially in wireless, mobile end devices and sensory technologies.

 

Creowave, one of the companies participating in the Alberta trip, specializes in the oil and gas industry. It builds sensory equipment for deep sea, offshore and land drilling, including the technology necessary for transporting measurement data safely wherever the client wants it.

 

“Some of the gas fields are in places where people don’t want to spend time. If the field contains H2S, it’s noxious when you smell it, poisonous when you don’t and heavier than air, which means, if someone loses consciousness because of the gas, they’re only going to fall down in a denser cloud of it. So, energy-consciousness, automatization and the guarantee of long-term functioning is essential,” said the company CEO Jyrki Koski.

 

But that’s only the beginning. Koski explains that not only is their equipment extremely easy to set up, meaning less personnel required and savings for the drilling company, it has to be extremely durable. The pressure in the pipe can be over 700 bars, which means the measurement device attached to the valve has to endure it for a long time – 30 years is not out of the ordinary.

And this is one of Creowave’s fortes.

 

“We haven’t had a malfunctioning unit in 10 years. Of course, this means that we’re constantly fighting the statistics, but so far so good – we’re the best of the best in that area, and we intend to stay that way,” said Koski.

 

With hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas industry expects a 50 per cent increase in exploiting the already established fuel beds. With the size of Alberta’s oil and gas deposits, there’s plenty of work to be done.

 

The companies to visit the area are presenting their top-level expertise within mobile networks, wireless technologies and efficiency in designing complete client solutions both in hardware and software, making the progress in the industry and the services surrounding it easier, better automated and more cost-efficient.

 

With the track record these companies possess and with BusinessOulu’s continuing effort to further enhance the ICT sector in Oulu, the story won’t end there. According to Koski, “Although we expect good results with the drilling companies alone, it is important to make new connections from the service industry focused on the fuel industries. BusinessOulu has done a fantastic job in presenting opportunities to expand our business.”