It’s official. AFTI WatchDog® is North America’s leading solution for Virtual Wellsite Monitoring.
Over the past 10 years, WatchDog has evolved from a single-sensor, low-cost oil well monitoring system into a powerful and proven platform that provides oil producers with the ability to optimize routine wellsite visits.
Here’s the story of how we got here…
Back in 2012, we, Advanced Flow Technologies Inc. (AFTI) introduced WatchDog to the oil market.
In the beginning, WatchDog’s sole capability was monitoring the temperature of flowing oil. At that time, there was (and still is) a large industry addressing electronic well monitoring and control. Most solutions focus on monitoring and controlling higher-flow wells with sophisticated and expensive products. These sites represent the top 20% of the industry’s wells. At that time, no one had designed a product suitable for the other 80%, which generally required a physical visit by an operator to assess their condition. There are hundreds of thousands of wells in this category, representing millions of miles driven each year by operators.
Armed with this intelligence, AFTI identified our mission. We set out to create a new solution aimed at these mature, consistently producing wells.
Our lofty goal was to reduce or eliminate the requirement and associated cost for field personnel to visit each and every wellsite daily, which was the standard operating procedure across the entire industry at that time.
The Operators “Norm”
Physical inspection of oil wells was consuming 5-6 hours per day of a typical operator’s time. Each operator was assigned a group of approximately 40-60 wells to visit every day. Driving to check every well expended the majority of the operators’ time and effort, especially when only 1-2 wells per day actually needed attention. Operators faced competing demands: do the bare minimum to meet the target of visiting every site versus applying their talent to optimize production and limit downtime.
We started to dig deeper and asked how the wells could be “visited” virtually using an electronic device, from anywhere, at any time. We found value in challenging the operators to begin managing by exception (i.e., focusing only on problem wells). This seemed like a much more efficient way to utilize their precious time and talent, which could be focused on fixing and optimizing instead.
In late 2012, we set out to define and create a comprehensive WatchDog hardware unit to enable a complete “Virtual Wellsite Visit.” This would provide enough information (key word ‘enough’) in a fraction of the time when compared to the traditional on-site visit. In these early days, the limited capabilities of WatchDog prevented us from offering a complete solution. However, the size of the opportunity in the market was becoming clearer.
The WatchDog team realized very quickly that our challenges would be both technical and behavioral.
On the technical side, WatchDog would need to inform operators:
- –> If the pump was working…
- –> If fluid was being produced…
- –> If fluid was being produced at the expected rate…
- –> Whether there was a leak in the area of the wellhead…
We believed that this set of capabilities would make it practical for producers to switch from manual to Virtual Wellsite Visits. However, our solution needed to be affordable and effective to respect the dynamics of an extremely price-sensitive environment.
Known fact: Producers are very reluctant to incur costs on wells without a clear path to payback, which had to be fast and attractive.
Figuring out how to detect leaks at the wellsite was particularly difficult. The only truly reliable way was to add a camera to the WatchDog unit. After looking for a camera that was certified to run in hazardous areas and able to withstand the extreme environmental and operational conditions at remote locations, we were unable to find an acceptable model.
We decided to develop our own camera, which has continued to evolve both from a design perspective and with the development of AI intelligence and learning we provide today for automated photo analysis. In 2024, we delivered new capabilities to the customer, for example, photos can be analyzed automatically on our platform for the presence of a leak. Hundreds of thousands of photos are analyzed automatically every 24 hours and we have a brilliant team in behind that technology.
By early 2015, we had dramatically improved every aspect of WatchDog’s monitoring capability:
- –> We developed our own communications platform from scratch
- –> We built our operator portal, cleverly named K9 (because you know…”WatchDog”)
- –> We added a solar charging circuit, eliminating the requirement for connection to site power and extending the reach where WatchDogs could be installed
From our humble beginnings monitoring a single variable (flow temperature), we now provide eight discrete surveillance and monitoring points per wellsite:
- –> We monitored the activity of the pump to inform whether it was working
- –> Our camera could detect leaks at the wellhead
- –> We monitored the pressure at the well’s tubing/casing
All this data could be stored in the cloud and accessed by operators at their fingertips.
We quickly realized that disruption to the status quo would bring along secondary challenges. At the top of that list was the behavioral change needed to embrace the Virtual Wellsite Visit. This side of the equation was in some ways even more complex than our technical challenges.
The daily drive to the oil field was a time-honored and comfortable method for checking wells. The Virtual Wellsite Visit concept we were selling was regarded not only as disruptive to well surveillance but also deeply threatening to the operators driving to inspect their wells. They believed that WatchDog would make their jobs obsolete. We believed the opposite: we believed that it would make their jobs more valuable since more time could be devoted to fixing and optimizing to deliver superior results, something only they could deliver.
Fortunately for us, a few were curious—the early adopters. A few tried it at scale. From initial pilots of 5 units or so, orders slowly grew to encompass complete field ‘runs’ of 40-50 wellsites over the next three years.
We embarked on the never-ending march into the market to change the status quo:
- –> In 2016, we sold 400 units
- –> In 2017, we sold 800
- –> By the end of 2018, we had more than 3,000 WatchDogs deployed with remote wellsite monitoring applications
In 2019, we landed our first significant adopter. The pack had a ‘lead dog.’
We released our updated WatchDog 4, building on the learnings from v2 and v3, which provided the opportunity to reduce the price even further. This proved to be revolutionary, giving us the pricing power and functionality to dramatically increase our rate of adoption. Our growth and adoption velocity has been building every year since. Our customers can rely on us to guide them through a proven process to install, onboard, and gain beneficial use with increasing effectiveness.
At the close of 2024, over 150 producers in Canada and the USA are saving significant costs while meeting production targets, with less downtime and reduced equipment failures. In defense of their environmental reputation, leak events at wellsites are identified and remediated faster and with less impact than ever before, while the emissions from tailpipes continue to trend down.
We’ve deployed a huge dog pack… but we’re far from done. Our vision for the Virtual Wellsite Visit and WatchDog, an operator’s best friend in the field, continues to evolve based on input from our great customers and the industry we support.
Today, we’ve built on the original idea and extended it to inform operators throughout their asset portfolio. WatchDog is monitoring:
- –> Injection and production pipelines for leaks and volume imbalance
- –> Production chemical use and tank level
- –> Notification for the presence of methane or a change in its concentration
- –> Production tank monitoring
- –> Leak detection at critical pump and facility locations
Our focus to inform operators of changes in condition or the presence of specific conditions while enhancing operations efficiency in the field, continues to guide our development roadmap.
Our view of the future horizon is vast. With over 20,000 WatchDogs in the field, the largest deployment of its kind in the industry, we are informed by a pedigreed customer base, a proven experienced team, and a clarity of mission to drive our actions.
Next milestone: 40,000 WatchDogs. Are you ready?