Page 7: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2019)

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EDITOR’S LETTER

SHow me the Money hile safety is historically number one on the agenda of most offshore energy operators, money is “1A”. As the offshore oil market endures a ? fth year of downturn from the halcyon days of 2014, the ‘new normal’ is the phrase of day as energy producers and all

Wwho support them have been forced to ? nd more ef? cient, cost effective means to discover and recover oil and gas in the offshore sector. As you ? ip through this edition, keeping a lid on costs is a recurring theme. ‘A New Slant on Decommissioning’ looks at how shallow gas reservoirs drilled into at a slant in the 1980s have posed a unique decommissioning challenge. For the facilities in Spirit Energy’s

Morecambe Bay complex, in the East Irish Sea none the traditional solutions were available. Because the original wells had been drilled from two rigs designed and built just for this ? eld, the unique drilling pack- ages no longer exists. Read up on the solution, starting on page 8.

The matter of underwater vehicle residency has long been discussed, but it appears that the tide is turn- ing according to Elaine Maslin’s report ‘Residency in Waiting’ starting on page 18. The ability to keep

AUVs in an underwater ‘garage,’ ready, willing and able to be manually or automatically dispatched to care for subsea system maintenance issues – planned or a surprise – effectively eliminating the need for more costly surface ships and support crews has been discussed for more than a generation. But a con- vergence of technologies from docking to charging to data download and transmission has brought real progress closer to reality.

To say that we’re in the midst of a ‘digitalization’ trend seems a bit trite, as everywhere we look in our business and personal lives digital solutions are ubiquitous, enabling tremendous new ef? ciency capability as well as challenges in step. In this edition we have a pair of features on the power of digitalization, the ? rst ‘Doubling Down on Digital’ by Jennifer Pallanich starting on page 29, and the second ‘Digitalization as Life Extension’ by William Stoichevski starting on page 34.

In the former, as digitalization has become somewhat of a marketing buzzword, Pallanich explores what terms like big data, digitalization, arti? cial intelligence, machine learning and the digital oil? eld actually mean. It’s one thing to say it, another to buy it, and yet another to ‘walk-the-walk’ and ‘talk-the-talk’ to en- sure that these next-generation solutions are researched, procured and properly integrated throughout your operation to truly reduce capex and opex costs, while at the same time not opening a new cyber security can of worms.

In the latter Stoichevski discusses ‘Digitization as Life-Extension,’ looking at how operators are on digi- tization journeys that aim to make the most of older infrastructure. Proposed projects from ConocoPhillips and Aker BP look set to reveal a special bene? t to “freeing data”, both for operator and supply chain. But while digitization comes with much promise, peril is never far behind and many still caution to be “careful when you digitize.”

As we steam toward the conclusion of 2019 with just one print edition remaining for the re-launch of

Offshore Engineer, we thank you for your interest and support and stand ready to serve you in print and online in 2020 and beyond. The 2020 Editorial Calendar is complete and our freshly minted BPA circula- tion audit is not far behind. If you haven’t seen one or both, drop a line to Managing Editor Eric Haun at [email protected] for your copies.

Gregory R. Trauthwein

Editorial Director & Associate Publisher [email protected] t: +1.212.477.6700 • m: +1-516.810.7405

September/OctoBER 2019 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 7