ICT

Oilfield of the Future

a report by

Paul Helm

Synopsis

While striving to realise the proposed value of x-fields (digital oilfield of the future), the continual development and deployment of new technologies, techniques and processes will place a growing demand on information technology (IT) to facilitate rapid introduction while maintaining a cost-effective, agile model. To be agile in the face of growing commercial pressures, growing worldwide demands and increasingly hostile and marginal environments requires todays exploration and production (E&P) organisations to follow a roadmap to become adaptive enterprises. An effective response to minimising the negative (that is, cost) impact of change is to focus on flexibility in infrastructure technologies as the basis on which new process and technology can be integrated seamlessly. This technique has already been used extensively internally within at least one company, as well as with numerous customers across multiple industries.
Offset of Technology Impact

common implementation platform, reducing complexity of integration and exploitation, whereas standardisation, both of platform and processes, leads to reduced management and operational overhead costs. Change invariably incurs cost. Adopting an adaptive approach, however, and the creation of an environment capable of embracing change quickly offsets the cost of change by providing a low latency in value return. So in pushing for an adaptive operating environment, control is exercised through the often orthogonal needs of faster, richer and cheaper.
Faster

Faster involves the drive to realtiming or righttiming of the enterprise. The ability to capture, deliver and act appropriately on information rapidly, either through automation or through notification of appropriate personnel, is necessary. Faster spans the realtime capture and display of field parametric data from production equipment through to shared immersive visual activities between office and field personnel. Faster also applies to informed decision-making. The shorter the latency between the event triggering a decision, assembling the pertinent facts and supporting information and executing on the decision, the faster cost is avoided and thus benefits are realised. Identifying and assembling the correct, complete information, in the right context, often from disparate sources and across multiple operating companies, is the challenge. For example, informed decisions on the viability of ageing assets, remote support for realtime drilling operations, realtime visibility of produced oil in water for environmental compliance or the optimised staging of spares in field support operations all require access to current realtime information. Furthermore, that information has to be available in a meaningful form, by the appropriate people to pay rich dividends in increased uptime, reduced environmental impact, compliance and yield.

Few technologies, even when they are implemented broadly, require or trigger a radical restructuring of infrastructure and support. When taken as a constant; however, new technology or technique introductions can soon stretch supporting infrastructure to the breaking point. The introduction of new technology and the data/information generated creates a further layer of legacy that needs to be integrated, managed and exploited. Designing for every possible outcome is impossible; however, designing infrastructure for agility, with the drive towards a more adaptive enterprise, is a necessity. E&P organisations deploying x-field technology have to address a core set of foundation objectives for success. In addition to the core values delivered from new technologies and techniques, it is critically important to deliver on the principles of simplification and standardisation. Simplification of infrastructure and architecture provides for a

Paul Helm is the Manager of Collaborative Business Architecture for Hewlett Packard (HP) Manufacturing Industries. He joined HP in 1994 in the European Mainframe Alternative Program and then moved into Professional Services, where he was District Manager in the UK, responsible for Manufacturing and Corporate Accounts. He worked in HP Labs on technology-driven new business opportunities, was the European Internet programme Manager, and entered into the current manufacturing group as a lead in world-wide e-procurement and supply chain. Recently his focus has been on collaborative business infrastructure, solutions that create secure, agile collboration across an enterprise value chain. Mr Helm has a rich background in manufacturing starting in the oil industry, initially in exploration and later in offshore production. He worked for five years for a shipbuilding and engineering company in systems, business process re-engineering and information technology. Mr Helm has a Graduate Degree in Geophysics from Leicester University, UK.

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BUSINESS BRIEFING: EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION: THE OIL & GAS REVIEW 2004

ICT

Richer

Richer information, in depth, quality and quantity from both source and derived data, provides the basis for enhanced operations. Shared visual, context-based portal and mobile technologies enable access to and exploitation of information, knowledge and experience by providing virtual support for tactical, operational and strategic decisions on asset life-cycle. Increased quantity of information can, however, be a doubleedged sword. The volume of raw sourced and derived data can potentially overwhelm the recipient, both human and system-based. This results in a situation where the real signal is camouflaged in noise. Increasingly, collaboration with third-party service providers results in a need to view information and status across extended value chains, not only within the enterprise but also across numerous external organisations. Access to this information when required, on demand, requires more than technology solutions; it requires a trust mechanism protecting both parties. Techniques and technology developed in financial trading, collaborative design and supply chain in manufacturing all have a roll to play in exploiting collaboration in E&P. The introduction of new sensor and tagging technologies, motes, radio frequency identification (RFID) and telematics are generating vast quantities of data for realtime and offline analysis identifying immediate and longerterm process improvements. This added technology places immense demands on traditional IT infrastructures and products.
Cheaper

organisations. Few operations are outsourced and forgotten. The need for visibility of end-to-end value chains then needs to co-ordinate and manage deliverables across multiple organisations, whether in oilfield logistics or field service. In addition, support requires the ability to define, deploy and modify collaborative processes rapidly, securely and effectively. One approach is to collaborate operations through agile infrastructure solutions. The approach is designed to operate on industry standard hardware and software, and leverages existing IT systems while delivering a platform for rapid deployment of new collaborative processes across and between enterprises. By designing a scaleable, configurable and ultimately flexible core collaboration infrastructure, many x-fields data and process requirements can be met, ranging from realtime streaming data capture and process execution, to business-to-business (B2B) extensible mark-up language (XML) hubs, analytics, monitoring and alerts, workflow management and mobile solutions, to context-sensitive portals.
Security

Managing costs in a change environment, such as that seen in x-fields, is an on-going challenge. Innovation drives change and change often layers costs onto existing operations. The counter is standardisation of process and technology linked to simplification of support. Uncertainty in predicting resource requirements is resulting in new demandbased resource provision for variable load IT environments delivering value by reducing complexity of support, speed of deployment, rate of adoption and ultimately increasing return on investment.
x-Field Collaboration

No discussion on increased reliance on technology is complete without addressing concerns over security. Increasing demands to collaborate internally and with third parties results not only in the sharing of commercially sensitive information over public networks, but also with outsourced management and operation of field assets. These operations are increasingly being exposed to potentially hostile action. Not only is commercial sensitivity high on the agenda, but with potential access via public networks to command and control systems, the potential for physical compromise of assets is growing. Fundamental to the successful operation of any enterprise in any industry is that of secure, robust IT.
Summary

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Collaboration is a broad description for many levels of sharing and co-operative working extending from shared whiteboard and desktop through to extended business processes and data-structured operating across many independent third-party

The benefit derived from adaptive enterprise principles in x-field development is the ability to react quickly to potentially disruptive change by minimising the risk of technological mismatch. The adaptive framework discussed in this article allows the deployment of enhanced technology and collaborative working practices quickly realising accelerated time to value from investments. Whether enabling brownfield assets for remote monitoring and management, delivering on compliance reporting for legislative bodies or rapidly creating a secure environment of active collaboration between E&P, oilfield service and operating companies, this adaptive enterprise delivers a low-risk, flexible, agile infrastructure with high return on IT.

BUSINESS BRIEFING: EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION: THE OIL & GAS REVIEW 2004

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2004 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P .