Digital Oil Part 2

Previously I delved into digital communication standards now commonly used within the oil industry and the importance of sharing real-time operational data between data centres and contractors. There is also a strong move towards a completely digital virtual oil well operated and controlled by a minimum of workers, but why are companies spending millions to develop and integrate these virtual systems?

Oil prices consistently rise year on year, even when the stock markets crash, oil is always one of the first commodities to recover its costs. However the industry has always faced a shortage of skilled workers for the many areas of hydrocarbon production. It has been estimated that over 100 million barrels oil will be needed everyday by 2015 and with this amount of supply required many more engineers, geologists and rig workers will be needed. In many African countries expats are used due a lack of skilled local workers, therefore the idea of a digital oil field turns from the realms of fantasy, to now becoming reality. So what is meant by the term digital oil field (DOF)?

Software is now available to capture the daily operations and behaviours of an oil rig and can be used to manage the whole production lifecycle.  Such software should allow for a full visualisation of the reservoir and the wellbore. This enables managers and engineers to see real-time monitoring and control data offsite, real-time drilling data which should include down-hole pressures, drill directions and rotational speeds. Furthermore Real-time surveillance will trigger alarms when production integrity has been breached. This allows companies to fully audit operations and procedures. Booz&Co reported that one company had introduced selected oil field technologies and has saved a massive US$20 million annually by automating data storage facilities, data integration across multiple systems and wellbore visualisation by using fewer but more skilled staff, located at a central control centre.

If such savings can be made why are the technologies not being taken up by every petroleum operator? Many smaller organisations are simply unable to absorb the initial implementation costs or have the forethought to properly use the available software. Often when a new system is required it causes a ripple effect over the current system while it is being integrated into working practices. From my experience managers often struggle with new technologies, both with their effectiveness and implementation. Furthermore workers at the ‘coalface’ can be resistant to change asking questions like ‘I have done it this way for years why should I change now?’ and this can be a major drawback to the implementation of a virtual digital system. The whole point for a digital oil field is to help tackle some of the following areas: Supporting staff development allowing for functional specialisation of assets and operations. Supplementing an ageing workforce where oil workers with years of experience are able to move into a less physical role as they age but still utilises their immense knowledge. Modern oil fields have a large amount of data to process with sensors being placed on almost every piece of equipment and a digital oil field brings with it the advantages of visualisation software. Also the risks and uncertainties are reduced if not eradicated due to the use of workflows and risk prediction algorithms. The problems of a lack of skilled workers are also eased as computer integration usually allows one person to do the work of many. Finally information and knowledge is easily exchanged with organisation that have different specialism, tasks and agendas which may be very different from the main oil production skill set of the operator.

However there are issues to consider as with any new technology one must first decide on what aspect to digitise. With so much data and information to be processed a company can be quite literally overloaded and as a result paralyse a company’s decision making processes instead of helping them be more proactive with decisions. Therefore it becomes necessary to carefully select or ‘cheery-pick’ the data required for specific information goals. The problem is if you record all available data then storage costs become prohibitive and the times required to process and sift through to find something relevant increases with every upload. Alternatively by only selecting certain types of data, you risk deleting information that might have intrinsic value to the company. So good visualisations are vital, which allows complex data to be shown in a graphical format to simplify the decision making process.

Oil rigs produce huge amounts of data on a daily basis, so it is not about implementing digital technologies but how oil companies use it to communicate the right information to the right people in the field. The Chevron Machinery Support Centre (MSC) looks at real-time data distributed over 6 continents from Kazakhstan to Colombia they monitor 65% of the U.S gas supplies. At their hub computer operators, overview a number of computer monitors looking for distribution paths to meet current gas supplies and to check for system alerts. Recently one of their African drilling operations started to overload. An alarm immediately alerted the controllers of a compressor problem at MSC some 6000 miles away from the original incident; this allowed the fault to be found and resolved quickly without any injuries to the workforce and saved millions of dollars in possible production downtime. Chevron has now implemented a number of digital systems to its upstream operations one of which is called Upstream Workflow Transformation (UWT) which has taken decades of investment and development to produce, but is now at the forefront of its digital campaign.

As a way of combining IT, automation and instrumentation technologies DOF software offers many benefits from faster reservoir production and analysis, increased workforce safety and operational management through the use of workflows, as long as data is properly analysed and filtered to give expected results for manager and engineers to make timely and accurate decision.