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INTELLIGENT OILFIELD

Learning IE lessons learned

Is the oil industry good at lessons learned but not the reservoirs, and collaborative facilities the opportunity to improve decision-making. at learning lessons? – asks Jan-Erik Nordtvedt, SPE

Intelligent Energy program committee chair 2014 and

Joining up the dots

However, if we’re not able to align people to the same goals,

President and CEO, Epsis get consistent execution of process (between people and crews) lmost a year has passed since the SPE Intelligent Energy or link business processes to day-to-day operating procedures, 2014 conference. A key discussion topic during the the technology implemented will not give all the improvements

A event was why the deployment of Intelligent Energy it promises. In short, if you’re not willing to change the way (IE) is taking so long. Why wasn’t IE more broadly and deeply you work, don’t expect ground-breaking results from IE solu- embedded in the oil companies and in the service sector? tions either.

Particularly, at that time, when the oil price had been stable at In Norway, and probably in other oil and gas provinces, we around US$100/bbl for a number of years. have – in the good times – simply added more engineers to

One would have expected that the improvement potential resolve a problem, because, in prosperous times, no one asks from IE would have made attractive business cases across the about how to save an hour or two per engineer each week; how industry. Still, many of the delegates commented on the slow to align the various goals, make technology stick or help to uptake of loosely integrated solutions. Since then, the oil price adhere to processes is not on top of the agenda. There is less has halved. It is natural to ask if there is more or less need for focus on running more effective meetings, having standardized

IE in this environment and if one should expect more or less processes, providing situational awareness data to immerse staff active IE programs in a low oil-price/lower cost environment. in or to save time during handover. We could just use another

There are many facets of this complex question, but I would engineer if we’re not able to complete what needs done. Now, like to focus on one – effciency. Many claim that the amount in more challenging times, we have to use fewer engineers. The of engineering work needed to produce a barrel of oil has result is that less work gets done.

sky-rocketed over the past decade. For example, an up to 50% This is not new. That we are in an industry that gets a “kick” increase has been reported on the Norwegian Continental Shelf out of technology is well known, after all this is an engineering- (NCS). People point to compliance, technical requirements, and heavy industry. That we’re not overly enthusiastic towards competency as possible reasons why this is happening. process adherence and knowledge-sharing is not new either.

This has been on the “lessons learned” fipcharts of most orga-

Investment in IE nizations for years.

The NCS has made substantial investment in IE initiates; with It seems like we’re pretty good at lessons learned, but less so many reports of signifcant value being realized – particularly at learning lessons. In our current environment we will need to within improved operations. Most companies have put in place be. We may even fnd that it is hugely rewarding. Changing the video conferencing, real-time data collection, data sharing and way we work – ensuring process adherence and people’s buy-in collaborative facilities. Over the last decade, bandwidth to – will, in my mind, be a big step forward within IE. Not that we

Norwegian offshore installations has followed Moore’s law of need a low cost environment to do so, but maybe it can provide exponential growth. This has allowed for video conferencing, the right incentive. data sharing, and the replication of high resolution real-time

SPE Intelligent Energy 2016 will run 6-8 September 2016 at data to onshore.

AECC, Aberdeen.

In many ways, we have increased the complexity of the onshore and offshore working day – we can analyze, assess and discuss much more than before. This holds the promise of Jan-Erik Nordtvedt is president and chief understanding the root-cause of any operational problem faster executive offcer (CEO) at Epsis and was and in a better way – surely one of the pillars of IE. One should SPE Intelligent Energy program committee expect that this would also result in the opportunity to produce chair 2014. He holds a PhD degree in more oil with the same number of people, and thus, give an physics from the University of Bergen in increased effciency. But, the opposite is being experienced. Norway. Nordtvedt started his career with

A simple, yet important, reason for this could be that the Statoil in Norway, and has since worked added complexity is introducing new ineffciencies, e.g. the more than 25 years within the oil and gas technology is not integrating easily with the other components industry. Epsis assists clients in implementing and getting value of the business. Video conferencing gives us the ability to put from deploying integrated-operations workfows using collabo- a face to a voice, real-time data to understand the dynamics of ration-management software.

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