Strong SCADA Outlook for Oil and Gas Industry

The worldwide market for supervisory control and data acquistion (SCADA) systems for the oil and gas industry is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3 percent over the next five years, says a new study from ARC Advisory Group Inc. The market was nearly $850 million in 2007 and is forecasted to be more than $1.3 billion in 2012, the study says.

“These new generations of SCADA components are easier to integrate and provide vastly improved capabilities and functionalities. SCADA systems are now being considered in a wide range of applications and true business processes for a variety of purposes, including business performance management,” says Russ Novak, ARC director of research and principal author of the study, titled “SCADA Systems Worldwide Outlook for the Oil & Gas Industry.”

The worldwide SCADA market for the oil and gas industry is expanding as upstream development and new production occurs in remote and newly developed regions, and the existing oil and gas infrastructure makes use of the enhanced functionalities of SCADA to improve its core business processes of managing global disparate assets, ARC says.

The oil and gas industry in developed regions is using SCADA as a core technology to support new business processes in response to changing industry dynamics. Developing regions are seeing increased exploration and production activities for which SCADA is used to link the geographically separated facilities.

SCADA will be at the core of technology adoptions as the world economy strengthens, and as the industry moves to improve business processes to meet growing energy demand and economic challenges. In both the upstream and midstream portions of the oil and gas industry, SCADA will play an increasingly important role in the real-time dissemination of knowledge and management control of assets, ARC says.