By David Wethe - 2012-09-03T06:12:37Z

NASAs Mars rover has something to teach the oil industry.

Traversing the Red Planet while beaming data through space has a lot in common with exploring the deepest recesses of earth in search of crude oil and natural gas. Robotic Drilling Systems AS, a Norwegian company developing a drilling rig that can think for itself, signed an information-sharing agreement with NASA to discover what it might learn from the rover Curiosity.

The companys work is part of a larger futuristic vision for the energy industry. Engineers foresee a day when fully automated rigs roll onto a job site using satellite coordinates, erect 14-story-tall steel reinforcements on their own, drill a well, then pack up and move to the next site.

Youre seeing a new track in the industry emerging, says Eric van Oort, a former Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) executive whos leading a new graduate-level engineering program focused on automated drilling at the University of Texas at Austin. This is going to blossom.

Apache Corp. (APA), National Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV), and Statoil ASA (STL) are among the companies working on technology that will take humans out of the most repetitive, dangerous, and time-consuming parts of oil field work.

It sounds futuristic, says Kenneth Sondervik, sales and marketing vicepresident for Robotic Drilling Systems. He compares it to other areas that have become highly automated, such as car manufacturing or cruise missile systems.

Until recently, robots have been a hard sell in an industry that has long relied on human ingenuity, says Mark Reese, president of rig solutions at National Oilwell Varco.

In the past, its been all about, We need more and more people and experience, and thats the only way to accomplish this task, Reese said.

The 2010 BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico helped shift attitudes, says Clay Williams, chief financial officer at National Oilwell Varco. Eleven men were killed when the Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire and sank. Statoil has projected that automation may cut in half the number of workers needed on an offshore rig and help complete jobs 25 percent faster, says Steinar Strom, former head of a research and development unit on automation at the Norwegian company.

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