Problem

Magnolia Oil & Gas operates approximately 2,300 producing wells across its Giddings and Karnes assets in Texas. These wells rely on several artificial lift methods — including rod lift, gas lift, and plunger lift systems — to maintain production performance throughout the life of the well. Of these wells, approximately 800 are equipped with pump-off controllers (POCs) that require continuous monitoring and analysis to maintain efficient operation.

Artificial lift monitoring is a critical component of Magnolia’s production operations. Engineers and optimization specialists must continuously review well performance data, analyze pump behavior, and identify wells, making adjustments to improve efficiency or prevent equipment issues.

Prior to this project, Magnolia relied on a legacy lift optimization platform (XSPOC) to support pump-off controller monitoring and analysis. While functional, the system operated largely outside of Magnolia’s broader SCADA ecosystem. This separation limited operational visibility and made it more difficult to align artificial lift monitoring with other operational systems across the field.

At the same time, Magnolia had already standardized much of its operational technology infrastructure around Ignition, which was widely used across the organization for SCADA visualization, operational monitoring, and data integration.

Magnolia identified an opportunity to modernize artificial lift monitoring by bringing lift optimization directly into its existing Ignition environment. Rather than operating as a standalone system, the goal was to extend Ignition as the central operational platform for well surveillance and artificial lift analysis across hundreds of pump-off controller wells. This approach would allow Magnolia to leverage its existing enterprise SCADA investment while expanding Ignition’s role from visualization into operational decision support.

While developing the project, Avadine needed to address several technical and operational challenges.

First, the system needed to scale across hundreds of pump-off controller wells while maintaining reliable real-time access to operational data. Artificial lift monitoring relies on continuous access to measurements such as load data, pump performance indicators, and dynamometer card information. The platform needed to process large volumes of well data while maintaining responsive dashboards for engineers and operators.

Second, the solution needed to integrate directly with Magnolia’s existing Ignition-based SCADA infrastructure. Rather than introducing a separate monitoring application, Magnolia wanted artificial lift monitoring to operate as part of its unified operational platform.

Avadine also needed to consider communication with the pump-off controllers in the field. Magnolia already utilized Autosol Communication Manager to provide secure and reliable communications with field devices. The new system needed to leverage this existing infrastructure to obtain controller data while maintaining Magnolia’s established communication architecture.

Finally, the project required replacing the legacy optimization platform while ensuring uninterrupted access to operational data for engineering and operations personnel who rely on continuous monitoring of well performance.

Solution

To address these requirements, Avadine deployed iPOC, an artificial lift monitoring and optimization platform built natively on Ignition.

Because Magnolia already utilized Ignition extensively across its operations, Avadine deployed the platform using an integrated architecture that extended the existing Ignition environment rather than introducing a separate standalone system.

The architecture combines several key components:

• Ignition – serving as the central platform for visualization, application logic, and operational interaction
• Autosol Communication Manager – providing communications with pump-off controllers in the field
• iPOC – delivering artificial lift monitoring, analysis, and automation capabilities within the Ignition environment

Integrating pump-off controller communications into the Ignition-based system was straightforward because Magnolia already had Autosol deployed across its infrastructure. Autosol continues to manage field communications while iPOC consumes this data within Ignition to power dashboards, analysis tools, and automation logic.

Real-Time Pump-Off Controller Monitoring

Ignition serves as the real-time operational interface for monitoring Magnolia’s pump-off controller wells. Ignition visualizes the Autosol-collected data from field devices through dashboards that allow engineers and operators to observe well conditions, performance trends, and operational status.

By centralizing artificial lift monitoring within Ignition, the system provides pump-off controller data alongside other operational SCADA data that is critical to Magnolia’s teams.

Ignition-Based Visualization and User Experience

The system uses Ignition Perspective to deliver responsive, web-based dashboards designed for engineering and operational users. The interface provides hierarchical navigation from field-wide surveillance views down to individual well diagnostics, allowing users to quickly identify wells requiring attention.

Status indicators, performance summaries, and visual well health metrics allow engineers to rapidly interpret operating conditions across hundreds of wells. The user interface emphasizes clarity, fast navigation, and minimal clicks to access critical well information.

Perspective’s inherent responsiveness means that the system can be accessed from desktops, tablets, and mobile devices without requiring separate applications.

Dynamometer Card Analysis

The platform supports rod pump performance evaluation through dynamometer card analysis, allowing engineers to review pump conditions and identify potential inefficiencies or mechanical issues affecting well performance.

Event-Driven Automation

Event-driven automation is a key architectural capability of the system. Operational events occurring elsewhere in the field — such as facility conditions or pipeline constraints — can trigger automated actions or alerts within the iPOC environment. Likewise, conditions detected within the artificial lift monitoring system can generate alerts or operational responses within Magnolia’s broader operational environment. This architecture allows artificial lift monitoring to operate as part of Magnolia’s larger SCADA ecosystem rather than as a separate optimization application.

Integrated Deployment Architecture

iPOC supports both standalone and integrated deployment models. Magnolia selected the integrated architecture, embedding artificial lift monitoring directly within the existing Ignition SCADA platform.

The architecture leverages Ignition’s Gateway architecture to centralize data ingestion, application logic, and visualization within a single platform. By combining Ignition with Autosol’s device communication infrastructure, the system separates field communications from application logic while maintaining reliable real-time data flow from hundreds of pump-off controllers.

Result

Avadine’s iPOC deployment successfully modernized Magnolia’s artificial lift monitoring environment while aligning it with the company’s existing Ignition infrastructure.

Magnolia’s engineering and operations teams now have centralized access to pump-off controller data through the same Ignition platform they use for broader SCADA monitoring. This unified environment improves visibility into well performance and allows teams to more quickly identify wells requiring optimization.

The system’s integration with Autosol ensures reliable communication with field devices while allowing Ignition to serve as the operational interface for engineers and operators.

Because the system is built entirely on Ignition, Magnolia now has a scalable platform capable of evolving alongside its operations. Magnolia can introduce additional analytics, dashboards, and automation capabilities without deploying additional standalone applications.

The iPOC platform represents Avadine’s broader strategy of developing Ignition-native operational applications that extend SCADA platforms into specialized industrial domains.

By leveraging Ignition as the application platform, Avadine enables organizations to integrate real-time operational data, analytics, and automation within a single architecture. The Magnolia deployment demonstrates how Ignition can serve not only as a SCADA visualization platform but also as the foundation for advanced operational applications such as artificial lift monitoring and optimization.

Project Team

Avadine’s SCADA engineering team is a group specializing in Ignition-based industrial software development and large-scale operational technology systems. As a Gold Certified integrator, Avadine has architected and delivered hundreds of Ignition deployments across industries including oil & gas, water infrastructure, agriculture, and industrial operations.

Avadine’s team combines expertise in SCADA architecture, HMI design, custom Ignition development, and high-volume operational data environments. Leadership for the Magnolia project included:

• Pat Smith - Solutions Architect
• Robert Pierucci - Senior Software Engineer
• Kyle Smizer-Muldoon - SCADA Manager

The entire team collectively brought extensive experience designing and implementing enterprise Ignition systems.

Project Scope

• Start Date: December 2025

• Deploy Date: February 2026

• Tags: 250,000

• Screens: 100

• Clients: 10-20

• Alarms: 1,000

• Devices used: 700 Devices (SMARTEN, Weatherford 8800, Weatherford WellPilot)

• Architecture: Hub & Spoke

• Database: 1 Microsoft SQL server

• Historical data logged: 5,000 tags logging every 10 seconds (150 million rows per monthly partition)

• Number of people on team: 5

• Ignition Ecosystem: Autosol ACM