Digital Technologies Highlighted at Conference

Ted Moon, spe.org Technical Editor

The energy industry is at the start of an unavoidable renaissance, driven by increased globalization of E&P, the development of a multicultural workforce, and the increased need for data on demand. This was the message of the SPE 2007 Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition, held in April in Houston. The 2-day event was organized through SPE’s Gulf Coast section Digital Energy Study Group.

The conference began with a focus on current successes in implementing digital technologies in the workplace and what technology is needed going forward. Charlie Williams, Chief Scientist of Well Engineering and Production Technology, Shell International E&P, gave the first keynote address, describing how Shell has implemented digital technologies in its field operations with particular emphasis on “smart fields.” An executive roundtable that followed brought together executives from operating and technology companies to discuss business drivers in the E&P community and the types of supporting technologies that have been developed to address these drivers.

The luncheon keynote was delivered by Phiroz Darukhanavala, BP Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Digital and Communications Technology. “Knowledge, computing power, and technological evolution are exploding at such a rate that we are seeing a blurring of boundaries between the physical world and the digital world,” he said. These advances are evident on the Internet and in fields such as aviation, and the oil and gas industry has been swept up in this digitization as well. “It’s happening upstream and down, from the initial exploration efforts to drilling to production, refining, transportation, and out to the customer’s gas tank,” he said.

Darukhanavala pointed to several current examples of how digital advances affect daily operations. One is in so-called smart drilling, being able to run an analysis at the rigsite and get the results in minutes vs. having to capture mud samples, send them to a laboratory, and wait 2 to 3 days for results. Other examples include being able to quickly measure production flow rates, wirelessly monitoring the working condition of rotating equipment, and seamlessly tracking the location and movements of rail cars and other transportation vessels.

While all of this digitization has resulted in an exponential growth in the amount of information available to make informed decisions, Darukhanavala warned that it might be too much of a good thing. “With this deluge of data, the question becomes, How do we manage it and not drown in it? In my opinion, a data plug is almost as bad as a data drought, and even more expensive for the business,” he said.

Seismic recording and drilling logs are areas in which the industry has more data than it currently knows what to do with, Darukhanavala said. “Seventy-five percent of seismic data obtained is underused, at best, and 50% of drilling logs from one of the largest oil fields ever discovered were discarded, unused. We must avoid this in the future …. Data must be harnessed so that actionable information can result from it.”

Darukhanavala pointed to the opening up of global processes as another consequence of the rapid explosion of digitization. “For example, the setting up of virtual teams is taking hold in our industry, in which a team of experts can work virtually on a Gulf of Mexico project, and then go across the hall to do the same in offshore Nigeria, and then go upstairs and look in on the Caspian Sea, and still be home in time for their supper. New technologies provide greater job location and stability, as people deliver their expertise virtually rather than locally.” The sheer volume of information and the increased reliance on a global workforce will require the development of a renaissance worker, someone with equal familiarity with digital technology and business operations, he said. “While traditionally the roustabouts and information technology professionals, or so-called geeks, of which I am proud to call myself, lived and worked in different worlds, this is not true today or in the future. As an effective renaissance worker, you will need to go back and forth with ease; you can’t stay in your silo.”

While Darukhanavala recognized that the combination of roustabout and geek into one worker will impact how people are recruited and trained, he saw this as good news. “Jobs will be more challenging, and more satisfying. Our new ways of working will produce better results,” he said. “However, expertise will have to be rapidly deployed and efficiently utilized. Work will have to be done remotely to allow experts some wider field for their expertise. Work will be done collaboratively to bring different specialties to focus on a single problem. Work will be done globally to allow companies to remain competitive no matter where the demand is.”

Technical Presentations

A total of 15 technical sessions and roundtables focused on many of the key topics facing the implementation and successful use of digital technologies, including asset management, drilling operations, securing the digital oil field, and monitoring and surveillance of production operations.

The asset management session touched on several key themes addressed by the keynote speakers, namely the need for making the most relevant information readily available. Leah Smith, Vice President of Acquisitions for Pogo Producing and Cochairperson of the session, crystallized the need by stating that “while the industry is in a land of opportunity, companies must work smarter, not harder, to realize this opportunity.” Representatives from several companies presented ways assets could be optimized by using map-based visualization techniques to integrate asset models online and by integrating production operations and economics under uncertain conditions.

The technology adoption session stressed the need for integrating human engineering into any digital offering, which means that for a tool to be effective, it must be highly usable by people of various skill sets. C.E. Reddick of BP addressed his company’s attempts to do this in its “Field of the Future” technology program. Making interfaces user-friendly is an extremely important part of ensuring that the program succeeds in its goal of boosting production worldwide. “We designed the program to ensure that it adds something tangible to the reserves base, and also provides specific value benefits at the well and in the plant,” he said. To that end, BP built elements of its program to include easy-to-understand controls, remote-performance-management tools, and a means of optimizing the performance of a tool remotely.

Spotlight on Emerging Trends

A series of “Emerging Trends” panel luncheons held on the second day allowed conference participants to learn about topics that are predicted to positively affect data collection and management in the next 5 to 10 years. The first session, on model-centric vs. data-centric surveillance techniques, brought together subject matter experts from operating companies and service providers to discuss ways in which fast loop, data-centric approaches to real-time production operations could be integrated with the slower loop of model-based asset optimization.

The second session highlighted the history, technologies, and current example applications of using predictive analytics to enable timely operational decisions from a myriad of data sources. The third session featured a panel discussion on high-performance computing, with a focus on emerging technical and application trends, as well as experiences from other industries with similar challenges to provide attendees with new ideas on how to better implement such systems.