In one of the stupidest moves outside of the U.S. gooberment lately, British Petroleum (BP) has connected 650 of its oil wells to the “Industrial Internet.” The same BP that spilled 4.9 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, now plans to connect 4000 oil rigs around the world to the Internet, via the Internet of Things.
An article at FierceBigData says that by connecting its wells to the Internet of Things (IoT), BP engineers will gain real-time access to common machine and operational data sets. The aim is to use the data to make better decisions, improve efficiency, prevent failures and reduce costly downtime.
Kate Johnson, General Electric (GE) Intelligent Platforms Software CEO and GE Chief Commercial Officer who is running the project for British Petroleum said in a statement to the press.
… our strategy is simple: Get Connected. Get Insights. Get Optimized. By connecting BP’s oil wells around the world, we’re giving them access to better insights that can ultimately drive new efficiencies in their oil fields and increase oil production.
Apparently, GE’s software will allow BP to capture, store, contextualize and visualize data in real-time.
The author clarifies that “Industrial Internet” is a term GE dubbed for Internet, there are just more things connecting to it. And many of the same problems will grow as a result, namely security issues and data breaches galore. Here’s hoping BP and GE are careful to build security in from the ground up and not an add-ons afterthought. Hopefully, there were lessons learned from the Internet’s earlier days.
rb-
The latest IoT insecurity is that Chrysler cars with U-Connect can be cyber-tagged from miles away. I have covered IoT insecurity issues for a while here, here, and here. With all of that in mind..…
Like the author says, hopefully, GE gets it right, because BP’s track record is abysmal. IF they don’t get it right, economic terrorists could use flaws in the IoT to cut off oil production from these wells to drive up the cost of oil from other wells in the middle-east. Ecological terrorists could use these same flaws to blow up oil rigs like what happened at Deep Water Horizon in 2010 and contaminate all the Gull of Mexico or the Alaska North Slope or Africa or Saudi Arabia. What would happen if they were able to blow up all 4,000 wells due to weaknesses in the IoT stack?
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- BP to pay $18.7 billion for 2010 oil spill (cinewsnow.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.