'Internet of everything' is central to more efficient oil rigs
The oil and gas industry needs to adopt digitisation and the internet of everything in order to explore new growth areas and revenue streams, according to Olav Sylthe of Xvision Software. The use of interconnected "people, process, data and things" across the entire value chain would help oil and gas businesses, which have been slow to adopt digitisation, to improve efficiency, reduce costs and streamline projects.
Digitalization is emerging as a technological driver of change around the world and provides businesses with abundant opportunities for growth and monetary gain. While industries like manufacturing and healthcare have taken the digitalization world by storm, the oil and gas industry has been remarkably slow to adopt this new way of thinking.

It is true that oil and gas has been “digitalized” for some time. True digital transformation, however, now requires adoption of the Internet of Everything (IoE)— the networked connection of people, process, data and things—throughout the value chain.

Most of today’s digital initiatives in oil and gas are incremental rather than disruptive. Some offshore operators are taking a step forward to make improvements in technical or operational capabilities, but many are not fully embracing the power digitalization can provide. Numerous benefits such as increased cost savings and signiﬁcant improvements in collaboration, productivity, maintenance and revenue can be realized through digitalization if more offshore operators would take the technological plunge.

According to a January report by Accenture on digitalization in the oil and gas industry, the primary barriers to change or adoption include:

Regulatory frameworks that are struggling to adapt to a new era of data sharing along value chains;

A lack of standardization in data coming from sensors;

An inability to share information across the ecosystem; and

The challenge of recruiting millennials to replace an aging workforce.

Digital collaboration technologies provide oil and gas companies, and specifically offshore engineers, a multitude of benefits. These include the ability to digitalize workflow and planning processes; optimize decisions between experts, disciplines and companies involved in the life of field perspective; and visually identify operational activities and maintenance events once projects are online.

Through digitalization, all offshore field projects can be easily understandable through online 2-D/3-D visualizations rapidly created or replicated using existing field layouts with a 3-D asset library and immediately monitored and reported to real-time operating levels. It also can offer an instant view of the cost consequences due to a required action or change to a field.

For offshore operators subsea and topside assets are their most valuable players. The foundation of these structures comprises years of knowledge, engineering talent and commitment. The technology-savvy world is moving to a digital environment. For the oil and gas industry to respond to this trend, offshore assets must reside there too. Offshore operations will dramatically change when oil and gas companies embrace and upgrade their digital capabilities, thus improving the way they collaborate with and connect new data insights to their operating models.

Real-world results

An independent European oil and gas operator was looking to exploit the Norwegian Shelf in the North Sea. It aimed to reduce costs by using already existing infrastructure in a neighboring oil field and had appointed an engineering firm to install a cable along the seafl oor.

Collaboration meant having to work across multiple disciplines and languages. This increased the complexity of communications, decision-making and project management, all of which could lengthen the delivery timescale. For example, each company used a different type of planning software, with Gantt charts provided as the basis for project discussions. But it was almost impossible to get diverse teams of operations personnel, managers and budget holders on the same page.

The operator turned to a specialist in 3-D visualizations and software development for major subsea and offshore engineering companies to find a solution. The digital collaboration platform created by the third-party expert brought all project data—assets and activities, both subsea and topside—online and into plain sight through an easy-to-understand visualization.

The collaboration platform complemented the use of Gantt charts, which are still maintained to plan activities. The intuitive interface presented all of the project data as an animated time line, with a customizable set of information layers. Users could navigate to a snapshot of the project for any date using a simple slider and toggle information layers as required.

The platform has matured to support the entire process of offshore and subsea installations, from planning and feasibility to preparation and actual operations. It gave users a simplified view of activities being carried out offshore along with the status of vessels, rigs and installations.

According to the operator, the digital collaboration platform simplified the business of understanding with what was already there and what had yet to be installed at any point. It presented the field layout graphically, with vessels, trenching, production, rock tumblers and pipe information layers that could be switched on and off, depending on the remit. Further, by using the digital platform, the operator successfully collaborated with all parties as one team, accelerated its project time line by 30% and incurred only minor errors and low periods of downtime.

The benefits are undeniable when digital technologies are implemented across the oil and gas industry, regardless of current oil prices. These include:

• Return on investment: Digital collaboration tools are easy to integrate and train employees on and are capable of accelerating project time lines by up to 80%, especially during the early concept and FEED phases. Once the project data are centralized and visualized, they can then be leveraged across the organization for collaboration in fl uid analysis, operational data gathering, maintenance and decommissioning planning. These time savings can drive cost savings as high as 70% across a project’s life cycle;

• Simplified collaboration: By providing a unified view of the project, digital collaboration tools simplify multilanguage cross-disciplinary communications. This reduces the opportunity for misunderstandings and scheduling confl icts and supports knowledge transfer, collaboration and creative problem-solving;

• Better decision-making: The solution enables activities to be tracked against the project plan and any deviation easily measured. The ability to perform “what-if” analysis allows the outcome of decisions to be modeled in a riskfree environment before taking action in the field; and

• Reduced risk: Increased visibility allows a safety zone to be established around the installation to enable compliance with health and safety requirements. Vessels are prohibited from entering or remaining in the zone at specified points of the project.

Digitalization has the potential to create tremendous value for both the industry and society as a whole. However, for oil and gas such a transformation will require organizations to implement a focused digital strategy championed by the C-suite, executive teams and IT leaders to create a culture of innovation and technology adoption. It also will need investment and commitment to revisit, renew and upgrade current processes, infrastructure and systems and a willingness to share and collaborate across the ecosystem. All the aforementioned needs will be required for a successful digital transformation for the oil and gas industry to truly realize the power and potential digitalization provides.

Have a story idea for Offshore Solutions? This feature highlights technologies and techniques that are helping offshore players overcome their operating challenges. Submit your story ideas to Group Managing Editor Jo Ann Davy at jdavy@ hartenergy.com.