Fueling Your Oil Company with an MSP
No industry forms the backbone of America like the oil and fuel sector. Without it, our vehicles wouldn’t function, millions of homes would be without heat, and the entire country would grind to a halt.
Running an oil company isn’t easy. There are constant price fluctuations, on-site exploratory operations, massive amounts of data to manage, an extreme need for security, and strict compliance regulations.
Your oil company already has enough on its plate. The last thing you need is to get bogged down by technical issues – and that’s where a managed service provider (MSP) comes in.
In this post, we’ll show how an MSP can support your oil company, whether upstream, midstream, or downstream.
How MSPs Help Oil Companies
Oil companies are a lot more than just office work. They span field operations, pipelines, refining, and delivery. It’s a lot to manage, but here’s how an MSP can help.
Complexity Made Simple
A good MSP can help ease the complexity of your oil company, providing small businesses with tools to streamline and boost their efficiency. Here are a few examples:
- Real-time data analyses: Especially useful for upstream work, an MSP can set up IT systems that monitor your equipment, environmental conditions, and production levels in real time. That means having accurate information at your fingertips – a must-have for the constantly changing oil industry.
- Asset management: An MSP can help manage and monitor all of your connected devices, both in the office and out. They’ll make sure nothing goes unused or unmonitored while handling all the critical software updates and maintenance.
- Remote operation: Whether it’s controlling pumps in the field, adjusting flow at a pipeline station, or securing a satellite network, an MSP can provide your oil company with remote tools to keep operations running anytime, anywhere.
- SCADA System support: SCADA systems are critical for monitoring and controlling equipment in oil and gas operations. A skilled MSP will know how to maintain, secure, and optimize these systems so your field operations run at their absolute best.
Cloud, Analytics, and Cost Savings
Your oil company generates an immense amount of data. From sensor readings, exploration reports, production logs, pricing, and logistics, understanding it all can be overwhelming. An MSP can make sense of the noise by installing analytics tools and processes that can sort and organize your data – some MSPs are even starting to use AI models for predictive analytics to assist in making this process even faster and more accurate than ever before.
They can also establish your company’s cloud environment through Microsoft Azure or similar platforms to provide a scalable, easy-to-access location for all of your data, which can save on hardware and upkeep costs.
Compliance Relief
Compliance is a massive deal in an industry as complex and dangerous as oil and gas. Regulations cover environmental standards like the OSPAR Convention and the Clean Air Act, health and safety frameworks such as HSE and OSHA, ISO 45001, and equipment and quality standards like ATEX, IECEx, and ISO 9001.
MSPs are the masters of compliance, as their tools naturally help track, document, and organize compliance data, while staying on top of regulatory changes so your business can be ready for the next audit without fear of violation fees.
Boosted Security
From exploration findings to production data and customer information, there’s a lot for your oil company to protect – anti-virus alone isn’t going to cut it.
An MSP can outfit your oil company with robust cybersecurity measures, layering encrypted network security, multifactor authentication, software security, and more. They can also train your team to recognize and avoid cyber threats through cyber awareness training.
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
In an industry that faces extreme weather, power failures, hardware issues, and cyberattacks, there is a lot that can halt operations. For example, the offshore oil sector experiences, on average, 27 days of unplanned downtime annually, costing around $38 million.
MSPs can create robust backup systems and disaster recovery plans to keep your businesses running when things go south, while making sure your critical data can be recovered.
Scalability and Standardization Across Sites
Oil companies often operate across multiple sites. An MSP can help establish a standardized system for your tech across each location, from how your data is managed and stored, to what computers and hardware you’re using, to the security systems put in place. This standardization makes scaling and communication far smoother.
The 20 MSP Difference
Not every MSP has oil industry expertise. But The 20 MSP does.
We have extensive experience supporting upstream, midstream, downstream, independent, integrated, O&G consultancies, project management engineering firms, compliance agencies – there isn’t a single area of the oil and gas industry we’re not familiar with.
We also have experience with critical oil company software, management, and integration for eMaint, iWell, ProntoForms, GreaseBook, NeoFirma, FieldCap, Kordata, SherWare, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, and more.
So if you’re looking for an MSP to support your oil company, let’s talk.
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About The 20 MSP
As a leading provider of managed IT services, The 20 MSP serves thousands of businesses nationwide, including single and multi-location organizations, delivering white-glove service, secure and streamlined IT infrastructure, and 24/7/365 support. We believe in building lasting relationships with clients founded on trust, communication, and the delivery of high-value services for a fair and predictable price. Our clients’ success is our success, and we are committed to helping each and every organization we serve leverage technology to secure a competitive advantage and achieve new growth.
