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Oil and gas automation runs on royalty accounting as much as process control. Dustin Symes explains how that shapes every SCADA decision JPI Solutions makes.
Canadian oil and gas is structured differently than most assume. In the US mineral rights usually sit with individuals, so custody transfer draws a hard line between upstream and midstream. In Canada the provinces hold most rights, so a producer can gather 100 wells into one plant and sell to a pipeline company there. That lands on the automation: much of the SCADA data collection exists to answer who is paying whom and how much royalty is owed. Once a well is drilled, automation might find 5 to 10 percent off nameplate, so the work protects a long production tail rather than chasing throughput.
Mining behaves nothing like it. Thinner margins, $100 million capital projects, an hour long elevator ride down, underground space running 20 miles across. Those are small cities: control systems cover substations, air monitoring and lighting as well as conveyors and pumps. Mining clients want programmers on site rather than remote, and they buy for continuity: a major vendor PLC paired with their DCS, meant to last 20 years. Horizontal drilling has rescaled oil and gas, from one well and a dozen sensors to a 32 well pad carrying 300 IO, pushing designs toward redundant PLCs and ring networks. The genuinely new technology lands on the data layer, where MQTT and report by exception are displacing polled Modbus.
Dustin set two gates before his first hire: enough cash banked to make that person whole for a month or two, and enough overload to have work worth delegating. He hired out of the instrumentation program at SAIT rather than a 15 year instrument mechanic. When he weighed taking on partners, dozens of people advised against it. He brought in Dan and Brent Lawther anyway in 2018, went from five people that spring to ten by the fall, and says JPI would not exist without them.
His hardest won lesson is unglamorous. Communication is the only consistent complaint he has ever had from a customer. Nobody complains about the code. They complain that nobody told them it was finished. On AI, JPI is decompiling Rockwell files into shutdown keys and landing 85 to 90 percent of the way there on a good prompt, and running log analysis across FactoryTalk directory, HMI and historian logs to find real root causes. He expects PLC code to become text so it can be version controlled like software, and customers to treat that as baseline within five years.
About Dustin Symes
Dustin Symes is Chief Technology Officer at JPI Solutions, a Calgary based systems integrator serving oil and gas and mining clients across North America from four offices in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. A Red Seal journeyman electrician who moved into automation, he founded JPI in 2017. JPI covers process control from the sensor to the HMI, then up into SCADA and corporate data.
https://www.jpisolutions.ca
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
5:50 Why he started JPI Solutions
10:50 Oil and gas primer: upstream, midstream, downstream
12:50 What makes mining automation different
16:10 Where JPI sits in the automation stack
28:30 Bigger well pads, redundant PLCs and MQTT
41:20 Bringing on partners when nobody recommended it
51:10 Communication as the only consistent complaint
1:04:40 The future of integration, AI and knowledge graphs
References
Radical Candor by Kim Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012
ThredCloud: https://www.thredcloud.com
About Your Hosts
Vladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.
Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/
Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:
System Integrators: https://www.joltek.com/blog/system-integrators
PLC Scan Cycles and SCADA Polling: https://www.joltek.com/blog/plc-scan-cycles-polling-scada-systems-data
Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.
Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/
Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-network
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
Canadian oil and gas is structured differently than most assume. In the US mineral rights usually sit with individuals, so custody transfer draws a hard line between upstream and midstream. In Canada the provinces hold most rights, so a producer can gather 100 wells into one plant and sell to a pipeline company there. That lands on the automation: much of the SCADA data collection exists to answer who is paying whom and how much royalty is owed. Once a well is drilled, automation might find 5 to 10 percent off nameplate, so the work protects a long production tail rather than chasing throughput.
Mining behaves nothing like it. Thinner margins, $100 million capital projects, an hour long elevator ride down, underground space running 20 miles across. Those are small cities: control systems cover substations, air monitoring and lighting as well as conveyors and pumps. Mining clients want programmers on site rather than remote, and they buy for continuity: a major vendor PLC paired with their DCS, meant to last 20 years. Horizontal drilling has rescaled oil and gas, from one well and a dozen sensors to a 32 well pad carrying 300 IO, pushing designs toward redundant PLCs and ring networks. The genuinely new technology lands on the data layer, where MQTT and report by exception are displacing polled Modbus.
Dustin set two gates before his first hire: enough cash banked to make that person whole for a month or two, and enough overload to have work worth delegating. He hired out of the instrumentation program at SAIT rather than a 15 year instrument mechanic. When he weighed taking on partners, dozens of people advised against it. He brought in Dan and Brent Lawther anyway in 2018, went from five people that spring to ten by the fall, and says JPI would not exist without them.
His hardest won lesson is unglamorous. Communication is the only consistent complaint he has ever had from a customer. Nobody complains about the code. They complain that nobody told them it was finished. On AI, JPI is decompiling Rockwell files into shutdown keys and landing 85 to 90 percent of the way there on a good prompt, and running log analysis across FactoryTalk directory, HMI and historian logs to find real root causes. He expects PLC code to become text so it can be version controlled like software, and customers to treat that as baseline within five years.
About Dustin Symes
Dustin Symes is Chief Technology Officer at JPI Solutions, a Calgary based systems integrator serving oil and gas and mining clients across North America from four offices in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. A Red Seal journeyman electrician who moved into automation, he founded JPI in 2017. JPI covers process control from the sensor to the HMI, then up into SCADA and corporate data.
https://www.jpisolutions.ca
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
5:50 Why he started JPI Solutions
10:50 Oil and gas primer: upstream, midstream, downstream
12:50 What makes mining automation different
16:10 Where JPI sits in the automation stack
28:30 Bigger well pads, redundant PLCs and MQTT
41:20 Bringing on partners when nobody recommended it
51:10 Communication as the only consistent complaint
1:04:40 The future of integration, AI and knowledge graphs
References
Radical Candor by Kim Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012
ThredCloud: https://www.thredcloud.com
About Your Hosts
Vladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.
Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/
Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:
System Integrators: https://www.joltek.com/blog/system-integrators
PLC Scan Cycles and SCADA Polling: https://www.joltek.com/blog/plc-scan-cycles-polling-scada-systems-data
Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.
Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/
Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-network
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub
Creators and Guests
What is Manufacturing Hub?
We bring you manufacturing news, insights, discuss opportunities, and cutting edge technologies. Our goal is to inform, educate, and inspire leaders and workers in manufacturing, automation, and related fields.