Apple iPhones Now Permitted on Oil and Gas Sites

The mother of all cases is finally here

I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.

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As far back as 2004, I explored the possibility of deploying cellular phones within an oil refining complex. The idea of persistent and safe communications with supervisors and lead hands by phone or text message during the work day was intuitively attractive, and we imagineered many a positive use case. This was in the era of the BlackBerry mobile phone, long before Apple created the smart phone category.

However, we ultimately abandoned the concept for three reasons:

1. The low-cost consumer-type handsets from companies like Blackberry, Nokia, and Motorola were not intrinsically safe — refining environments, like many oil and gas facilities, can experience the occasional rogue emission of a flammable hydrocarbon, and a handset that could ignite the hydrocarbons with a rogue spark was simply too risky.

2. The intrinsically safe handsets that were available were bulky, heavy, costly, hard to use, and provided very limited capability. They couldn’t handle being off line, and there was little software available. At best they automated one or two useful functions, which failed to outweigh their limitations.

3. The facilities environment wasn’t friendly to cellular communications. The site was (and still is) large, the equipment was equally massive, with lots of steel, and the setting generated plenty of electrical interference.

And so we moved on, letting this good idea await better conditions.