Industry Insights from Vertrax

The final deadline for complying with the ELD mandate is December 16th, 2019 — less than two months away. The mandate went into effect in December of 2017 and full enforcement began in April of 2018, so this is the final phase of implementation.

The mandate has already had a major impact on the industry, so we wanted to dive into the adoption rate of the technology as the deadline approaches, as well as uncover the impact it’s had on trucking fleets in terms of compliance, crashes, and driver behavior.

In this series, we’re breaking down how blockchain can impact the complex segments of the oil and gas industry: upstream, midstream, and downstream.

Part 1: Upstream

As we mentioned in the first part of this series, there are three segments of the oil and gas industry: upstream, midstream, and downstream. Linking the upstream segment (exploration and production) and downstream segment (refinement), midstream oil and gas includes the transportation and storage of natural gas, crude oil, and refined products.

Due to the potential of environmental harm from improper storage or transportation, midstream oil and gas is one of the most regulated industries. And because oil and gas products have to pass through national, state, local, and municipal borders, they must successfully attain a wide variety of approvals. While midstream oil and gas businesses struggle to juggle regulations with their many partners, blockchain has the capability to mitigate these problems.

In this series, we’re breaking down how blockchain can impact the complex segments of the oil and gas industry: upstream, midstream, and downstream.

There are three main sectors in the oil and gas industry: upstream, midstream, and downstream. These categories denote where the relevant resource is in the process of traveling from underground reservoirs to its final destination, whether that be in the tank of a car or a gas stove in an apartment. For this initial installment in the series, we’ll explore blockchain’s use in upstream oil and gas.

Possibly the most complex part of the oil and gas industry — and definitely one of the most technology-heavy — upstream oil and gas refers to both the search for natural resources and their extraction. Upstream oil and gas is also known as exploration and production (E&P).

According to the World Economic Forum, “digital transformation in the Oil and Gas industry could unlock approximately $1.6 trillion of value for the industry, its customers, and wider society.”

While we’ve broken down the overall benefits of blockchain and its specific benefits for fleet management, there are still some challenges that need to be overcome in order for this technology to become standard in the industry.

Across the world, businesses in many industries are gaining interest in the latest cutting-edge technology: blockchain. Around 66% of global organizations have some level of interest in blockchain, with almost 10% currently experimenting with or deploying it.

As more and more industries adopt advanced technology, streamlining business operations, and improving transparency into performance, technological terms are starting to become common in day-to-day conversations. For example, “blockchain” is a term that many professionals in a wide range of industries have become acquainted with. It’s no wonder when worldwide spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow from 1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated 11.7 billion by 2022.

Remote tank monitoring has been surging in popularity recently, and for good reason — the benefits it holds are staggering for both the consumer and supplier. With this rise in popularity comes the emergence of various competing tank monitoring solutions with wides ranges in quality and functionality.

Remote tank monitoring is one of the fastest-growing innovations in the trucking industry. Suppliers are realizing more and more that remote tank monitoring is a must-have addition to their current technology suites rather than a nice-to-have. In fact, a Berg Insight report revealed that in 2017, the number of active remote tank monitoring solutions reached almost 1.8 million units worldwide and 600,000 units in North America.

New technology is constantly developed to streamline trucking operations. In fact, technology is expected to eliminate $236 million in trucking operational inefficiencies over the next four years.

The road to full compliance with the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate has not been a smooth one. That being said, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) knew that it would take time for trucking companies to install ELDs in all commercial vehicles, and subsequently created a staggered implementation timeline to ease the transition.

But the final deadline is approaching quickly.

While December 18th of 2017 was a soft deadline requiring trucking companies to use either ELDs or existing automatic on-board recording devices (AOBRDs), by December 16, 2019, ELDs are mandatory for all drivers and carriers who are subject to the ELD rule. (In general, that means all drivers who maintain Record of Duty Statuses (RODS).)

Read on to learn about AOBRDs and ELDs — and how your fleet can make the transition with ease.