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Oil production in the US has skyrocketed since 2010, primarily due t0 due to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and utilizing horizontal wells. However, the global supply of oil has far surpassed demand. As a result, oil prices have dropped dramatically, and oil companies are facing steep revenue losses.

To combat this, oil companies are utilizing Internet of Things technology to reduce their production costs by becoming more operationally efficient.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we examine how oil companies are connecting their oil wells, rigs, and exploration devices to the internet in order to gain insights about how their assets are performing. 

Here are some key takeaways from the report: 

• Over the next three to five years, 62% of oil and gas executives worldwide say they will invest more than they currently do in digital, according to a recent Microsoft and Accenture survey. 
• Oil and gas companies will use IoT devices and their associated analytics to survey land for new potential drilling sites and extract the oil from the ground. Among oil and gas executives, 89% believe they can leverage analytics to improve business practices, according to Microsoft and Accenture.
• We estimate the number of devices used on oil extraction sites — primarily wells — will increase at a 70% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). The devices will primarily be internet-connected sensors used to provide environmental metrics about extraction sites.
• By fully optimizing the IoT solutions available, an oil and gas company with $50 billion in annual revenue could increase its profits by nearly $1 billion, according to a Cisco study. 

In full, the report:

• Explains the driving forces for the increase in oil production
• Examines how IoT analytics are being utilized by oil and gas companies in oil fields
• Identifies the types of networks needed to connect the devices
• Discusses the importance of mobile devices to control IoT devices

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store.» Purchase & Download 
2. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you’ll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally.» Learn More Now

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Our subscribers consider the INSIDER Newsletters a “daily must-read industry snapshot” and “the edge needed to succeed personally and professionally” — just to pick a few highlights from our recent customer survey.

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Millennials are a hard group to buy for. Encompassing anyone born between 1982 and 2000, millennials are thought to outnumber baby boomers and are more diverse than any other group, according to the US Census.

This group has over $1 trillion (£650 billion) in buying power and are far more likely to buy from a company which supports their cause, such as Apple, rather than one that doesn’t,according to Millennial Marketing.

Here are the cool things to get the millennial in your life, no matter what their taste is.

“Outliers” by Michael Gladwell

Michael Gladwell is the New Yorker writer whose books look at the micro-trends that explain macro-trends. 

“Outliers,” which is published by Penguin Books, examines the stories of successful people to determine whether it was chance or skill that got them where they are today. Examples include Canadian ice hockey stars and Bill Gates. 

Price: £6.99

Bose SoundLink

The Bose SoundLink is ideal for anyone who doesn’t want the bulk of a big Hi-Fi but does want the sound quality. 

The quality of the audio — especially at the low end of the register — is amazing. 

The device can connect via Bluetooth and has good battery life, even when playing more sonically intensive (i.e. louder and bassier) tunes. 

Price: £169.95

A Netflix subscription

Gone are the days when all of the best video content is on a TV. Netflix has been working hard to produce original programming, including hits like “House of Cards,” “Narcos,” and “Orange Is The New Black.”

Netflix offers multiple subscription options — mainly for adding extra screens — with HD streaming and support for pretty much every device there is. 

Price: From £5.99/month

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is on lockdown amid unconfirmed reports of an “armed and dangerous person” near the campus’ ROTC Armory, the university tweeted on Wednesday.

 More to come…

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Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Wednesday that his administration would try to “take out” terrorists’ families, in addition to the militants themselves.

“With the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” Trump said during a “Fox & Friends” interview.

He argued that such tactics were necessary because the terrorists claim to not care about their own lives.

“When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he repeated. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourselves. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”

The real-estate mogul made the comments after he vowed to “knock the hell out of ISIS,” also known as the Islamic State. One of the “Fox & Friends” hosts asked him about minimizing civilian causalities, which Trump promised to do. 

“I would do my best — absolute best,” Trump replied. “I mean, one of the problems that we have and one of the reasons we’re so ineffective is they’re using [civilians] as shields — it’s a horrible thing.  They’re using them as shields. But we’re fighting a very politically correct war.”

SEE ALSO: Donald Trump jokes about the IRS and ISIS being ‘the same thing’

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NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Yahoo are up sharply before the opening bell on a report that the company will discuss the sale of its Internet business.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday that the board of Yahoo Inc. is meeting this week to talk about what shape the company will take going forward. The article, citing anonymous sources, says private equity firms are among those looking at Yahoo’s websites.

Representatives for Sunnyvale, California, company did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday.

Last month, activist investor Starboard Value urged Yahoo to scrap a planned spinoff of its lucrative stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and sell its own Internet business instead.

Shares of Yahoo rose more than 4 percent to $35 in premarket trading.

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New York City is the greatest city in the world, and it draws people looking to find their fortune from just about everywhere.

Next Step Realty, a New York City real estate brokerage that matches recent graduates and young professionals with luxury apartments, shared data with Business Insider on 1,026 young professional renters that the company worked with in 2015.

The ten most popular Manhattan neighborhoods for Next Step’s customers include several locales that have long been home to New York’s elite:

Seeing as we are looking at apartments in Manhattan, rent is not cheap. Among those ten most popular neighborhoods, the average rent for a studio varies from $2,000 per month on the Upper East Side to $2,975 in Midtown East:

SEE ALSO: The most popular college major for Wall Street

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When Carolina tight end Greg Olsen and Kansas City safety Eric Berry had life-changing experiences away from football, the logical next step was finding ways to help the causes that helped them.

That’s the legacy of the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year award — players using their platforms to raise money for issues that are important to them.

The league announced the nominees from each team Wednesday. Finalists will be selected in January, and the winner will be named the night before the Super Bowl at the “NFL Honors” show.

Olsen’s cause is to provide resources to improve the survival rate between surgeries for infants with a heart condition similar to the one his son T.J. had.

Berry has added cancer care to his list of priorities after he was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to step away from the game late in the 2014 season.

Both are among the 32 nominees for the 2015 Payton award, which was renamed for the late Chicago Bears running back in 1999, the same year the 1977 Man of the Year winner died of a rare liver disease and bile duct cancer.

“Everything under the sun that these babies tend to struggle in, we would provide some of expert in their field to be in your home to help you take care of it,” Olsen said. “We feel like this is the most tangible, direct thing to impact that percentage and changes these babies lives forever.”

Olsen created a program with a children’s hospital in Charlotte called “The Heartest Yard.” Berry, who already had a program to help impoverished people in Uganda, spent more time in hospitals with cancer patients.

“Me going through that situation, I was able to relate a lot more to people and being able to talk to kids and just let them know what I was going through,” Berry said. “That gave me a new avenue to where I could help.”

Carolina linebacker Thomas Davis, the 2014 Payton winner, founded a nonprofit that provides free programs to underprivileged children and their families. His foundation provides two college scholarships for high school seniors and had back-to-school and Christmas giveaways along with a program to provide Thanksgiving meals.

The NFL has dealt with lots of negative coverage about players over the past two years, including high-profile domestic violence cases and substance abuse issues. The man of the year program gives the league a chance to showcase players who have worked to help their communities.

Charles Tillman, the 2013 winner with Chicago, focused primarily on providing hospitalized children various forms of entertainment. Dallas tight end Jason Witten, the 2012 recipient, has a foundation that focuses on domestic violence. His mother was a victim of an abusive husband when Witten was growing up.

“They’ve given such a platform in the NFL to do so many good things, and it’s nice to see when guys step up to the plate and do something they’re passionate about,” said Lindsey Jackson, the wife of Tampa Bay receiver Vincent Jackson. The Buccaneers’ 2015 nominee focuses his charitable work on spouses and children in military families.

The team-by-team list of 2015 Payton award nominees:

Arizona: Patrick Peterson

Atlanta: Patrick DiMarco

Baltimore: Steve Smith Sr.

Buffalo: Eric Wood

Carolina: Greg Olsen

Chicago: Matt Forte

Cincinnati: Carlos Dunlap

Cleveland: Gary Barnidge

Dallas: Brandon Carr

Denver: David Bruton Jr.

Detroit: Stephen Tulloch

Green Bay: Sam Barrington

Houston: J.J. Watt

Indianapolis: Dwayne Allen

Jacksonville: Zane Beadles

Kansas City: Eric Berry

Miami: Ryan Tannehill

Minnesota: Chad Greenway

New England: Devin McCourty

New Orleans: Benjamin Watson

New York Giants: Eli Manning

New York Jets: Eric Decker

Oakland: Justin Tuck

Philadelphia: Connor Barwin

Pittsburgh: Cameron Heyward

San Diego: Darrell Stuckey

San Francisco: Anquan Boldin

Seattle: Richard Sherman

St. Louis: Chris Long

Tampa Bay: Vincent Jackson

Tennessee: Delanie Walker

Washington: Ryan Kerrigan

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BAGHDAD (AP) — Millions of pilgrims gathered in Iraq’s holy city of Karbala amid tight security on Wednesday to mark Arbaeen, the annual commemoration of the end of the 40-day mourning period after the seventh century martyrdom of a central figure in Shiite Islam.

Many made the pilgrimage on foot from the Iraqi capital, walking along roads lined with blast walls and razor-wire, and waiting at checkpoints to be frisked by security forces. Soldiers and police also mingled with the pilgrims, most of whom wore black out of mourning.

Iraqi officials said security was increased this year, with operations coordinated between the Interior Ministry, Shiite militias and Iranian advisers. The Islamic State group has repeatedly targeted Iraq’s Shiite majority, viewing them as apostates deserving of death.

Iraqi state-run media said Wednesday that more than 22 million pilgrims have visited Karbala, setting a record for the annual pilgrimage. That number could not be independently verified. Iraqi authorities said last year’s Arbaeen drew 17 million pilgrims.

Arbaeen commemorates the end of the 40-day mourning period after the killing of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, in a climactic battle in A.D. 680 that cemented the rift with Sunnis.

The faithful traditionally walk for a day or longer to reach Karbala where crowds chant and march around the Imam Hussein shrine. The holiday is observed in Shiite communities worldwide, with large gatherings in Iran and southern Lebanon.

On the walk to Karbala, which can take up to two days, pilgrims said security was the main topic of conversation, closely followed by politics.

“We are commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, who led a revolution for reforms,” said Ali Tahir, a pilgrim from Baghdad. “We are facing the same problem now, which is corruption and lack of services. The current government pays no heed to the people.”

Murtada Ahmed, 23, who walked to Karbala from Baghdad with friends, spoke with disdain about the passing convoys of SUVs with blacked-out windows, the preferred mode of transport for the country’s political elite.

“They don’t even bother themselves to walk,” Ahmed said. “They just stay in their cars and really just annoy the rest of the pilgrims.”

Last summer saw mass protests across Baghdad and the mostly Shiite south over the failure to provide basic services, including frequent power outages amid a sweltering heat wave.

The IS group controls large parts of northern and western Iraq, including the city of Ramadi, some 90 miles (140 kilometers) north of Karbala. On Monday, a suicide bomber targeted pilgrims in Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding another 21, according to Iraqi security officials.

A special task force of Shiite militiamen has been deployed to Karbala to provide extra security, said Hashim al-Musawi, a spokesman for the umbrella group of militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. He said Iranian advisers are also on hand to coordinate security.

“We have a joint operations room,” al-Musawi said. “It enables the Iranian advisers who have expertise in the field of security to help protect the visitors.”

The Shiite militiamen and Iranian advisers have played a key role alongside Iraqi security forces in battling the IS group. Many pilgrims carried the flags of the various militias on the march to Karbala.

“Of course we are not afraid,” said Ahmed al-Ta’ii, who walked to Karbala from his home in Baghdad’s Kazimiyah neighborhood with his nine-year-old son. “The security is 24 hours and every year it’s increased. Why should I be scared?”

Besides, he added, if anything happens, “we will just go to paradise.”

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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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Ever since the 2008 US election was dubbed “the Facebook election” pundits have been desperate to call the next big thing in the way political campaigns reach voters.

Will 2016 be the Snapchat election? The Twitter election? The meme election?

Harper Reed is sceptical. “I think when people say it’s going to be the ‘X election they’re usually wrong’,” he says. “We could probably just pick one and they’ll run with it — it’ll be the WhatsApp election or whatever.”

Reed was Obama’s CTO for the 2012 re-election campaign, charged with overseeing the President’s digital strategy and constructing a huge software programme that could distribute information about Democrat voters to the network of volunteers on the ground. It was a huge success.

But to make it a succeed, Reed says, the team had to to cover all bases.

He says: “If you’re a millennial, maybe it’s the Snapchat election. But if you’re 45-65 maybe it’s the Facebook election. If you’re a Twitter user, maybe it’s the Twitter election. In the US, it’s all about turnout, which means you have to appeal to every single democrat to get them to vote. No one says, ‘Is this going to be the telephone election?’ [But] That’s still going.”

“If you look back to when they said it was the Facebook election, it was really just the tip of an iceberg. You don’t see the biggest part of it. Sometimes what you’ve seen as a participant or an observer is just one tenths or one hundreds of the tools that are being used.”

Campaigns won’t just adopt new platforms like Snapchat or WhatsApp because they’re there, Reed says.

“I can only speak to the Democrat side but for the Democrats everything is aggressively measured and what that means is if you’re going to use Snapchat, you’re going to use it for a reason, not just for fun,” he says.

“The digital team who were running Twitter, they weren’t just going to put out a tweet for fun. They’re going to try and figure out how do we measure the impact. Then they’d tweet it and if it worked, great.”

But one big trend Reed is predicting is a rise in interaction from candidates on various social media platforms, rather than just using the sites as megaphones.

He says: “You already see that now, Hilary’s campaign is interacting with other candidates, whether it’s Jeb and talking s**t or just other candidates.

“In 2012 it was a lot like display advertising — I would say something on Twitter and you would look at it. Now, if I tweet something, someone might reply to it and I might reply to that. That’s really where the magic is.

“It used to be that the only person who would make statements were the press secretaries, but now they’re writing whole articles about Twitter streams.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Girls Who Code is teaming with Viking Children’s Books on a line of at least 11 planned works about computer science and coding.

In a joint announcement Wednesday, the tech organization and Viking said the upcoming books would include middle grade fiction, doodles and board books. The initial releases, coming in the summer of 2017, will be “Girls Who Code: Tips, Tricks, and Inspiration for Taking Over Tech” and the start of a fictional series billed as “The Baby-Sitters Club” meets coding.

Girls Who Code, founded in 2012 by Reshma Saujani, is a nonprofit with a mission “to close the gender gap in the technology and engineering sectors.” Saujani is an activist and former deputy public advocate in New York City.

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