You would think that the most valuable piece of equipment on an oil company’s rig is the drill, right? After all, a large chunk of an oil company’s budget goes into drilling investments. But, the modern drill is just as important and crucial to an offshore rig’s operation as the HD video camera attached to it.
  Here’s the cold, hard fact of this week’s OilComm show: The average bandwidth usage for an oil rig is around 2MB a second. Video allows companies to monitor operations as they happen on the drilling floor and is essential for land-based drilling managers to monitor numerous wells from one central location and to look for potential hitches and problems and steer teams on different rigs in the right direction.
   In the most recent issue of Via Satellite, Shell field telecommunications manager Don Happel said that real-time drilling is his company’s biggest use of video communications. "The drilling department has a big budget," he said. "They need to spend a lot on this service."
   The use of video conferencing between rigs, platforms, vessels and onshore headquarters also is growing for oil companies. This bandwidth for video isn’t only being used for business either.. The rate of growth for personal use via smart phones and tablets has created a massive demand for bandwidth on top of the business uses. Finding spare bandwidth in this industry is difficult enough, but determining the right type of bandwidth is an even more challenging task. This is what makes OilComm such a critical show for offshore communications experts.