Dej November.Qxp 10/11/2006 13:52 Page 1

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November /December 2006 Issue 4

Schlumberger Information Solutions’ Global Forum in Paris - defining the next stage of oil and gas software Managing real time data POSC - relaunched as Energistics dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:52 Page 2

Game Changing E&P Results

Know how.

Put all the pieces together. Achieve breakthrough team performance with Schlumberger Information Solutions. Avocet* Integrated Asset Modeler software. “Resolved discrepancies in simulations and saved tens of millions USD on upfront facilities cost.” SPE paper 90976. Petrel* software. “Sidetracked lateral wells through the predicted high-quality reservoir and enhanced average production by 3,000 bbl/d in each well.” Hardy Oil and Gas. ECLIPSE* software through rapid response services. “Made critical field development decisions in a tight timeframe while achieving operational expenditure and activity goals.” BG Group. Petrel software. “Accurately visualized the geometry of a complex fault system and drilled the second most productive basement well in Vietnam's history.” Hoan Vu JOC. Experience a whole new level of effectiveness.

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Contents Schlumberger Information Solutions Global Forum Our report from Schlumberger Information Solutions' Global Forum in Paris September 11-14. Have we defined how future oil and gas IT systems will 2 work? Olivier Le Peuch Schlumber Information Solutions' president explains 3 Nov/Dec 2006 Issue 4 the company's vision for helping staff achieve 'step-change' in performance using software Digital Energy Journal 213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK CIO Panel www.digitalenergyjournal.com Schlumberger hosted a panel discussion with IT managers from Pioneer, Tel +44 207 510 4935 Occidental, Romgaz, ExxonMobil and Chevron, to look at obstacles and accel- 4 Fax +44 207 510 2344 erators of oil and gas IT take-up Editor Chevron, Statoil, Shell, TNK-BP, Total, Ecopetrol, BG Karl Jeffery Speakers from Chevron, Statoil, Shell,TNK-BP,Total, 5-8 [email protected] Ecopetrol and BG talked about how their companies are Technical editor getting value with different kinds of IT and where they are going with it Keith Forward [email protected] Schlumberger’s plans Production, design and circulation Schlumberger makes a tie-up with Intel, Cisco, BT; pres- Katerina Jeffery ents its ideas for how software can co-ordinate people's work, and how future [email protected] information 9 Advertising sales management might work David Jeffries Only Media Ltd Software 1 Santley Street, London SW4 7QA Reorganising national oil companies 16 Tel 44 207 733 1199 Many giant fields operated by national oil companies Fax 44 207 733 1615 have significantly lower recovery factors than fields with [email protected] advanced reservoir management elsewhere. Hamish Wilson from Paras Consulting gives some advice on set- Digital Energy Journal is published ting about improving the situation on print 8 times a year, supported by a free website and email news service We cover information technology and communications in upstream POSC - relaunched as Energistics oil and gas production, The Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium has 17 drilling / completions and exploration. re-energised itself with a new name - Energistics. Also a new brand image, revitalised vision and mission. We Each issue of Digital Energy Journal is mailed met CEO Randy Clark at a recent seminar in Aberdeen to 2000 oil and gas executives, as well as distributed at major trade shows such as ATCE, Petex, Digital Energy and Intelligent Energy. Communications and Monitoring Subscriptions: GBP 195 a year for 8 issues.To Real time data subscribe, please contact circulation manager US company OSISoft has got the closest anybody has to solving Katerina Jeffery on the emerging problem of how to manage endless streams of real time data. 21 [email protected], We talked to director of product marketing Gregg LeBlanc Digital Energy Journal, 213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ. Alternatively you can subscribe Subsea fibre online at www.digitalenergyjournal.com A subsea fibre optics network is being installed in the Gulf of Mexico, and likely to be installed in offshore West Africa 22 Improving your computer network Tim Everitt, of oil and gas networks company YR20, explains the main steps to making your network, faster, more reliable and more secure, and what oil 24 and gas companies are doing

Automation Front cover: M Thyagaraj, chief information Building an intelligent well officer of ONGC, poses a Guy Vachon, Jaedong Lee and Patricia Vega, of Baker Hughes' Optimisation question to the CEO panel at Schlumberger Information Solutions' annual Solutions Group (Production Quest) explain how to set about making a well 28 global forum in Paris in September 'intelligent' and how it works. Photo courtesy of Schlumberger

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Software SIS Global Forum 2006 Our report from the Schlumberger Information Solutions' Global Forum in Paris on Sept 11-14

igital Energy Journal was invited Integrated operations means that you can around the world. to Schlumberger Information see likely locations and quantities of oil As you would expect Schlumberger Solutions' (SIS) annual Global (technical information), and how much it Information Solutions is providing prod- Forum in Paris on September will cost to get that oil out (business infor- ucts, services and partnerships to help oil 11-14,D to hear the latest stories from both and gas companies with all these four mation) on the same screen. Schlumberger and its customers about Integrated operations means that you stages. how they are moving ahead with their can see your whole company's operations For the first stage, it has formed a part- efforts to achieve integrated operations. at any scale you like, zooming in and out nership with Intel and CISCO, to develop There seems to be a convergence of like on Google Earth.You can see how secure and reliable wireless communica- opinion in the industry about what we much your entire company produced last tions systems on rigs, which make it much want to achieve and how to achieve it. year, or see how much a specific well spent easier to install instruments which can To steal some examples from Schlumb- on its last workover. gather data and feed it into the corporate erger's Olivier Germain, integrated opera- Getting everything working together, data network, and enable personnel to tions means that if a rig becomes free at a Mr Germain said, is like solving a Rubics access their own corporate intranets with- date ten days earlier than anticipated, cube. It's tricky, and takes a bit of trial and out being able to see anyone else's. everybody's activities can be rescheduled error, but ultimately it can be done. For the second stage, Schlumberger has so that drilling can start ten days earlier. Firstly you have to gather the data.This a data management partnership with IT means sensors, data communications infra- company Infosys, primarily to focus on inte- structure (wireless / satellite / fibre), soft- grating data with different software appli- ware to make it easy to input the data and cations, including sorting out unstructured employees that are happy to use it. data. Secondly all of your data needs to be For the third stage, Schlumberger good, and in standardised electronic for- already has a range of software tools and mats, including your historic data. All the platforms which can help people collabo- kilometres of well logs have to go into a rate, such as Petrel, which can bring geolog- database. ical model data from a range of different Thirdly you need software applications sources, and DecisionPoint, a platform oil which can take data out of the different companies can use to build online tools to databases, even if they are on computer co-ordinate people's activities and present systems, and present it in a way people them with the data they need. want to use it, and take people from screen For the fourth stage, Schlumberger has to screen from one task to the next one. embarked on a marketing campaign with To do this you need an intimate under- the tagline 'breakthrough team perform- standing of how people normally work ance,' emphasising that if staff use these together, so the software supports work tools, their performance can reach a new processes that people feel comfortable level. We are promised further develop- with, rather than tells them to do some- ments in future to make software which thing they don't want to do. people embrace more readily. Fourthly you need people who are So we have a clear path forward. happy to work with the system, and under- Meanwhile, bear in mind the thoughts of Joel Nana Kontchou, VP Europe and Africa, SIS, Schlumberger Information Solutions' head was master of ceremonies at the SIS Global Forum stand that it is trying to help them co-ordinate their activities and save them time, not of marketing Mike Benjamin, that the soft- (above) ware developments of the past 20 years Attentive delegates at Schlumberger Information give orders from a computer server halfway Solutions' annual Global Forum" (below)

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have taken us backwards in many ways. People today communicate a great deal meeting personally, and people can be by e-mail and instant messenger, and have much more nervous in person-to-person less reason to get to know one another communication and less confident making much less personally than they did in the decisions. past. Collaboration tools developed so far The continuous bombardment of mes- have not been entirely satisfactory either, sages means that people never give their he said. full attention to anything. People today are expected to absorb a "There's been a mixed lot of information, but it means that everybody becomes a generalist. record of success with col- So the challenge is to find a way to bring laboration centres. Most back the natural team process which was present in 1985 before software came companies say - they along, he said, but at the same time doing things faster and better. haven't worked out to the Meanwhile - it might be too early to say, but there seems to be a common name degree we thought they emerging for all of this, with representa- would," saidMr Benjamin. tives of Chevron, Schlumberger and Statoil all using the term 'integrated operations' to Olivier le Peuch, president, Schlumberger Information Another less desirable result of software describe the digital oil and gas field. Solutions implementations to date is that it makes it easier for people to have a general aware- Olivier le Peuch "Reach a new level of per- ness of many subjects, but this means there Olivier Le Peuch, president of Schlumberger formance using are fewer specialists. "You dilute your Information Systems, spoke about how oil expertise when you spread it about too and gas personnel can achieve a new level software” - Olivier Le much," he said. of performance (a 'step-change') by team- An undesirable by-product of software work supported by best use of the latest Peuch, president of SIS systems so far is that they have generated technology. Mr Le Peuch said that optimising produc- large amounts of unstructured data, and The box, featured in Schlumberger's tion is "gaining a lot of attention," including now many oil and gas companies face the adverts, represents the industry's current monitoring equipment and wells to ensure challenge of cleaning it all up so it can be predicament, he said, bound by a formida- everything is operating at optimum capaci- used. ble (and familiar) set of challenges. A lot of the software so far has just auto- “To break out of the box, we need ty. The challenge here is that an enormous mated the manual methods people were 'breakthrough team performance," he said. used to, without coming up with new and "Technology alone cannot cut it." amount of data is generated by the monitoring devices, and software is needed to better ways of doing things, he said. Mr Le Peuch described a few case stud- On the positive side, Mr Benjamin talked ies where he believes Schlumberger has manage it, so people don't have to manage it manually. about how most oil and gas software can helped companies achieve breakthrough run on a PC today, so users do not need team performance. Schlumberger is also involved in Statoil's Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) project, which two computers on their desk, one for office Schlumberger worked together with applications and one for specialist oil and seismic exploration company Western has a $300m research budget. "Statoil wants 55 per cent recovery from subsea gas software. "Software usability and com- Geco, together with BT, and got a record puting power has increased substantially," data transmission speed by satellite from a wells and 70 per cent recovery from platform completed fields," he said. "Achieving he said. seismic vessel. Oil and gas companies are not necessari- In another project with BG, the company this goal is like mission impossible. But there is a commitment from Statoil to ly seeing the benefits of today's faster com- provided IT infrastructure outsource service puters and what today's software can do. in partnership with HP in Paris. It performed deploy new technology as it becomes available." "SIS has started developing software that 1.5 years of computer processor work in 6 moves away from traditional methods - for weeks. "We analysed all the data in 2 Mike Benjamin, Schlumberger example you can extract a fault plane in an months," he said. "We call it 'ready to run'". Mike Benjamin, vice president of marketing instant," he said. "These powerful capabili- Schlumberger is building remote moni- with Schlumberger Information Systems, ties are not widely adopted. Petrel hasn't toring centres - so far it has 30 monitoring emphasised how 'breakthrough team per- taken off to the extent that we think it centres monitoring over 60 wells. One of formance' can only be achieved with a bet- should." the biggest is for Mexican oil and gas com- ter emphasis on the people who use the It is getting much easier to collaborate pany PEMEX, where it is modelling 6 wells software. with people you are not in the same room at once from one centre. The challenge is to make software which with, and easier to integrate technical and The remote monitoring centres receive helps people work together as naturally as business data, he said. data from the rigs by satellite communica- they did before computers arrived, but do What people want, he said, is "simple, tions and fibre, and have collaboration things faster and better. flexible and adaptable software that rooms. The paradox is that in the pre-computer works," supported by "transparent data Mr le Peuch presented a case study of era, people often worked more comfortably handling and industry standards." how Schlumberger helps BG remotely with each other than they do now. "In 1985, Schlumberger's concept of 'people monitor a gas field offshore Tunisia. "We people knew each other and worked face ready software' is closely aligned with that deliver line information to the decision to face. It was a lot more effective. Decisions of its partner company Microsoft, and the maker," he said. "It reduces the time they were made quite quickly," he said. company believes that making software spend on aggregating data.They got the By contrast, tools such as e-mail make it more 'people ready' is essential to achieve BG CEO Innovation award." possible for people to work together with- the next generation of 'breakthrough team out getting to know each other or even performance', he said.

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CIO Panel Schlumberger held a panel for oil company "We struggle with collaboration. I think its development - we believe that's our chief information officers, with representa- going to be one of our biggest challenges." lifeblood," she said. "You will see us contin- tives from Pioneer Natural Resources, "Data management is a huge challenge ue to pursue our own proprietary technolo- Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Romgaz for us," he said. gy." (state oil company of Romania), ExxonMobil When asked what he thinks is the "We want to improve efficiency and and Chevron, to examine the obstacles and biggest prize that can be achieved from IT effectiveness of upstream personnel. We accelerators of oil and gas industry IT take- over the next 3 years, Mr Moore said he did- want efficient ways to move from explo- up. n't think there is just one. ration to development to production. We're First to speak was Don Moore, CIO of "Its taking numerous amounts of data focussed on standardising software, hard- Occidental, who said that the current focus is and turning it into information in ways we ware and data models," she said. on improving the efficiency of production, haven't seen," he said. "Information pro- "We use IT to help us integrate and auto- rather than the efficiency of exploration or vides faster decisions." mate," she said. "We can take best practises drilling. "Sometimes there's a thin line between and corporate knowledge and embed "We're focussed on meeting production innovation and chaos," he said. "We want these in the work processes. goals, and helping company management innovation in a controlled way." "Accomplishing this on a company wide achieve its business goals," he said. Mr Moore said that he didn't think the IT basis is quite a daunting task. It needs a Occidental is putting a lot of emphasis department is the same organisation the partnership with the business - ensure on remote surveillance tools. "We think company had a few years ago. "It's becom- we're capturing the appropriate corporate that's key to the business, being able to ing so integrated with business processes," knowledge." manage the business anywhere, anytime," he said. "I hate to talk about IT as a separate Our upstream presidents are quite he said. issue." clever at getting people to create a vision Occidental wants to provide information The question of how IT adds value to an of where we want to go," she said. about its wells to authorised people over oil company is similar to the question of When asked how Exxon defines the digi- the internet. how drilling adds value to an oil company, tal oilfield, Ms Reece said "I think everybody Particular challenges are standardising he said. "The answer is, we are the compa- has a different idea of what the digital oil- on software, supporting collaboration and ny," he said. field is. We look at where IT enablement data management, he said. Cindy Reece, manager of upstream techni- adds value to our organisation." cal support with ExxonMobil, talked Exxon's "Collaboration is easy to initiatives to prepare itself for the future. It "We've got to have a busi- has a program called EM2010, which Ms talk about and very hard Reece leads, aiming to create the subsur- ness case to show there is face working environment for the year to deliver,"saidDonMoore. 2010. value, and how does the "Exxon is very focussed on research and value creation fit in that business strategy.” Schlumberger put together a high-powered CEO panel to talk about the future of the oil and gas industry. From left to right: Tony Hayward, CEO and managing director, BP; Ali Al-Shammari, deputy managing director, Kuwait Oil Company; Ing. Carlos Arnoldo Morales Gil, VP exploration and production, PEMEX; Fahad Al-Moosa, VP drilling and workovers, Aramco; James T. Hackett, chairman, president and CEO, Anadarko; and Andrew Gould, chairman and CEO of Schlumberger. In the screen is session moderator Dan Domeracki, Schlumberger's VP marketing and technology

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“Our company is very focussed on the bot- "Let's not lose focus on the people that need to run integrated operations, and plan- tom line, delivering and demonstrating make it happen," he said. "Let's not lose ning accordingly, he said. value." focus on the human process." Chevron sees its i-field activities in four "Most of our professionals are doing too levels, of instrumentation (level 1), real time much work which is not at their level, work Chevron's i-Field information from the instruments (level 2), which could be automated with IT, so peo- Mike Hauser, product manager for Chevron's real time intervention using the information ple can do more creative work," he said. i-field project, explained how Chevron's 'i- available (level 3), and transforming the way When asked how Exxon evaluates new field' (integrated operations) project has the company operates (level 4). A further technologies, she said that Exxon asks itself evolved over the past 6 years. level was added in 2006, the IT infrastructure questions like, "Does it fit within our archi- "2000 was the start of the root thinking," (level 0). tecture? What are the implications of mak- he said. "We only had sensors at the time". Chevron has been working on data working that change? "In 2001 we had 2 major projects - oil- flow systems for two and a half years, he "Each of us needs to be focussed on field automation - mostly surface focussed. said. Now it has workflow systems which can demonstrating to management the value We looked at real time production and co-ordinate people's activities in "surveil- of IT," she said. "Our IT spend is going up resources optimisation, in a 50:50 joint ven- lance, monitoring optimisation, analysis, significantly." ture with Schlumberger. We identified key work process change," he said. It is often not plausible to try to calcu- workflows." Mr Hauser stressed that integrating dif- late the return on an IT investment, since "In 2002 i-field was born. We got the pro- ferent activities does not happen by itself. many of the benefits are seen in the whole posal to put it all together. We didn't target "Integration is not a natural act - it takes business, she said. exploration and drilling, they were pretty deliberate effort," he said. "An i-field project "We have to make sure we're using efficient and not a lot of room for optimisa- is optimising the whole asset." appropriate management techniques to tion. But with managing the asset, there make sure we deliver on cost and sched- were opportunities." Jan Richard Sagli, Statoil ule," she said. "In 2003 we pulled our team together, Jan Richard Sagli, project manager, subsea with 18 people. We surveyed the landscape. improved oil recovery production Tom Halbouty, VP and CIO with Pioneer Natural We were in absorption mode, like a optimisation, Statoil Research Centre spoke Resources, said that the company has spent sponge. We wanted to see who was doing about Statoil's 'Subsea Improved Oil many years 'democratising information' in things as opposed to talking about it. We Recovery Program' (SIOR), which aims to its organisation. worked with asset teams to develop the achieve 70 per cent recovery from rig oper- It has a computer system which links opportunities. We started building relation- ated fields and 55 per cent recovery from together 30 different types of data, and can ships with our partners. subsea fields. "This is something like an create different workflows around it. "Our In 2004, Chevron finalised an 'inner cir- impossible mission," he said. model has not been one size fits all," he cle' of partners it was going to work with, In connection with the program, Statoil said. including Schlumberger, SAIC, Epsis, has formed a 3 year partnership with "We have to focus on innovation that Accenture, Microsoft and the University of Schlumberger Information Solutions, to adds value to the organisation, not just Southern California (USC), where Chevron develop new production optimisation tech- innovation that's good," he said. "When has launched a master's program in smart nologies. innovations occur that help you see the oilfield technologies. "We freely pull com- Statoil's project will look at optimising subsurface better you must adopt those petences from these companies," he said. both over the life of the field, and optimising immediately. We spend a lot of time look- In 2005, Chevron launched three more i- on a day by day basis (looking at optimising ing at new innovation." field projects, in a range of different oil- the drilling, production and process facili- "I think the most important thing you fields, featuring tight gas, steam drive, ties). can do in an organisation is enable the deepwater, shallow water and waterflood. The goals are to develop methodology, right people to make the right choices," he technology and IT solutions, developing a said. "You can create systems with work- “By 2006, every Chevron set of updated, integrated models of the flows. But there are foundation things you subsurface and topside facilities, which can have to do to get to that point." asset had made a decision be used to optimise things. "[The value is] in the ability to tie infor- that they wanted their mation in the company together," he said. "We believe the main "If you build the right architecture and have own i-field strategy, which results will be a powerful good data, deliver to the individual things they were in full control that help them make the right decisions, it's solution of production and a competency that enables a company to of,” says Mr Hauser be more competitive - they can beat com- process optimisation," petitors to a decision." "We build relationships with the asset Mr Halbouty said that one definition of teams, that was one of the three criteria of Mr Sagli said innovation could be 'creative activity which success. We want to enable willing assets to can be commercialized.' "Innovation is the The project will look at research, develop- reach the level of i-field activities required ment and deployment of value added tech- ability to think up new ways of approach- to accomplish their business plans." ing the problems," he said. nologies in both of these areas, along with Mr Hauser stressed the importance of the development of workflows to integrate "Innovation precedes standardisation. putting together technology systems You have to allow innovation to occur in a short term and long term production work. around the needs of specific assets. "All our The project will include testing new tech- controlled manner," he said. i-field projects are asset based project, not "We really haven't seen the tip of the ice- nologies in the field, mainly in 'smart wells' technology based projects," he said. with good instrumentation and communica- berg in how far these things are going to The current focus is on putting together move," he said. tion infrastructure. automated workflows, systems simulation Statoil will also focus on putting together Anselmo Tati, IT director for upstream and and modelling. It is also building artificial downstream Latin America, Chevron, said reproducible production workflows.There intelligence systems, to be balanced with will be role based systems, where people that people are spending 1.5 to 3 workdays human decision making. every month looking for information. "7000 access and input different data into the sys- Chevron is also working out what kind tem, depending on what their role is. hours of productivity is just lost." of organisational capability it is going to

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Jan Richard Sagli, "It will help with team collaboration, no TNK-BP eventually purchased Petrel licens- project manager, hassle data management.You can get data es for 91 seats. It will be moving all of its subsea improved oil fast easy and clean when you need it." data models from Roxar, which it was using recovery produc- previously, into Petrel. tion optimisation, The system created is role based, so peo- Statoil Research ple interact with it differently depending "Petrel met our requests more than Centre on their role.The system has 3 roles - proj- other technology and has met expecta- ect owner, contributor and reviewer. tions," he said. "We thought Petrel had the Ms Williams demonstrated how the sys- best cross-discipline functionality, and we tem could work, starting from a team believed we would get functionality leader ('project owner') working out that improvements over time." there will be a shortfall in production in There were some suggestions for 2009. improvement. "Some of our fussier geo- "We want a system which defines roles," he The first screen shows a list of wells physicists think there's room for better said. which have been drilled but not yet pro- functionality in the high end," he said. "The There will be some research on optimi- duced, and who has done the work on production / well data functionality is prob- sation technology, and testing out and them.You can search and filter them. ably not as well integrated as we would making new ways to build mathematical Once you have decided on which proj- like." models. "Perhaps we have to think differ- ect you want to go for, you can put togeth- Mr Sutter said that many people use the ently when designing models, thinking er a Gantt chart, showing how the project software before going to the training, more about lifecycle models," he said. will be put together, and what will happen "much to the annoyance of Schlumberger." Statoil will standardise on using at which time. "They say give me a license and I'll find Microsoft for its office applications. Then you can access the well logs from out how it works - and they do. I can use it, Statoil will put a lot of effort in process the system, and input them into Petrel, it's not that difficult if I can use it," he said. control, an area it has a lot of experience in, using OpenSpirit to carry the data. he said. "We have some experience with The computer remembers who did what Herb Yuan, Shell using that technology on Statoil fields. at every stage, so there is an audit trail. "We'll do it in Snorre B; it has a lot of instru- Shell wants to start small with these mentation." kinds of workflow projects, rather than try Statoil would like a software company to to roll it out to the whole company at once. develop simplified reservoir models, which It is being gentle on trying to encourage can provide a less detailed but faster model people to use this kind of system and of the reservoir. "Eclipse models can run for explaining the benefits, rather than forcing hours and weeks - it's too slow," he said. them to use it. "We're saying we have some "We would like faster models we can use to solutions we think can help," she said. "They see the trends." go back and show the teams how this can impact them." Jevon H Williams, Shell One challenge is that geoscientists to Jevon H Williams, project manager smart not take kindly to being, as they see it, fields, hydrocarbon development, Shell, managed by a computer system. "People talked about how Shell has developed see geoscience as a creative environment workflow tools for managing smart fields and don't like project management," she projects, on Schlumberger's 'DecisionPoint' said. "But we need to bring some vigour in platform. because so much money is involved." "Schlumberger has been our partner of choice since 2004," she said. Al Sutter, TNK-BP Shell started the project in 2004, looking Al Sutter from TNK-BP talked about his for ways to improve collaboration between company's implementation of teams, in particular making it easier for use- Schlumberger's Petrel software for manag- Herb Yuan, manager of International Exploration ful data to be shared between different ing reservoir data and integrating the dif- and Production IT and information management people, and reducing the amount of time ferent models it had. with Shell people spent searching for data. TNK-BP is a company formed from the merger of BP's Russia oil assets and the oil Herb Yuan, manager of international "We wanted to get geosci- and gas assets of Alfa Access Renova Exploration and Production IT and informa- Group, with upstream operations in West tion management with Shell talked about entists focussing on doing and East Siberia, and Volga-Urals region of the challenges of standardising innovation, Russia. two things which would seem impossible more technical work, not The company has data for 17,000 wells, to reconcile. searching for data," Ms and wanted geological models for all of its Mr Yuan is a board member of data main fields by 2008. "We have very poor management organisation OpenSpirit, and Williams said. and inconsistent subsurface data," he said. was previously chair of the board of POSC "We want standard agile and integrated (Petrotechnical Open Software It wanted to develop a 'smart collaborative applications that our staff are motivated to Corporation). He has been with Shell for 29 environment,' where teams can share infor- use.The geology reservoir model is our key years. mation with each other, including 3D mod- piece of business," he said. Four years ago, he was given the task of els.They can also track the level of uncer- TNK-BP looked at several different soft- standardising upstream IT applications in tainty of data as it moves from application ware applications before choosing Petrel, Shell. Mr Yuan said he had thought a great to application, track risk, and share knowl- with criteria including the operating plat- deal about how to reconcile the need to edge regionally and globally. form, Russian and English capability, techni- use innovative technologies, with the need Shell wanted to develop what it calls a cal functionality, ease of use / workflow, to standardise IT, but decided he could do 'blueprintable' solution, which can be used pace of software development. both at once. "There is a virtual circle around the company. "By having a consis- "We tried to involve as many staff as we between innovation and standardisation," tent easy way for teams to work, it will lead could in the evaluation," he said. Over 100 he said. to consistent and repeatable modelling TNK-BP employees have participated in the Mr Yuan suggested that the industry is process," she said. evaluation. slowly moving from one geared around

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reservoir models to one geared around and joint ventures and want to share data. electricity shutdowns, and there are a high data. "What we are facing more and more is "We have to have infrastructure in place number of wells with rod or pump failure. increased transparency - that's a turn- to share data," he said, "when today we are The workover rigs have a poor efficiency. around coming with the next generation of partners, tomorrow we are competitors." "We have a mature field developed with people that's going to work in this space," Previously, companies often gave trust- conventional technology," he said. "We can he said. ed employees accounts to enter IT systems apply new technologies to create value." "Collaboration and integration is much from another company. But this was often Ecopetrol wants to increase production more challenging," he said. "What we're not managed well. "Maybe they leave the with horizontal and multilateral drilling, looking at is problems bigger than one company, no-one knows what accounts he and improving the injection system. company can handle. Learning to collabo- has," he said. The company chose 50 wells, represent- rate is not in our (Shell's) genes." said Efforts were made to create an infra- ing 60 per cent of field production, for an Mr.Yuan structure for 3rd party connections, but it 'e-field pilot'. was hard to make it work properly, he said. Tools were implemented for monitoring Dominique Bazin, Total Getting the data security right could under-performing wells, providing an alert Dominique Bazin, geoscience data manager mean taking up to 2 years to set up a com- that the well may need maintenance. It can with Total, talked about Total's information pany joint venture, because of the need to quickly identify electrical problems with management project in Nigeria, to put all of create a completely new IT organisation to surface equipment. "We can extend the life its paper geological and production infor- manage it, which would be torn down of the sucker rod system and prevent mation into an electronic system, to make it when the work was complete. extensive well failures," he said. easier for people to find the data they want. Mr Tati sees the solution as 'federated Ecopetrol fitted control systems to the identity,' where oil companies develop a downhole pumps, to automatically opti- "People say, you spend 60 common system of staff identities.Then it mise them to achieve the desired produc- is easy to manage who gets access to tion or injection rate. per cent of your time which system at which time. There are tools to get wells started Chevron and Schlumberger are explor- much faster after power shutdown due to searching for and validat- ing this idea together, and a workshop on electricity failure. ing data and 40 per cent federated identity is being planned in There is a system to optimise the set- Brazil. "We are trying to see if we have more tings of the production and injection doing the study," she said. people to participate," he said. "We want to valves. talk about it at SPE." "The success of the project is driving Total had three databases; Finder, for Having a system like this means that Ecopetrol to extend the initiative to other numerical data; LogDB, for log databases; users only need to have one password. fields, he said. and eSearch for electronic documents. Once the computer has identified who Total wanted to build a tool on they are, it can allow them access to all the Khalil Lemkecher, BG Group Schlumberger's DecisionPoint software systems they have rights to. Khalil Lemkecher, a petroleum reservoir which would enable users to work with the engineer with BG Group in Tunisia, talked database in a useful fashion, for example about his use of Schlumberger's using DecisionPoint's geographical inter- "You have one single sign Production Data Management System face to enable users to select on a map on. It's a very seamless (PDMS). which wells they want to retrieve data for. BG's data management system covers Total scanned 1,300,000 pages, 26,000 approach we're thinking BG's operations in UK,Tunisia, Egypt, India, documents and data from 7,000 wells into Kazakhstan,Trinidad & Tobago and Canada. the system.This works out at 2km of shelves of. The user won't even The system takes data in real time from of paper, filling 83 offices.There is also 20 notice it. I think it's a the production facilities, terabytes of 2d seismic data. BG is using the Schlumberger DECIDE! A team of 26 people were working full really fantastic idea," said software to manage and monitor real time time on the project for 3 years, including production data. It can use the data to staff from Total,Total's Nigerian subsidiary Mr Tati analyse how well the production is going, EPNL, contractors and Schlumberger staff. including downtime analysis and monitor- Many people have to log on to three or The eReach software is designed to ing production losses. four different computer systems just to enable users to retrieve the documents The biggest value the software has access their data, and all this hassle will be they want within 3 clicks. achieved is in reducing the number of trips removed, he said. The database is secure, with all users which need to be made offshore, he said. The cost of setting up a federated iden- classified in 'user groups', with different "We have improved a lot our production tify scheme for the industry have been esti- rights to see and extract data. surveillance," he said. "We had better com- mated at $1m, with a multimillion dollar "We decided to implement a new manner munication with the offshore crew. We've cost per year to maintain the different to work," she said, "using common software been able to spot the problems. If we used identities. in an identical way." our old tools and take longer to know Total is now working on improving the Roberto Diaz, EcoPetrol where the problems are." security of the system, finding ways to stop Roberto Diaz, asset production manager The gas business has become much people from being able to download docu- with Colombia state-owned oil company more complex from a data management perspective, due to fluctuations in demand, ments onto memory sticks. Ecopetrol, spoke about his 'e-field' equip- In future,Total wants to be able to link blending between different gas streams, ment monitoring system, in particular the this drilling information with production and gas platforms starting to process oil, information. "We are ready to go beyond Casabe Field 280km North of Bogota, with he said. geoscience data," she said. "We will have 240 injection wells, which was discovered A Schlumberger representative, also production data management system in in the 1940s by Shell. It has 1.3bn barrels in involved in the presentation, explained 2007." place and 290m barrels have been pro- that the production data management sys- duced so far. tem is very complex. "We have to spend a Anselmo Tati, Chevron The field has many technical challenges, lot of time discussing with the IT people to Anselmo Tati, IT director for Latin America including sand control, collapsed casing implement these solutions," he said. "Don't with Chevron, talked about security issues and finding bypassed oil. underestimate the IT aspect, servers, fire- with the oil and gas industry, in particular A lot of production has been lost due to walls, interfacing, and networks." when companies enter into partnerships

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It was hard persuading personnel working (wireless communications of around 15m, out one being able to access the network for the various assets of the benefit of the such as Bluetooth;) wi-fi, with a range of of another.There can also be location system, and people often said 'no thanks, 500m outside (less inside) and WiMax, with based services, which enable a person's we're busy,' he said. a range of up to 50km. position on the rig to be tracked, for safety The wi-fi being installed on oilrigs is or security purposes. Fridtjov Øwre, Norway's Institute for 'enterprise grade,' very different to the wi-fi BT's Terry Adams explained how his Energy Technology which many people have tried at home and company is investing £200m a year in Fridtjov Øwre, research director at Norway's experienced connectivity problems with, developing a global robust data communi- Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), talked he said. cations network, carrying data in the multi- how Norway is using information technolo- A typical first mile technology is the Intel protocol label switching (MPLS) protocol. 'mote', he said, a self contained wireless gy tools to boost recovery. "We can guarantee there will also be a transmit / receive (transceiver) computer, Remote monitoring centres have been service and route that can handle your which can be wired to a sensor, such as a developed for the Ekofisk, Snow White, business traffic," he said. By 'guarantee', BT vibration monitor, and configured into a wi- Statfjord and Ørmen Lange fields, which means it promises at least 99.97 per cent fi network, so the data can be processed, monitor subsea systems, pipelines and the availability, and normally 99.98 per cent. compressed, and transmitted into the net- gas liquefaction process. Norway is keen to BT is currently extending the networks work. expand its remote monitoring capability. into Nigeria and Cameroon, and looking to The motes work in a mesh, which means Mr Øwre said he is keen to find a manu- provide fibre optic communications into that each one can communicate with the facturer of enormous screens for the Sakhalin, and across Russia. next one.This means that there can be mul- remote monitoring centres. "We want a The computer networks in BT's MPLS tiple routes for the data to take to the main screen 16m x 1.5m curved," he said. network are run by Cisco as a primary plat- server, and the network does not have any IFE has developed its own system for form and Juniper Networks as a secondary single point of failure.The data can reach displaying the data on the screens in the platform. BT has tools to measure how well the main server in a number of hops. monitoring centres, using graphs, not just the network is performing, and demon- Schlumberger envisages that the tech- showing raw data. "I am confident it will strate this. nology could be used to enable rapid help promote teamwork in the integrated BT is keen on developing 'presence' installation of sensor networks to monitor environment," he said. technologies, which are an evolution of equipment onboard the rig. Microsoft Messenger, e-mail and telephone. Having wireless networks onboard rigs is Instead of sending e-mails out into the "31 percent of Norway's much more flexible than the 'static environ- blue yonder, or trying different land line known resources are pro- ment' of cables - it is much easier to add numbers and paying expensive mobile new equipment whenever you want with- phone roaming rates to speak to someone, duced," he said. "36 per out the trouble of installing cable. It is also you know if the person you want to talk to safer than cables. is in front of a computer and available for cent of Norway is unex- The next level of wireless communica- voice calls, videoconferencing or instant plored. But a third of the tions is WiMax, with data communications messaging, and if so you can speak to them up to 50km. "We can do 50 km with the straight away however you like. unexplored area is in the right antennas," said Mr Grove-White. "We "Presence is a word Microsoft is using can do 50 mpbs. But not both at the same hugely," says Mr Adams. "You can have a Barents Sea," said Mr. time (50 kbps and 50km).The further you system which tells you if one of your part- Øwre go with WiMax, the lower the data rate ners is online, on the telephone, in a meet- will go." ing, you'll know if they're in an office or on Particular problems being experienced in a rig. Presence is enabling integration of the Barents Sea include icebergs which can Alastair Grove-White, audio and visuals." head of strategic drag 5m deep trenches on the sea bottom, BT is offering services to streamline cor- connectivity with porate networks, looking for ways to damaging any equipment which is installed Schlumberger reduce costs, bring about common tech- there. "You have to plan for this," he said. nologies and standard platforms, and use SIS, Intel, CISCO and BT enterprise applications. Schlumberger Information Systems works Olivier Germain, Schlumberger in partnership with BT, Intel and CISCO, to Olivier Germain, product champion, drilling develop data communications infrastruc- data management, Schlumberger ture, both onboard rigs and globally. Information Solutions, presented his idea of Schlumberger calls the wi-fi service on how a drilling operations management the rig the 'first mile'; with the 'second mile' solution could combine surveillance and being the connectivity between the rig and performance analysis, promising a solution the shore (fibre, VSAT or microwave line of Schlumberger which would help "manage and optimise sight microwave) and the third mile being has standardised on CISCO architecture for the performance of your present and future the international telecoms networks, such networks in the first mile, he said, because it operations in a collaborative and transpar- as BP's multiprotocol label switching makes it easier to manage the quality of ent way." (MPLS). service. "Providing managed quality of Mr Germain used the analogy of a The partnership is that Intel makes the service over wi-fi is not straightforward," he Rubics cube to explain that getting all the wireless chipsets, Cisco puts together the said. "We believe the CISCO solution is sec- different departments working together networks, Schlumberger does the site ond to none. takes a lot of trial and error, like doing a analysis and deployment and can put The security challenges are quite enor- Rubics cube, but ultimately it is possible to Schlumberger software on top, if required. mous, with highly sensitive data being make it work. "The first mile is often the biggest chal- communicated wirelessly. It is important to "You want the production department lenge," explained Alastair Grove-White, make sure that the data does not end up in to be aware of what the drilling depart- head of strategic connectivity with the wrong hands. ment is doing," he said. Schlumberger. "Conditions are not ideal for It is a challenge creating a network The ultimate solution, he suggested, running in cables." which employees from different compa- would be something like Google Earth, Technologies being used in the 'first nies, both working on the rig, can use, with- mile' include the personal area network

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where users can look at what is going on Mr Germain envisages that the software are going to need, what task will need to be from whatever height they like - they can could help co-ordinate people's activities. So completed and what needs to be done get a distant ('30,000 feet') view of a for example, if a rig suddenly becomes avail- next. large area, or see small areas in the same able 10 days earlier, everybody's schedules Microsoft is not just trying to persuade level of detail as if they were there. are automatically changed so that the rig people to buy Microsoft software, but it is Schlumberger has developed three can immediately be set to work on another also helping companies try to get more workflow tools, covering business surveil- project. value from what they already have, such as lance, asset and resources management. The person lodging the paperwork with SAP systems. The tools have been built on flow the government for the drilling can be noti- "If you're going to enable people you Schlumberger's Advanced Drilling fied that they have 5 days to complete the have to make sure they have access to the Package on its DecisionPoint webflow paperwork, not ten. data in a format they can use," he said. framework, which enables users to pull The challenge, one delegate said, is mak- Microsoft is taking security much more data from several different databases, ing data about the micro view (e.g. specific seriously than it has done in the past, he hosted on different computer systems, at wells) work together with data about the said. once, to get the view of what is going on macro view (e.g. company production that they need. plans). "We're not there yet," he said. It can be used, for example, to gener- "A few years ago Microsoft ate and monitor key performance indica- Dr Anthony Smith, Schlumberger thought of security as tors, such as for the number of accidents, Dr Anthony Smith, marketing manager, money spent and time. information management, with someone else's problem. You can examine all of these things at Schlumberger Information Solutions, pre- different levels, e.g. for the whole compa- sented Schlumberger's information man- Now they think its ny or for specific fields or wells. agement strategy. Microsoft's responsibility "As you drill down, your KPIs will "Visions are ten a penny - you need tac- change and get more precise," he said. tics to achieve the vision," he said. "You can to enable security,” said "As you get closer to your well you get achieve it through openness and innova- Charles Johnson more details, e.g. exact schedules.You tion, consulting, integration and delivery." can find out how fast drilling is taking Schlumberger Information Systems has Chevron and Schlumberger gave us some place and see the daily production four solution delivery teams in its informa- hardcore requirements but we have imple- reports. tion management department, working on mented them." Users can put together their own KPIs managed services; systems integration; con- In the 2007 version of Microsoft Office, if they like, for example if they want data sultancy; and technology / products. there will be more security tools. It will be for a certain list of wells. Managed services include project man- possible to send someone a document but Users can put together their own agement, managing structured / unstruc- stimulate that they can't save it or print it, alerts as well, for example if one week tured data, mapping / cartography and and they won't even be able to see it after a passes 20 per cent over budget, or if the technology watching. certain time. temperature or pressures go 10 per cent Mr Smith said that the information man- outside normal levels. agement requirements are much bigger for Steve Langdon, HP Users can compare data from differ- gas than oil, because there is the added Steve Langdon, chief technologist of HP's ent wells around the world, or see how complexity that the gas is much harder (or consulting division, and also chief technolo- the best wells were drilled.You can draw impossible) to store. gy officer of HP's high performance com- graphs of the history of a well, showing Mr Smith said that companies also need puting division, talked about how servers the production rates over time. to take environmental data management are developing. All of the data can be incorporated more seriously. "Computers are the most flexible tool into Petrel, so for example it is possible Schlumberger is working on 'intelligent' anybody has devised," he said. "Computers to show a geological models with the solutions, including neural networks, simula- are critical enablers to do things we couldn't cost of drilling different wells on the tion, optimisation and prediction. "The costs do any other way.They are fundamental to same screen. of this are huge, the benefits will be huge," what I'm trying to do." Olivier Germain, he said. Some oil and gas companies are starting product cham- "We should be able to change the way to see themselves as digital companies, he pion, drilling we look at it, so no-one says information said. data manage- management any more," he said. Mr Langdon talked about how super- ment, Charles Johnson, Microsoft computers are gradually being replaced by Schlumberger clusters of industry standard building block Charles Johnson, worldwide managing computers. director of manufacturing industry solutions So-called 'blade' computers are being with Microsoft, stressed that the software introduced, designed to be used in combi- demands of the oil and gas industry are nation with each other, which take up 50 much more difficult than industries where per cent less floor space, use 40 per cent everything is predictable and contained, less power and have 75 per cent less cables. such as a factory. The computers have fans which were He said he thought that the oil and gas originally developed for use on model aero- "As you get closer to industry represented the 'real world' planes.They are quiet and can be carefully because of its unpredictability. controlled. your well you get more "We think it's not about technology it's about people," he said, echoing the words details, e.g. exact sched- of Schlumberger's Mike Benjamin. "People ules. You can find out drive business outcomes." Because a day in the life of an oil and gas how fast drilling is tak- industry worker is unpredictable, it is very hard to create software tools to help people ing place and see the collaborate.You don't know what data they daily production reports.”

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Software Numerical Rocks - new rock analysis methods www.numericalrocks.com umerical Rocks, a company in clearer picture of what the rock is like than The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Trondheim, Norway, is develop- you can get from doing physical manual model simulates NMR responses and can ing computer tools which can measurements. plot magnetisation decay over time. work out rock properties (eg per- The technology has been approved by The Flow Simulation module can calcu- Nmeability, capillary pressure, resistivity), Statoil as an 'official tool', to use in everyday late the capillary pressure, relative perme- using just a thin sample of rock, rather than operations. Statoil will use it first of all to abilities, resistivity index. It can simulate having to take a whole core section and do test results generated by the Numerical what the rock looks like in 3D, and show endless measurements on it. Rocks software against its laborious manual how the rock will look like after primary From the digital model, you can work out calculations, and then ultimately use its drainage, imbibition (using water drive, to the properties of rock within hours, rather data in real decision making. fill the pores with water and push oil than weeks or months taking physical From the digital rock model, it is possi- out) and after secondary drainage. measurements.You also do not need to ble to make a drawing of the pore network, Numerical Rocks believes that the serv- extract such a large sample of rock. showing how fluid will flow through the ice can provide a greatly improved under- The technology works by building a rock, looking at the system from any standing of the pore structure and physics computer model of the rock, from the thin angle.There are four modules to the soft- of the rocks.You can also add better rock sample. ware. data to the reservoir simulation models, to The computer simulates the way the The Formation Resistivity Factor module improve the decisions you make about sandstone formed over millions of years, can calculate the electrical conductivity of what to do with the reservoir. with periods of sedimentation and com- the rock in all three directions. The company provides its version 1.0 paction, using high performance cluster The Absolute Permeability module can software package; it also provides a 2 day computing and 3D visualisation tech- measure the ability of the rock to transport course in using the technology, and how to niques; ultimately it can generate a much fluids, when only one fluid is present. calculate fluid flow parameters.

Numerical Rocks analyses a to model a cube of rock...... and analyses the pore model and derives a pore network for simulating how oil, gas and water thin section of a rock... will flow through the rock.This is the actual physical space (left) and a model of the space (right)

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Software

Ikon incorporates data and anisotropy effects. Ensuring that seismic inter- Roxar appoints electromagnetic pretation decisions are based on realistic rock properties Even Gjesdal as modelling (geology) reduces drilling risk. CFO www.ikonscience.com MTEM is a geophysical method that can determine, before drilling, whether deep UK oil and gas software company Ikon www.roxar.com underground reservoirs con- Science is partnering with Edinburgh- Even Gjesdal, tain hydrocarbons. It may also chief finan- based MTEM (multi-transient electro- be used to find hidden oil in cial officer of magnetic) to integrate electromag- mature producing fields. Roxar netic modelling and inversion into Leon Walker, CEO of MTEM Reservoir modelling and multiphase Norwegian oil and gas service Ikon's rock physics based modeller said, "Integrating our data with flowmeter company Roxar has company Bjørge ASA. He has a RokDoc. Ikon's software will add value appointed Even Gjesdal as chief BA in Economics from the for our clients by enabling us RokDoc provides geoscientists financial officer. Norwegian School of with an integrated environment to perform feasibility studies to Mr Gjesdal was acting CFO of Management and has also to model geophysical rock determine how our technology Roxar since January 2006 and worked in auditing and consul- properties providing rapid can best be used to identify before that group controller. tancy at PriceWaterhouse- interpretation via different rock and exploit their reserves. "It will also allow us and our Before that he was CFO of Coopers. physics models. clients to perform constrained The RokDoc Scenario mod- inversions where we combine ule provides an integrated envi- existing knowledge of the ronment to rapidly test and val- reservoir and the 3D resistivity idate seismic interpretations information provided by an using 2D modelling scenarios, MTEM survey to determine integrating both pre- and post- hydrocarbon content." stack seismic, well logs, elastic Roxar updates Tempest with Parallel Processing Tempest at no additional cost. www.roxar.com Tempest consists of four integrated software modules Reservoir modelling software compa- covering the different stages of ny Roxar has updated its Tempest reservoir simulation.These are: software suite for reservoir simula- Tempest-MORE: a full-field tion to version 6.3. simulator capable of running black oil or compositional simu- The main new feature is the lation modes capability for parallel process- Tempest-View: a graphical ing, utilising the Message interactive program that pro- Passing Interface (MPI) stan- vides simulation pre and post dard. processing.Tempest-View pro- This will allow for simula- vides data set creation, editing, tions to be run quicker and job submission and monitoring, more accurate on multiple clus- run control, results plotting and ter machines, as well as making 3D visualization. them usable on standard desk- Tempest-PVTx: a program for top computers. fluid characterization that 2D geophysical analysis from the RokDoc A single task can now be matches equation-of-state software package broken down into multiple descriptions of fluid properties parts which are processed inde- to laboratory data pendently on different comput- Tempest-Venture: a tool for ers.The task is then reassem- economic evaluation and risk Paradigm Releases Sysdrill v2.5 bled to form the result. analysis for estimation on field Users are able to upgrade cash flow and net present value www.paradigmgeo.com easily from previous versions of

Houston software company Roxar's updated Tempest reservoir Paradigm has released Sysdrill ver- -Support for geological sur- simulation software sion 2.5, a software solution for faces; formations, faults, oil- drilling engineers to plan well paths water contacts and optimise wellbore placement, -Enhanced geosteering work- by integrating engineering and flows with Paradigm Geolog wellplanning into different people's -WITSML Real-time survey workflows. updates during drilling In doing so, Sysdrill can merge -Ability to share data with the macro realm of geology third-party applications includ- and geophysics with the micro ing --WITSML and DEX trajecto- realm of petrophysics. ries Enhanced features in the cur- -lmproved target selection rent release include: -Copy and paste well plans

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BP's $21 DIY PC departments as people learn negotiated. support how to manage their comput- In order to take part, Tony Edwards ers themselves. employees have to show a heads up BG's www.bp.com Instead of using a company level of IT proficiency, and sign computer, set up by a company a 'diligent use' agreement. iValue team Employees using BP's 'do it yourself' IT department and with compa- They have to agree to down- PC initiative, where they have an ny IT support, employees can load the latest patches, use a its iValue annual grant to buy computer equip- choose to receive an annual firewall and antivirus, and not (digital ment and pay for support, rather allowance (thought to be of go to inappropriate websites. than use BP's in-house IT depart- $1000) to spend however they Employees with computers ment, have spent an average of just like on computers, equipment which connect directly into oilfield) and support.They are also BP's systems (ie not over the $15 each on support over the 21 given a license to Windows and internet) cannot join the programme. months the scheme has been run- Microsoft Office. scheme. ning, according to Jim Ginsburgh, VP www.bg-group.com If they need support, they go However employees which of enterprise architecture at BP, to the computer supplier, or use use BP's own software on their quoted in the IT news service Tony Edwards, previously online help tools, rather than go computers can; in this case, Silicon.com. to BP's in-house IT department. they can go to BP for support Advanced Collaborative This represents a considerable They can buy computers for those specific software. Environment programme man- saving to BP on IT support wherever they like, although if BP also hopes that employ- ager with BP, has moved to BP costs, and points to what many they use BP's preferred suppli- ees which buy their own com- Group, to head up its iValue see as a trend for the phasing ers they will probably get what- puters in this way will take (digital oilfield) programme. out of in-house company IT ever discount BP has more care of them.

Dr Edwards is currently managing a team that is building BG's digital oilfield strategy and imple- light' approach to check that all Petris President and CEO. PetrisWINDS DrillNET has three frame- mentation program that data is complete for a calcula- tion. work versions which can be aims to 'optimise gas pro- DrillNET released Output reports can be gen- tailored to a company's specif- duction from the reservoir erated from the results, and the ic needs, based upon the num- to the customer' and will www.petris.com data exported to Microsoft ber of users and collaborative cover downstream, mid- Houston software company Petris Office products. features desired. stream as well as upstream has released PetrisWINDS DrillNET, a DrillNET is available in multi- More than 20 individual sectors of the business. drilling and completion engineering ple languages and can be con- modules are available, covering "I am pleased to have software framework. figured for each user to allow the range of most drilling and been offered this is new It combines Petris' Maurer the use of one language for the well construction activity. and challenging role with drilling programs into one inte- program operation and another Companies can select as many BG and am looking for- or as few modules as needed. grated package that makes it one for report generation. ward to building the digi- "Companies have told us As with all Maurer software easy for data to be captured, tal oilfield capability within that they need a solution that products, DrillNET allows a user BG," Dr Edwards says. reused and shared among lets them collaborate and reuse to focus on the specific drilling users. drilling programs while making program of interest, and does This should increase both it possible to bring new person- not require that data for the operational safety and efficien- nel up to speed faster and with entire well be present to run cy. better performance. DrillNET is the calculations, making it suit- Features include context- a direct response to these ed for program on existing sensitive help and a 'traffic requests," says Jim Pritchett, wells.

Codify announces non executive OpenSpirit appoints Beijing director www.codify.ltd.uk Allan Merritt is joining Aberdeen representative software solutions company Codify as www.openspirit.com Allan Merrit, non executive a non executive director. oping partnerships with the director Codify national oil companies," says Codify provides a range of Data integrations company Dan Piette, president and CEO companies, including clients in OpenSpirit has appointed Beijing- of OpenSpirit. the oil and gas industry, with based Co-sail Software as its regional "This global interaction, cou- custom software solutions. representative, to help OpenSpirit pled with China's own interest Mr Merritt founded and was meet a rising demand for its services in acquiring foreign oil and gas the managing director of IT properties, makes the need for specialist company Pragma in China. "During the past few years, integrated data management a until October 2005. priority." He began his career in the China has seen significant for- oil and gas industry with a role eign investment and many of as an entry level programmer the super majors are showing in Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas, an increased interest in devel- Canada.

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The tool was launched at the powerful visualisation and Landmark system - visualise an entire Society of Exploration interpretation solution." basin It is designed to help upstream Geophysicists (SEG) trade show It uses the Verari Systems E&P oil and gas companies manage in New Orleans. On the compa- 7500 visualisation server, which ny's stand, the company has up to eight powerful www.lgc.com large regional data sets afford- ably, so they can make fast demonstrated how it is possi- processors, 128 Gb of memory ble to visualise and interpret and a NVIDIA Quadro Graphics Landmark has launched a visualisa- decisions on a basin scale. This should enable users to 45,000 km2 of 3D seismic data, card.This is the only server tion system which can be used to spot large scale data trends, from 100 different 3D surveys. which is approved for being visualise and interpret subsurface which cannot be seen so easily It uses Landmark's GeoProbe used on all Landmark software. data for an entire region, or oil basin, when you can only visualise a software, which Landmark The company says it costs in one go. small area at once. claims is the industry's "most 'under $100,000'.

Landmark tapeless archiving system

www.lgc.com

Schlumberger and Landmark, part of Halliburton's digi- ments," says Landmark. The electronic data storage tal and consulting services division, "Rather than spending their is much easier to manage than Infosys alliance has launched a tapeless data cata- time searching for the right tape archival, the company loguing and archiving system. data and ensuring its authentic- says.There is no gradual data The solution combines ity, end-users stay focused on loss, potential damage, loss of www.schlumberger.com Landmark's Corporate Data actually using the data." media and warehousing costs. The Corporate Data Archiver Archiver reporting tool with software creates an automatic Schlumberger has announced an the EMC Centera data storage catalogue / summary / outline alliance with IT outsourcing com- system. of the data; it is possible to Landmark's tapeless archiving system pany Infosys. The data can be retreived review the summary without instantly because it stored elec- having to retrieve all of the The two companies say they tronically, rather than on tapes. data, which massively speeds will work together on a range The archived data is always up search and retrieval time. of different solutions, but the available. Project data is captured at alliance will be primarily "Archived data retrievals specific milestones in the that once took hours to days, focussed on integrating E&P process, so there is always a and, in some cases, weeks, now petrochemical data and project history and audit trail take just seconds without assis- available for regulatory and applications, including tance from the IT depart- unstructured data, with finan- policy compliance. cial and human resources back end systems. Infosys' policy is to take data management work to 'where it can be done best, makes the most economic Pinnacle and Transform's 3D completion monitoring sense, and with the least amount of risk'. While this often involves doing work in www.pinntech.com India and China, the company is very proud that it was Pinnacle Technologies, together with recently applauded by Wired Transform Software and Services, magazine for bringing jobs to have jointly developed what they The software can be useful to mic and tiltmeter mapping the US. claim to be the first ever 3D visuali- identify sources of fluid loss, or technology for hydraulic frac- "Our alliance will provide sation software for well completion other unexpected events ture monitoring. end-to-end services integrat- monitoring. occurring during the well com- "As we expand the applica- ing petrotechnical data with The partnership brings togeth- pletion. tion of our technology into other relevant business sys- er Pinnacle's ability to monitor The software is supplied reservoir monitoring, we are tems," says Infosys. fractures, with Transform's soft- together with a customised focused upon the integration Schlumberger believes database and visualisation lay- of microseismic, tiltmeter, GPS that using sophisticated ware. out, with results from the and InSAR (Interferometric information management The software, called Pinnacle fracture diagnostics, Synthetic Aperture Radar) tools, together with strong PTXplorer, can be used to mon- together with satellite images, information with a range of system integration services, is itor and analyse hydraulic frac- surface information, informa- geophysical, geological and the right way for oil and gas turing effectiveness, taking tion about well bores, well logs engineering data," says companies to increase pro- data from microseismic and and horizons. Pinnacle. ductivity. tiltmeter measurements. The data is all put together Pinnacle and Transform plan The two companies have Everything can be visualised by Pinnacle technical special- to expand the technology to been working for a number in two or three dimensions, so ists. support monitoring of many of years. you can see how the fracturing went, and track the fracture Pinnacle claims to be the different reservoir types, from fronts. leader in applying microseis- heavy oil to tight gas.

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Software Digital Oilfield '42th fastest growing' in Merrick Systems new version of North America ProCount www.digitaloilfield.com The technology can simplify www.merricksystems.com errors as data is converted from complex workflows, within and one unit to another. Digital Oilfield has been ranked the across departments, between Houston oil and gas software compa- Users can put together their 42nd fastest growing technology, field and office.There are solu- ny Merrick Systems has launched a own screens, and add whatever media, telecoms and life sciences tions for electronic invoicing, new version of its ProCount hydrocar- fields and labels they like. company in North America, for its contract management, spend bon production accounting software, The software has a drawing 6,782 per cent growth it achieved analysis, well lifecycle manage- which oil companies use to manage module, which can be used to over the five years from 2001 to ment, business process man- production from different sources in gather complete systems to 2005. agement and rig scheduling. an oil field. show oil and gas allocations from different wells. The ranking was made in The company has over The tool is designed to enable 15,000 users in 5,000 different Configurations can be con- Deloitte's annual Fast 500 sur- all oil company personnel, from vey, a list of the fastest growing companies. firmed with remote field per- field staff to back office, to have companies in technology, "We have exceptional peo- sonnel. media, telecoms and life sci- ple who are committed to the access to data about how much Users can add different com- ences. technology and help us deliver has been produced. ponents, such as wells, meters, Digital Oilfield makes online on the promise of market The new version, called tanks and equipment, to a software which can be used to longevity," says Rod Munro, ProCount 2007, gives users drawing. optimise business processes, CEO of Digital Oilfield. more freedom in how they use All the data is reconciled including integrating financial The company also ranked the data.They can display the every day and every month, so and operational processes, and 9th on the Deloitte Technology data in whatever units they like, there are no end of the month optimising core business Fast 50, the 50th fastest grow- although the data is all stored surprises. processes. ing technology firms in Canada. in the same unit, ensuring that Information is made avail- there are no compounding able to all users as soon as it is entered, so everybody has access to the same latest infor- Landmark and WellDynamics tie-up mation. There are sophisticated www.lgc.com ual wells and oil producing net- security features, making it pos- works, the two partners believe. sible to restrict certain users Landmark of Houston has started It should make it easier to from accessing certain areas of working together with involve many different staff the database if required. WellDynamics, so it can tie members, in implementing an ProCount 2007 is currently being beta tested by a number Landmark's reservoir visualisation optimisation strategy, resolving conflicting objectives, and inte- of exploration and production tools with WellDynamics' reservoir grating actual flow control customers. monitoring and control tools. information with the reservoir Other new features include WellDynamics produces the information. better interfacing with 'SmartWell' monitoring and "WellDynamics gives our Merrick's DynaCap data capture control tools which are users unprecedented control of system for plants, offshore plat- installed on over 215 wells and what happens below the sur- forms, and facilities.There is its permanent monitoring sys- face. Our joint solutions with also better interfacing with SAP tem in over 450 wells, and 50 oil Landmark will give them infor- software and Cygnet's SCADA companies as customers. mation they need to use our system. By linking together tools and systems to control ProCount runs in Microsoft Landmark's visualisation tools their wells and to meet their SQL server 2000 and 2005 data- Landmark's visualisation tools will link base. with WellDynamics' well moni- goals, regardless of whether directly with WellDynamics' reservoir toring tools, it will be possible they are focused on net present monitoring and control tools, to enable to develop models which can value, ultimate recovery or real time optimisation. Photo courtesy be used to monitor, forecast short term production," says Landmark Graphics Corp and optimise well behaviour WellDynamics. and production, across individ-

First meeting of SPE IT Technical iv) INDUSTRY FORUMS - Provide Occidental Petroleum; and a forum to combine petro-tech- Washington Salles, IT manager, nical information initiatives in Petrobras. Section A board member of the IT the industry to create critical http://itts.spe.org nology between the sub-sur- technical section will be face and field operations mass. assigned to each of the sub- The Society of Petroleum Engineers ii) PROFESSIONAL DEVELOP- The section steering commit- committees to help and pro- (SPE)'s IT technical section held its MENT - Promoting establish- tee is Mehrzad Mahdavi, vice vide guidance. president, Enterprise Security first meeting at SPE's Annual ment of a new discipline comb- The subcommittees held Services, Schlumberger (chair- Technical Conference and Exhibition ing information technology conference calls during the two (ATCE) in San Antonio, Texas, on man); Steve Comstock, VP weeks after the meeting to dis- and oilfield technologies Upstream Technical Computing, September 25th. cuss work efforts, which will including curricula and training ExxonMobil; Patrick Hereng, The section decided to set up iii) INFORMATION SECURITY - lead to a plan for future activi- chief information officer,Total; ties of the section to be devel- the following subcommittees. Develop information security Gary Masada, chief information i) SYSTEMS INTEGRATION - oped by the steering commit- best practices to effectively officer of Chevron's Information tee at a meeting in early Providing best practices for manage risk in the integrated Technology Company; Don December. integration of information tech- work place Moore, vice president and CIO,

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Software Reorganising national oil companies Many national oil companies are organised in departments which work independently of each other, and would benefit from a more integrated organisation, says Hamish Wilson, principal of Paras Consulting any giant fields operated by by "X", what would the impact be? national oil companies have - What are you going to do to improve your significantly lower recovery prediction accuracy? factors than equivalent fields Hamish Wilson, principal, - How are you going to improve the capital Paras Consulting Mwith advanced reservoir management else- efficiency of your operation? where. Questions such as these are easy to ask, Current processes used by national oil The investment required may well be in the but not so simple to answer. implementation of new working practices, companies around the world are no longer Business performance in oil companies adequate for improving performance. improving the clarity and accessibility of can be articulated in the following metrics, existing data, and the procedures that in Discipline and workflow integration is criti- each of which can be expressed in value cal to the improvement process. their turn enable a smooth business per barrel - a financial measure per techni- process, rather than in expensive new tech- Many national oil companies have very cal measure. functional organisational structures in nology. Production Rate; Reserves replacement The process of change and the invest- which departments work independently of and resource addition; Operating Costs; one another, with processes and proce- ment of time and energy to enable that Finding Costs; Income; Lifting Costs; Capital change should not be underestimated. It is dures sequential and localised. Efficiency. The overall business picture is difficult to vital that changes to working practices are Currently, these metrics are difficult to acknowledged at every level - from the see, and agreement on critical business fac- generate in enough detail to have an effect tors hard to gain, in a fractured and dis- user accepting and understanding the ben- on operational decision making. efits of data consistency, to a fundamental jointed business environment. In order to adequately inform the busi- While it may be that world class techni- need for buy-in at executive level. ness, there is a granularity of detail that can External guidance may be necessary to cal work is being done, the company as a only be found in precise data, that for many whole is not focusing on the ultimate busi- ensure a smooth transition, and some con- national oil companies, is currently neither sultants now include change management ness value of the work, and any advances accurate nor readily available. are being slowed by concentrating on spe- as a vital element of their project manage- Independent business systems and ment offerings. cific issues. processes are at the core of these problems Such advances in working practice will - many budgeting and accounting systems have a substantial impact on current recov- Making the change are Excel based, leading to an inability to What can be done to make the difference? ery rates. Better and more efficient man- relate to the true business picture. agement of data and knowledge are the Ultimately, the only way forward for Reservoir performance informs the busi- national oil companies is a holistic foundation for closing this performance ness about overall capacity, which in turn gap and the implementation of such prac- approach. drives the overall field strategy. Together The combination of multi-disciplinary tices must be seen as a priority. with supporting technical disciplines, this in Changes in working practices are made teams, integrated applications and sup- turn creates an integrated field develop- porting data management will lead to even more necessary by recent advances in ment plan. technology, for example the improvements improved productivity and increased in reservoir characterisation, made possible recovery factors. Consistent data The implementation of new working by the move from 3D to 4D seismic imag- Systems for financial and business analysis, ing. practices, while acknowledging the need forecasting and interpretation are not com- for intelligent management of the changes The increase in knowledge at this level patible, in part because there are no con- impacts on the whole business structure, involved, will inevitably result in maximised ventions for entering data at the most basic productivity from existing and future fields. and there needs to be processes in place level - for example well names. that can fully integrate such improvements Consistency of data input is vital across in technology, for maximum business value all systems. impact. A particular example is the challenge to About Paras Consulting The priority therefore, is for a strongly link production data with reserves and cost business driven, integrated organisational data, and this must begin at the most fun- Paras Consulting is a global manage- structure and work process. damental level… well names. ment consultancy providing perform- There is a misconception that the intro- ance improvement solutions to the Improving performance duction of information management is upstream oil and gas industry. In an era In order to improve performance we have about spending money on IT, something of increasing pressure on sustainable to be able to measure it. It is important that is seen as a low priority in many com- production and recovery factors, Paras therefore at the business level to be able to panies, not just national oil companies. Consulting assists clients to develop ask questions about the current position, The truth is that it is about how money effective and cost-efficient production and the effects that new processes and is spent - smarter working practices and capacity enhancement strategies, procedures can have on their original busi- wise application of technology results in designed to deliver measurable business value across the entire E&P ness plan. improved performance and consequently improved business value. value chain. Paras consultants have a Questions like the following need to be variety of senior-level experience It is not necessarily the case that a com- addressed: including E&P strategy formulation, - How are you getting on against your plete overhaul of the technology already in production enhancement, exploration plan? place is needed. We should drive the performance, subsurface process - Can you demonstrate that you are invest- design of the underlying systems and improvement and information / data ing capital in the best options? streamline current data management pro- management. - If your capital was increased or decreased cedures to explicitly support new business processes.

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problems and allowing more staff to work remotely from the rigsite. WITSML is six years old, and being used POSC relaunches by Statoil and aggressively promoted with- The Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium has re-energised in BP,the originators of the WITSML initia- itself with a new name - Energistics. Also a new tive, among other oil companies. BP and Statoil, and later Shell, led the ini- brand image, revitalised vision and mission. We met tiative up to the end of 2002. From early CEO Randy Clark at a recent seminar in Aberdeen 2003, Energistics has had responsibility for managing its support and future evolution. The WITSML special interest group (SIG) etrotechnical Open Standards meets twice a year in person, and more Consortium (POSC), guardian of Randy Clark, often electronically, to discuss future the electronic standard for well CEO of enhancements and to review documented information 'WITSML', is putting Energistics use cases so that the standard can be mod- itselfP through something of a relaunch, ified in the light of real data and opera- under the leadership of its new CEO Randy What is WITSML tional experience. Clark. WITSML stands for Well Information As Energistics, it promises to take a more Transfer Standard xML (WITSML). It is an Problems outward approach, rather than focussing electronic data communications standard, Developing a standard is not without prob- on internal Energistics issues, fighting to for communicating well data between lems. Despite the schemas ensuring a con- prove the value of its electronic data com- equipment and software made by different sistent set of data objects, there have been munications standards. companies. issues both with co-ordinating transitions It will become more focussed on its BP and Statoil, later with Shell, estab- community, developing propositions which lished the initiative, giving responsibility to to new versions of WITSML itself and of can really add value, prove their worth in an external organisation, Energistics, for various minor 'dialects' which are slight dif- field trials, and achieve acceptance in the developing it from 2003 onwards. Now ferences in semantics or usage introduced industry. Norwegian oil company Hydro is also by different implementations. Recently it has changed its name to insisting that it will only use WITSML com- Small differences such as these can reflect these changes (the new name had pliant applications. mean more work for operators to achieve not been released as this article was being Statoil uses WITSML on 300 its wells, consistency. prepared for publication). including all wells in the Norwegian sector Another issue that arose is the need for "We have a new brand image, a new and a growing number of wells interna- a WITSML certification program that would name, a revitalised vision and mission," said tionally in Iran, Venezuela, and Angola. ensure that a vendor's application met a Mr Clark. WITSML can be used to define in a stan- minimum standard for compliance. "Everything we do going forward is dard way things like wellbore, drilling tra- Energistics is in the process of launching going to be market driven, value oriented. jectory, logging while drilling (LWD) data a certification program for WITSML based We are looking to the community to deter- and mud logs. products. mine our priorities, to find the largest value The standard enables applications to Some operators mentioned variable proposition as we go forward." 'plug and play' together, making it much quality in WITSML implementations and "There has been a shift of focus of our easier for operators to put together a suite that suppliers were slow to move to comply work effort towards membership and way of intelligent data algorithms and tools with a new version of the standard. from Energistics as such," he continued. that represent the best in class for each "I believe the membership needs to own activity. Barriers to adoption the standards development offering and be It should save a lot of work converting Although the business case for WITSML has the key driver of that. data between different file types. largely been made, there are still significant "We are a service company, we take For example, a speaker from SDC barriers to its full adoption by some of the stewardship of a project and facilitate the Geologix described a typical scenario majors, including a lack of understanding project management and provide some where an engineer was manually retrieving of the standard. subject matter expertise and a connective header information from a LAS (Log Ascii Some suppliers still take the view that tissue between the community and other Standard) wireline log file, importing it into WITSML is just another proprietary inter- standards bodies." Excel and finally saving it as a text file face and may disappear in a few years; "Essentially we will have a base opera- before importing into GEO, Geologix's well therefore implementing it can be seen as a tion, build and maintain membership and log data management application. This is burden to satisfy the requirement of a few support new self-funded initiatives, partici- the sort of person-intensive activity that operators, rather than an opportunity to pating in a general way. Where there are WITSML is designed to eliminate. consolidate existing data formats. interested parties we can form a communi- One of the main advantages is that far "It's a significant problem," said Mr Clark. ty around it." more data entry is automated, reducing "It's one thing to develop the standards, "We can do a bit of push and a bit of errors and increasing the speed at which another to move to implementation and pull, find new opportunities and frame that data can be analysed. Also, the creation of a adoption, we have to drive deployment at a higher level, but take it to the member- single data source which can be accessed within an organisation and assist the pro- ship. Any specially funded project will have by every application - one source of the motion effort through training, case studies a clear business case, and a clear and truth - removes problems of data synchro- and harvesting of pilot data." unambiguous result of standards develop- nisation and translation between different "The challenge in oil and gas is that ment." databases in differing formats. there are a large number of autonomous Energistics readily admits that uptake of WITSML is an important technology for units that are very hard to break into.” said the standard has been slower than it could well data collection and analysis, which can Mr Clark have been - it attributes this to a lack of help improve decision making and reduce "A lot of the deployment effort is more understanding of WITSML amongst indus- non-productive time. about promotion and marketing - getting a try bosses, an initial lack of real world trials It can save money by reducing the targeted message to different levels of an and a need for a top industry project man- amount of manual data entry which needs organisation from sea level right through ager to push for acceptance.This is all to be done and reducing software devel- to upper management - this is the way we being resolved. opment costs. will be successful." There can be health and safety improve- "Each of us has to create ways in which ments through earlier identification of each individual knows how what we do

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influences their performance and their abil- be seen as an extended member of the However, problems still occurred because ity to do their job. If an engineer can't see D&C Digital team," he said. of faulty or missing data and too often how utilising standards in business A new drilling and completions portal required manual intervention, said Mr processes and technology will benefit him website will act as a channel for vendors to Grøvik. we haven't been successful." provide information about their products Mr Nielsen stated a Norwegian Energistics is also looking at other indus- which could encourage BP buyers to take a Petroleum Directorate (NPD) and tries and emerging technologies such as more detailed look. Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF) RFID to see what may benefit its member- It will be a single access point for all study that calculated the value of ship. information on drilling and completions Integrated Operations on the Norwegian Again, the development of any new global operations, with the latest informa- shelf to be 40 billion USD. standard depends on business drivers with- tion on projects and digital operations. Statoil's anticipated Integrated in the community, with the role of "A clear unambiguous WITSML standard Operations potential is more than 50 per Energistics to try to get a group of the right is a must have for the drilling and comple- cent of that, and an external review of the people together to facilitate the process. tions digital programme," said Dr Pickering. Integrated Operations efforts on one of its "Our aim is to provide an energy stan- "The standard must be stable for a defined major fields calculated the value created to dards resource centre, a platform for period and third party tools and smart be close to 1 billion USD, with a further accessing information about standards in processes must be plug and play." potential of 0.7 +\- 0.4 billion USD. related segments in other industries - who "D&C Digital needs WITSML now to fulfil Statoil has been using WITSML in opera- did what when, how is it relevant and how its delivery targets," he continued. tions for nearly 3 years, and is increasing its is it done there," said CEO Randy Clark. "The D&C Digital team has a significant use with 51 wells so far this year. "We will implement specific applications task ahead to convince the BP D&C com- It has transferred information from over and build on that over the next years." munity of the value of WITSML; WITSML is 300 wells with the use of WITSML, incorpo- To promote its activities on a wider part of the D&C Digital strategy but it rating all wells operated by Statoil in the scale, Energistics is establishing 8 regional- extends far beyond this." Norwegian sector and a growing number based focus groups to champion develop- An important driver is to reduce non of wells internationally in Iran, Venezuela, ment and adoption of standards. productive time and optimise well delivery and Angola for example. Generally Hydro At least one meeting a year will be held by anticipating, detecting and preventing operates 10 to 15 parallel drilling opera- within each region and the organisation is problems associated with the subsurface tions with WITSML. looking for local industry leaders to take a environment, logistics, equipment failures One of the main challenges is imple- principal role in shaping each region's and weather. menting real-time or 'right-time' data shar- activities. Real-time model updates can be used ing. during actual drilling to make the best Hydro is currently using 'right-time' data BP possible predictions of future problems. with a window of around 5 minutes, with One of the founder Another problem facing the whole the aim of reducing this to less than two members and main industry is the 'big crew change'; BP minutes in the near future. contributors to the expects to lose a large number of its top One of the main problems is eliminating WITSML program, BP,is level experts in the next five years. the many manual operations needed to set currently represented During this short window the company up and maintain real-time streaming data, on the WITSML steering has to aggregate its experience through while many applications simply do not committee by Julian building knowledge into new workflows properly support it. Pickering, domain lead and intelligent systems that can aid opera- Hydro has continuing problems with its drilling and comple- tional decision making, he said. "We will service providers; some of the products in tions. have to operate leaner, smarter and with the data stream are not built to support Dr Pickering is promoting the technolo- more collaboration." multiple well streams (up to 20 simultane- gy within his organisation's many business BP intends to deliver expertise wherever ous wells); others are slow to support new units. it is needed through remote collaboration, data objects or move to the latest version He talked about the need for BP to "set using a team of shore based engineers to of WITSML. its house in order" to be ready to move provide support to multiple locations with "Continuous stable delivery from service ahead with adopting new digital drilling a decreased head count at the rigsite. companies is one of the main priorities for and completions technology to address Reducing crew levels in high risk envi- future WITSML integrated applications," increasing technical challenges and the ronments is also an important factor said Mr Grøvik. growing pressures on internal and external in improving environmental performance industry expertise. through de-manned and ultimately PRODML BP's efforts will evolve over one to two unmanned operation. The next new initiative is PRODML, an elec- years, with the aim being to build the infra- Dr Pickering believes that future drillers tronic communications standard for soft- structure and tools needed to implement may never visit the rig, but will instead use ware applications which are used to man- the 'smart field' concept, including visuali- an immersive visualization environment to age production data in the office and opti- sation, automation and simulation of the control every aspect of the operation. mise the well. entire well delivery system. It can be used for all software applica- BP is re-defining its digital technology Statoil / Hydro tions in the 'smart field' category, including delivery to support drilling and comple- Lars Olav Grøvik of Hydro and Peter Eilsø modelling, simulation, optimisation of tions and is looking to standardise tools Nielsen, senior advisor subsurface work reservoirs / wells. and processes on a global basis. processes, spoke of some of the problems These applications normally use large A focus for this activity is a department amounts of data streamed from the fields, at BP called D&C Digital (D&C stands for of implementing WITSML as well as the advantages Statoil has gained from its and software applications made by differ- drilling and completions), which will work ent vendors. Integrated Operations approach, of which on research and development technology BP,Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and WITSML is an important enabling technolo- and applications support. Statoil led the efforts to develop PRODML, "D&C Digital is more than just a market- gy. starting in August 2005. ing tool," said Dr Pickering, "it is a mark of Hydro now exclusively uses WITSML Initial involvement in the project was quality that justifiably sets expectations for compliant applications and requires service limited to five operators and eight suppli- our customers. providers to implement the necessary ers and Energistics, with a fast turnaround "Everyone delivering digital services to the interfaces. of twelve months from start to the release BP drilling and completions community will of version 1.0.

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The initial development created data This led to a short term modification participating companies to the active con- standards for gas lift optimisation, produc- task to specialist interface definitions tributions to the Energistics Special Interest tion optimisation (from free flowing wells according to the type of data being trans- Group (SIG), which will now be renamed with real time data streams and reservoir ferred, eg well test, production volume. the production PRODML SIG. models); and field-wide optimisation using Publication of the revised version 1.0- of Many companies, old and new to real time data, models and forecasts. PRODML is scheduled to take place in PRODML, are already actively planning Four pilot tests, based on the above use November 2006. 2007 objectives to include new features cases, were conducted using field data pro- The success of the first year PRODML and functions to support more optimisa- vided by the operators and applications effort is also evident in the intention of all tion use cases. and test code implementations provided by the software companies. The results of these have shaped the development effort, which is coordinated by another special interest group, now open to membership for any interested parties. Energistics' snazzy Feedback from the public review during redesign September was very positive and support- ive, Energistics says. Some feedback, however, suggested that the objectives of PRODML could be achieved with less burden on software developers and greater integrity between services. The emphasis this time was focused on deliverable commercial applications that would achieve business benefits in tightly defined scenarios. Communications and Monitoring

Knowledge Reservoir analyses data in 'Right Time' Randy Neck VP marketing www.knowledge-reservoir.com at Caprock Houston oil and gas consultancy Knowledge Reservoir has launched a production data analysis service, to help collect and analyse data from sensors, gauges and meters in the Knowledge Reservoir's 'right time' analysis centre oilfield. information in the timeframe Anadarko Petroleum, said, "we The service, called 'RightTime needed by the client. regularly collect and analyze Analysis Services," includes This makes an interesting oilfield performance data from data surveillance, making an differentiation with the 'Real a variety of sensors and meters, analysis when data falls out- Time' claims that many other both downhole and topside. It's side an expected range, and companies are making, per- great to know that Knowledge post analysis. haps unrealistically promising Reservoir is using their expert- Knowledge Reservoir uses the to provide instantaneous ise to provide this value-added analysis. service to an already short- terminology 'Right Time' to Client Kevin Renfro, senior handed industry." www.caprock.com indicate that it will provide the engineering advisor at Oil and gas satcom company CapRock Communications has appointed Randy Neck as vice president of mar- Apax buys Telenor Satellite Services keting. es, and also Iridium and October 25th. www.apax.fr Randy Neck, who has over 25 Apax Partners France has acquired Thuraya. Telenor sold TSS because it years of industry experience. Telenor Satellite Services for USD No formal announcement was defined as 'non core busi- He was previously director of 400m cash (Eur 318m). has been made for Telenor ness' since 2002, the announce- product marketing and man- This follows an agreement for Satellite Services and France ment stated. agement at CapRock. Apax Partners France to Telecom Mobile Satellite Rumours had been circulat- Prior to joining CapRock, acquire France Telecom Mobile Communications to merge, but ing for some time about TSS Randy Neck held multiple Satellite Communications it seems fairly likely that this is being up for sale, and this was technical and strategic busi- (FTMSC) on July 7, 2006. part of the plan. emphasised by two senior staff ness positions within the Telenor and France Telecom Telenor Satellite Services departures to rival VSAT com- telecommunications and ener- are the second and third has around 550 employees, 232 pany Caprock.This includes gy industries. largest distributors of Inmarsat in Norway, 168 in the US, and Tore Hilde (previously CEO of He also served as director of in the world. others in Europe, the Middle Telenor Satellite Services) and communications with Duke TSS has a large amount of East, Asia and South America. Britt Carina Horncastle (previ- Energy. non-Inmarsat business, includ- 2005 revenues were $376.9m, ously chief financial officer of ing Sealink, one of the world's with an EBITDA of $61.0m.The Telenor Satellite Services and largest oil and gas VSAT servic- agreement was concluded on chief executive officer of Telenor Satellite Services US).

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Communications and Monitoring

Stena will be fitting an IP Stena's IP infrastructure on 5 rigs communications infrastructure onboard its rigs www.mitel.com chasing. Stena says it commissioned Stena Drilling has started deploy- the Mitel system because it ment of an IP communications infra- wanted to bring its telecoms structure by Mitel. management in-house, rather So far it has installed the system than used a managed solution. at its Aberdeen headquarters, "We struggled for months and onboard one of the rigs. with our old PBX system, which It plans to roll out the system lacked the level of flexibility we to cover five rigs and offices in required," says Sharon Asia, Australia and Africa. McLaughlin, IT manager of The solution has been Stena Drilling. designed and implemented by "Our drilling rigs frequently Aberdeen VSAT company move and we need a system Nessco. that allows us to adapt our On one of its rigs, Stena has telephony systems quickly and installed a Mitel 3300 IP com- easily. encing equipment we had office. munications platform, with "Previously we were con- invested in." "Many companies make do handsets, for wireless communi- strained by our traditional sys- "We now have the flexibility with telecoms that no longer cation. It will roll out the wire- tem and often found ourselves to make moves, adds and fulfil their needs due to the less phones on all five of its waiting days for an engineer to changes ourselves and can mistaken perception that mov- submersible rigs over the next re-programme headsets and integrate new applications ing to IP will be an upheaval," six months, as well as its mobile telephone ports, which was nei- quickly and easily." says Mitel. rig Drill Max. ther cost-effective or time effi- Stena Drilling expects the "Stena Drilling has taken Mitel says that the system cient." system to make it easier for control of its communications will prove particularly impor- "We had also become frus- senior managers to work from and is now benefiting from tant for health and safety brief- trated that our old system did- home, getting the same com- increased functionality, flexibili- ings and information on pur- n't support the video confer- munications as they get in the ty and cost-savings.

HIG plans to merge Petrocom in the Gulf, as well as provide Petrocom with Sola Communications, a new products and serve new RigNet buys Oil acquired by Miami company it bought earlier this markets around the world. year, which provides cus- Simmons and Company Camp served as financial advisor to VCs tomised telecoms services to www.rig.net PetroCom in this transaction. www.petrocom.com the oil and gas industry. It Oil and gas satcoms company RigNet believes that the two compa- HIG has also invested in a number of other companies in has acquired Norwegian company Gulf of Mexico cellular and satellite nies will complement each the Gulf, including Rotorcraft OilCamp AS, which operates the SOIL communications company Petrocom other very well. Leasing, Redfish Rentals and Network (Secure Oil Information has been acquired by an affiliate of Petrocom says it will use Total Safety. Link), a secure, high capacity commu- HIG Capital, a private investment HIG's money to expand the nications network in Norway and the company in Miami. area where it provides service UK. OilCamp supplies communica- FPSO operator Bluewater Services NesscoInvsat will also provide tions solutions to a number of Bluewater renews has renewed its contract with communications for drilling rigs currently operating NesscoInvsat NesscoInvsat to provide VSAT satel- Bluewater's FPSOs Haewene on the Norwegian continental lite communications services for its Brim and Uisge Gorm, in the shelf. comms contract vessels. North Sea. The SOIL Network is a mem- The contract is with £200,000 a The satellite data is brought bers-only network that enables collaborative partners to access www.nesscogroup.com year, and covers Bluewater's into NesscoInvsat's teleport near Aberdeen, Scotland, and intranets and communicate onshore and offshore locations has more than one different with each other quickly, reliably in the UK, Netherlands, South routes to Bluewater's offices, to and securely. Africa and China. optimise resilience. Companies do not have to Bluewater Services - renewing satcom The contract has been extend their extranet to each contract with NesscoInvsat The network is monitored expanded this year; by NesscoInvsat 24 hours a partner or supplier individually; day. they are potentially connected "We needed a supplier with to all other members. the depth and breadth of In addition to the SOIL experience to deliver and sup- Network, OilCamp's product port our mission critical voice portfolio includes SOIL and data application. Interconnect, secure fibre optic NesscoInvsat has demonstrat- connection between Stavanger ed this in the past, and we had and Aberdeen; SOIL Meeting, a no hesitation in renewing this videoconferencing solution; contract and working with SOIL Offshore, a high-band- them on the ongoing upgrade width communications solu- and expansion of our offshore tion for drilling rigs and off- network" said Colin Inglis, IT shore platforms; and SOIL and telecommunications co- Hosting. ordinator at Bluewater.

20 digital energy journal - November/December 2006 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 21

Communications and Monitoring Managing live data US company OSISoft has got closer than anyone to working out how to manage constant streams of real time data. We asked director of product marketing Gregg LeBlanc how it is done

he challenge of managing live In 2007, OSIsoft is planning to release a ('real time') data is one which is "Data Directory" to help users more easily perplexing many people. access data from all over their operations. The company is also building a Microsoft TIt is one thing to have data about what Office extension to the new Excel Services, is happening now (eg a temperature or a which will allow users to view spreadsheets pressure), quite another to manage a con- with live data from within their browsers. tinuous data stream. One company which may have got the Front end closest anybody has got to a solution is San OSIsoft has software tools which provide Leandro, California based OSIsoft, which is users with the ability to define how they providing services to manage real time use the data, what data they want to see, data from rigs and remote installations. how they want to handle it and work The fundamental of OSIsoft's approach together with their partners. is that you divide the challenge of manag- This software can be reconfigured end- ing real time data into two separate com- lessly, as users discover different ways they ponents - the IT infrastructure to communi- want to use it. cate and archive the data, and the software "You don't have to pre-define the prob- tools to access and work with it. lem," he says. "You don't have to tear apart Oil and gas companies are getting used to streams of By keeping the elements separate, it is data coming from the rig - but do they know how to an application when you've built it. A manage it? Photo - courtesy Stratos possible to easily reconfigure the system if dynamic infrastructure allows you to do you decide you need to view the data in what you have to do at that moment," he "Whether or not they've had everything different ways in the future. says. instrumented - they've always wanted to Oil and gas companies using the tool "What we find about our users - they can know more about what's going on there," include Shell, BP,PetroCanada, Chevron, open up a wealth of decisions and ideas he said. "You've got a lot of companies pok- and ConocoPhillips. very easily. We call it having a very low cost ing their head down into the production Shell and BP use the system to manage of curiosity." areas and asking lots of questions. live data from their platforms in the Gulf of Having the data already well indexed, in "Many of our companies are getting Mexico, whilst PetroCanada uses it to get a a data store, makes it much easier to navi- questions from the business they can't nec- single view of its Canadian gas well opera- gate. "You used to have to know the layout essarily answer very easily, or it's a lot of tions (1423 data points updated every of the control systems to manage real time work to get them to find out," he says. minute). data," he says. "The production people aren't being "You have to think about having a com- "If people want to know something they offered a seat at the table with the business mon infrastructure - and be able to get at can find it easily. If you want to know the people." the information in a consistent way," says current production rate off a unit - you One of the tricky problems is getting Gregg LeBlanc, director of product market- should be able to ask that in a fairly natural people used to the idea of having whatever ing with OSIsoft. way," he says. data they want readily available - when Although it sounds like a consultancy IT OSIsoft's software tools participate easily everyone is used to accessing the data project, OSIsoft stresses that what it is actu- with familiar engineering workflows. "We through different software applications. ally selling is a software product. "We're let users and corporations create their stan- "Different people need a different view very much an off the shelf product compa- dard best practices, and we supply the of the world," he says. "We give people a ny," he says. tools to help them complete their tasks in a playground they can do their work in." OSIsoft also provides expertise in creat- timely way. If a customer has an automated "People always think in terms of applica- ing IT infrastructure which talks to the dif- workflow package, they can use our tools tions," says Mr LeBlanc. "This is a tool that ferent control systems, and here there can to help them automate tasks." allows people to build up their own view of be challenges. "There are certain control "We want the user really defining the the world that they need." systems that are harder to talk to than oth- workflow requirements - to help us develop "It's a disruptive technology, it's hard to ers," he says. the right software for them," he says. sell them upfront," he says. One problem in the past has been that "The workflow is an important aspect," many oil and gas companies built data he says. "We don't formally define workflow management systems which were too rigid, - but we participate in people's workflow. Applications and did not allow any reconfiguring, and We have a lot of chemical engineers on Most customers are very good at finding ended up with a system which did not staff - but we are familiar with a lot of work- ways to gain value out of the data. work, and so stopped managing real time flows," he says. "One customer said, when a compressor data, he says. "With some of these systems - we're breaks on the rig, we order the parts - it can "The industry got really burned near the verging on millions of data values coming take weeks for us to get out there," he said. year 2000, they started implementing these on - second by second," he says. "How do "We talked about getting the telemetry really rigid systems," says Mr LeBlanc. you pick, how do you manage a system like off the site and taking it to a central area. "When they turned the big switch on - they that? You can get lost in that sea of data." Then we could figure out when it will break weren't' sure if they got it. It was rigid and based on the decline curve.That was kind they didn't want to go and touch it again." Selling it of interesting." There is certainly a renewed interest in Many companies are investing in faster tools to manage real time data.

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Communications and Monitoring

data communications links from the plat- important, and to do that you need good The company is piloting a service ori- forms, so they can get more raw data. information systems, he said.You have to entated architecture approach to "Unless people have their thinking caps integrate the IT strategy with the business connect data producers with informa- on - they may not see all the opportunity strategy. tion consumers. for collecting the information," he says. By having integrated data and views of By turning systems and applica- "Many customers are talking about well data, you get around the traditional 'functions into 'services' you can get a operations as more of a science than an art tionality silos' of earth scientist, production faster integration across different sys- these days," he says. "They're looking to engineer etc, he said. tems. other operating arms in order to gain valu- The company has got great value from The business intelligence is made able insights into how to make their opera- standardizing its PCs, productivity software, up of a data warehouse of data that tions more streamlined and efficient." network, servers, security and technical might be needed for analysis, and "As a result of communicating about computing, he said. various data feeds. common practices like condition-based The initial focus had been on standardiz- "The company is piloting this maintenance or better energy manage- ing tools for specific functions; the business approach in several locations with ment, they're improving the production life is now demanding data sharing across some initial success, but we still have of their wells, keeping production costs functions, leading to a need for many more a long way to go," he said. down and operating more efficiently." data transfer points. The company has learned to focus There are two different ways the data You need to carefully define data owner- IT efforts on areas that can make a can be managed: using applications ship, roles and responsibilities, and priori- bottomline impact, he said, and to installed on the user's computer or over the tise the most critical data. continually talk to business users to web with no software installed on the com- "An integrated view of major work make sure that everything is right. puter at all. processes cannot be obtained from func- The company has learned to get tion specific applications," he said. its infrastructure sorted out, so you An oil company view "People shouldn't need to learn every don't have to worry about network A chief information officer at a large oil and application that they need to get data reliability and performance. gas company, talked at a recent OSISoft from." The company has learned to stan- user conference about the data challenges, "Real time data is one of the compo- dardise as many large applications as with reservoir simulation models generat- nents of an integrated view." possible and implement consistent ing 10 TB and upwards of data, large off- "Some key data types are not needed at data. shore fields having up to 2,000 input / out- all organisational levels, so they can be "Smart small and build on the suc- put points, generating 10 gb a day of data. readily rolled up so they can be accessed cesses," he said. In the upstream, decision quality is very via drilldown if necessary.

Oil and gas fibre optics A subsea fibre optics network is being installed in the Gulf of Mexico, and likely to be installed in offshore West Africa, according to industry experts. We reviewed the developments so far

sing transoceanic fibre optic com- Mexico, the Persian Gulf, off Africa and in Gulf fields, entering the ocean in Freeport munications is absurdly cheap Sakhalin. or Corpus Christi,Texas, and Pascagoula, today. We have all spent many "The odds are that fibre optic networks Mississippi, in water depths of 3,000 to hours sending e-mails and getting are bound to happen in the Gulf of Mexico 8,000 feet. websitesU across oceans and barely paid a and off Africa," says Marc Fullenbaum, It will cover fields in the Viosca Knoll, penny for it. product marketing group manager with Green Canyon, Atwater and Mississippi Over 500,000 km of fibre optic cables Alcatel Submarine Networks. Canyon blocks, in a 700km loop. have been laid so far in the world. "Fibre in the Gulf of Mexico is under dis- The intention is to start laying the cable So as the oil and gas industry demands cussion," he says. "I would say that the next in December 2006 and 'light it up' in sum- faster and more reliable communications, it interesting area is the West Coast of Africa." mer 2007. seems sensible to assume we will be seeing You don't need a direct fixed connection The fibre network had been planned for a lot more fibre. from the rig to the fibre to benefit; a rig can several years, with Houston company Gulf Fibre optic cables can carry a multiple of communicate via Microwave or Wimax to a Fiber Corporation looking to gather financ- terabits per second, enough to keep the oil nearby rig which does have a fibre connec- ing and then sell the bandwidth to differ- and gas industry happy for a few years at tion. ent oil and gas companies. least. You can use a Microwave (line of sight) Now, it seems that BP is planning to pay And as the data requirements grow or WiMax link, carrying 80 mbps distances the entire $100m costs, and commission exponentially, with perhaps companies up to 80km, or 25 mbps of distances up to Ocean Fiber LLP to build it. wanting to send continuously updated 15km, respectively. BP is planning to own the network and seismic data (5D?) and do continuous lease part of the bandwidth to other oil videoconferencing for all staff members in Costs and gulf operators, and says it is already in the future, wave technologies make is pos- The obstacle is the installation costs, and discussions with some of them. sible to for the fibre cables to carry a lot some kind of mechanism for the costs to BP says that the fibre optic connections more data than it was originally designed be shared by several different companies will provide each rig with the equivalent of for. which use the network. 50,000 satellite dishes. But there are still plenty of oil rigs which To give you an idea of the costs, BP has The network will be hurricane proof, but do not have any fixed fibre connection, in announced plans to spend $100m laying a will enable the rigs to be operated when areas of offshore activity such as the Gulf of 700km loop of fibre across its deepwater they have been evacuated after a hurricane.

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Communications and Monitoring

Houston company Ocean Fiber will operate cations Company connects the Ula rig to broken, but not all communications are a 24 hour diagnostic monitoring centre in Aberdeen. It is owned by BP and operated lost. Harahan, Louisiana, and its sister company by Data Marine Services, part of Petrocom will provide satellite communica- Schlumberger. Repeaters tion services as a back-up. Repeaters, which lie on the ocean floor and Ocean Fiber hopes that the system A free market boost the signal, are normally used every could also be used for communications for Perhaps what we will eventually see is 50 to 100km in transoceanic cables; but this the planned LNG offloading facilities off- some kind of free market telecom system, technology has not yet been used so much shore the Gulf Coast, or more of the 4,000 where data packets can be transferred in the oil and gas industry. platforms in the Gulf Coast. It could provide using a variety of different methods, such If repeaters are not used, the data signal the communications links for the planned as fibre, satellite, microwave and wi-fi, needs to come up to a rig every 50 to security communications, such as radar, depending on the amount of data, the 100km for boosting, so the communica- undersea acoustic monitoring and cameras. urgency, the methods available, and the tions is vulnerable to a problem on a rig. data urgency. "Repeaters are absolutely reliable," says Norway If one link is ever broken, or its price is Mr Fullenbaum. "We have deployed over Meanwhile the Norwegian Oil Industry put up, the market system can work out the 4,300 repeaters and none of them have Association (OLF) is so concerned that the next best way to send it. failed so far.The mean time between failure networks are running sub-optimally with With the increasing number of smaller for a repeater is 10,000 years." different operators on each one, that it has oil and gas companies, having an offshore Alcatel is very proud of the fact that proposed setting up some kind of central telecoms network which is independent of none of its submarine cables or repeaters network infrastructure for all of the oil and any single company will be attractive; but a in the area were damaged during the Asian gas fields. third company will probably not find it easy Tsunami. OLF believes that a fibre optic network, to install the system speculatively will not connecting as many rigs as possible, is be easy. Protection from ships essential in ensuring that production can There have been a few problems about be optimized, and this means making maxi- Fibre rings and lines cables being broken by fishing and ship mum use of the available communications To date, most of the fibre installations in anchors. infrastructure, and never being beholden to the oil and gas industry have been linear, Normal practice is to use armoured one private company. with lengths of fibre going from one rig to cable at depths of up to 1500m, putting a The central operator would effectively the next, with data boosters ('repeaters') on steel armouring around the cable.The buy the use of the infrastructure from the each rig. cable is also buried 1m underneath the cable owners and then sell it as required. Alcatel, one of the largest providers of seabed. At depths greater than 1500m, the There are currently three networks in subsea cables, believes that a better cable is just laid on the ocean floor. the North Sea, put in by a mixture of oil and approach is to have a ring of cable entirely gas companies (Statoil and BP), and private underwater, with feeder risers going to all Other projects companies (North Sea Communications, of the rigs. There are plans discussed to build fibre and Data Marine Services, owned by This means that if the cable is ever bro- optic communications connecting rigs in Schlumberger). ken anywhere, data can flow the other way Sakhalin to the shore, for Sakhalin Energy "It is important to establish such an inte- around the ring, until a maintenance vessel Investment Company, a joint venture grated common infrastructure well ahead can fix the break or replace that section of between Shell, Mitsui and Diamond Gas of the implementation of integrated opera- the cable. Mitsubishi Corporation. tions in bigger scale," says OLF. The cable is not vulnerable to problems BP has also commissioned a 26km Currently there is a star-shaped fibre which might happen on any one rig, e.g. umbilical cable connecting two subsea network in the Haltenbanken area on the due to weather or explosion, because the wells, running 1700km deep, with a 24 kilo- North Coast of Norway, operated from a rig whole of the ring is underwater. volt cable, also carrying high and low volt in Heidrun and connecting to shore. Another layout possibility is the hub net- electrical power, fibre optic connections Currently it only serves Statoil rigs and work, as seen in the Haltenbanken area and lube oil connections, in its King bypasses BP (Skarv) and Shell (Draugen) North of Norway, where cables are run from Complex in the Gulf of Mexico, caring the rigs in the area. a central point (probably a rig) to other rigs tieback to the Marlin Tension Leg Platform, For the North Sea, the TampNet fibre and to shore. 135km South East of New Orleans.The structure (owned by Statoil), a linear net- If there is a breakage in the cable, then whole cable's design and manufacture will work which connects to Kollsnes and communications from one rig to the star is cost around $16m. Karstø on the Norwegian Coast, also linking to BP fibre cables connecting with Laying subsea Aberdeen, and North Sea Communications cables - something the oil (NorSeaCom) networks, linking with and gas industry Lowestoft. will be doing a lot TampNet was established in January more of 2002, aiming to be an offshore telecom provider, serving central and northern North Sea, initially with five platforms connected directly to the system and 23 connected by radio links. North Sea Communications owns or leases a ring of fibre optic, going from the North Sea rigs to Aberdeen and Lowestoft in the UK, undersea to France, via land to Copehagen, undersea to Finland, via land to Stavanger in Norway, then to the North Sea rigs. This ring structure means there is no single point of failure. Central North Sea Fibre Telecommuni-

November/December 2006 - digital energy journal 23 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 24

Communications and Monitoring Boosting your networks

Tim Everitt, of oil and gas networks company YR20, explains the main steps to making your network, faster, more reliable and more secure, and what oil and gas companies are doing

ust a few weeks ago the Society of puters, networks and software robots. cations capacity. Petroleum Engineers (SPE) held the In response to these requirements a new Fibre-optic cables and associated high- J inaugural meeting of its new set of network technologies is rolling off capacity radio systems have been provi- Information Technology Technical the production lines of the standards bod- sioned in many oilfield locations and are Section (ITTS, itts.spe.org). ies and equipment manufacturers. being planned for many more. It's not long ago that most petroleum engi- So, what are the oil companies trying to Older satellite systems are being neers would have been celebrating a do and how are they doing it? replaced with new technology to provide nuclear strike on their IT department, so Oil companies are driven by the need to more capacity and to make the new capaci- what's going on? increase return on investment to attract ty more flexible for oilfield sites where We all know about the high-profile work and retain capital. fiber-optic and radio are not available. of the Petroleum Open Systems They seek to recover more of the hydro- Fewer dollars - but arguably more influ- Corporation (POSC, www.posc.org), carbons in reservoirs; they seek to drill wells ential dollars - are being spent in the wide American Petroleum Institute (API, more accurately; they seek to run produc- scale replacement of telecommunications www.api.org) and others to define data tion wells more reliably; they seek to and network equipment. models and other IT standards but until reduce costs and they seek to do it all with The quiet folksy beard-and-sandals recently there was a flaw. fewer people at oilfield sites to reduce risk. types at the Internet Engineering Task None of this good IT work is any use if To do all this they are using more instru- Force (IETF, www.ietf.org) have not been the underlying networks are not reliable mentation, more CCTV and more software idle since developing the TCP/IP system 25 and secure. robots. years ago for the US Military and then changing the world with the public Reliable networks More process information Internet 15 years ago. Oil companies are quietly spending serious Since Y2K (threats of computer systems They are well aware of how their tech- amounts of money - well, serious in terms being wiped out as the year turned from nology is being used and have been busy of networks even if small in the capital- 1999 to 2000) forced the upgrade of most developing new standards to deliver the intensive oil company world - to bring their SCADA systems, there has been continuous reliability and security required by the oil oilfield networks up to the "five nines" growth in the amount of process informa- company vision. (99.999% availability) standards necessary tion flowing from oilfield to office to be for safety-critical systems. used by engineers supporting subsurface Virtual technology There's nothing specific to the oil and and topsides reliability and optimization. One of the key technology concepts here is gas industry about this; across the world all This is now considered, by the oil com- "Virtual" - it's a set of technologies to make industries are committing their critical busi- panies, to be both technically and commer- a crowded place seem empty, and there- ness data and processes to databases, com- cially proven. fore safe. Eternally driven, the oil companies now It's been around a long time to make want to move on to the next prize - the computers safe.Those of you as old as the Our networks data are getting more complex - but are flow of process control information from author may remember IBM mainframe they getting more secure? Photo courtesy Stratos office to oilfield with computers; the computer operating system fully distributed con- was called MVS (Multiple Virtual Systems). trol of manned oilfield Others amongst you may remember sites. DEC VAX (Virtual Address eXtension) com- A drilling rig with puters running the VMS (Virtual the mud engineers sit- Management System) operating system. ting in an operations On these computer systems every user centre in Houston or seems to be alone in the computer and an FPSO with the users cannot interfere with each other. night-shift control- The concept of a "Virtual" architecture room crew in an opera- has been extended from the computers to tions centre in the networks. Aberdeen.These are On Local Area Networks (LANs), such as the next steps. Ethernet, the computers can now be connected to a Virtual Local Area Network Telecoms and equip- (VLAN). On Wide Area Networks (WANs) ment there are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) The biggest dollar using technologies such as Multi-Protocol spend to achieve this Label Switching (MPLS). vision is telecommuni- Just as "Virtual" technologies kept seri-

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Communications and Monitoring

ous computers secure, so "Virtual" tech- crossing points called firewalls guard the agement. nologies keep serious networks secure. way from a less secure network (such as the These new deliverables are requiring new The process control systems are separate one to which your desktop PC is connect- methods, skills and tools. Most oil compa- from the process information systems ed) into a more secure network (such as nies outsource these activities on a contin- which are separate from the voice systems where the process information is kept). uous or as-required service basis to com- which are separate from the CCTV systems They police your identity and what panies such as YR20 (www.yr20.com, the which are… you get the idea. you're doing. author's employer) in order to gain access These technologies allow a single set of Identity management used to be a to best-in-class methods, skills and tools. network hardware to deliver multiple sepa- sleepy backwater of usernames and pass- And so back to the SPE and what's rate networks, and keep them secure. words. Nowadays it's called Strong going on.They are no fools, they know Authentication (SA) and usually involves what's going on and they understand very Segregating traffic something you know (e.g. a password or clearly that IT departments, and their sup- At this point the business needs to get PIN) and something you have (e.g. an elec- pliers, must be upgraded to be fit for the involved. As well as segregating the net- tronic token with an ever-changing services required to deliver the oil compa- work traffic into separate virtual networks sequence of apparently random numbers). ny vision and return on investment. for security, the traffic is segregated into Audit trails are kept so that all activities The pieces are coming together. It is different Classes of Service (CoS). can be tracked back to a specific person. working. It has to work! Each Class of Service can then be guar- As the network traffic payloads become anteed access to the right amount of net- more important and represent core explo- work capacity via Quality of Service (QoS). It ration and production business processes, is essential that the whole VLAN, VPN, CoS the IT staff are having to raise their game. and QoS configuration reflects the business The sponsors and customers of these About YR20 priorities of the asset's management. new networks are a step-change up from YR20 consulting engineers all have the past and are demanding new deliver- at least 20 years experience of Security dollars ables; engineering feasibility studies, net- delivering, maintaining and repair- Fewer again dollars - but some would work capacity plans, network impact ing reliability and performance in argue the most important dollars - are assessments, formal commissioning plans, critical oilfield data networks. being spent on the security gateways that known to work solutions, QoS policies, root connect these virtual networks together. cause analysis of failures, Service Level www.yr20.com These barbed-wire and turnstile border Agreements (SLAs) and maintenance man-

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November/December 2006 - digital energy journal 25 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 26

Automation

million from over 1,000 ppm. Roxar's oil in water monitor Eni pilots 2nd The first pilot project for Roxar's oil in water monitor was Roxar oil in water on Statoil's North Sea Sleipner monitor A platform, where it has been running since May 2006, to www.roxar.com measure overboard water dis- Italian oil and gas company Eni SpA charge to ensure it meets envi- has started its second pilot of Roxar's ronmental requirements. oil in water monitor. The oil in water monitor was It will use the monitor at its developed jointly with TNO Cavone black oil sea field, to Science and Industry, and is monitor oil droplets and solids based on ultrasonic pulse echo in the onshore production facil- technology.This provides greater accuracy and reliability ity, to get more detailed infor- compared to conventional oil discriminated to give accurate problems like equipment mation about oil droplet size in water monitors, which use information on size distribution degradation, scaling, tempera- distributions in the production optical technology, Roxar says. (ranging from the extremely ture and chemical changes. process. The monitor sends acoustic low 2-3 micrometers) and con- The monitor can be inserted This is part of a number of waves into the fluid, and centration. and extracted without interfer- new technologies being imple- receives individual acoustic There is no need to recali- ence in the production process. mented at Cavone, to optimise echoes from both solids and oil brate the tool if the chemical It can be installed in hazardous production and reduce envi- droplets.These are then composition changes, because conditions. ronmental impact. analysed to give accurate infor- direct measurements are per- Roxar envisages that the EnI is also implementing oil mation about the size distribu- formed with the dispersed oil tool could be used to monitor water separators which can tion of the droplets and droplets. water which is being re-inject- reduce the concentration of oil Individual acoustic echoes from There is an auto diagnostics ed into the well, or discharged in water to under 10 parts per oil droplets are analyzed and facility, which can overcome overboard. Sercel acquires Wärtsilä power for largest mobile Vibtech drilling unit www.sercel.com www.wartsila.com Sercel, a subsidiary of seismic company Compagnie Generale de Power system manufacturer Wärtsilä The contract, worth over EU Geophysique (GGY), has acquired the has won a contract to deliver a total 50 million, involves detail outstanding shares in Vibration power system for the largest mobile design, products, systems and commissioning of the power Technology Limited "Vibtech", which oil drilling unit ever built, the MPF plant, propulsion, electrical and develops wireless seismic recording 1000 offshore drilling vessel, to be completed and delivered from automation systems. equipment. Delivery of the major com- Spanish yard Dragados Offshore in Vibtech recently released the ponents will be during the first the fourth quarter of 2008. Unite system that records and quarter of 2008. transmits thousands of chan- also to integrate wireless tech- The MPF 1000 has been Wärtsilä will deliver eight 16- nology with its latest genera- nels of data, enabling quality described as the largest and cylinder Wärtsilä 32 diesel tion products. the most versatile offshore control while recording.The engines with a combined Vibtech will remain as a sep- drilling unit ever built. It can power output of 58,880 kW, system uses new transmission arate legal entity and pursue combine floating production, technologies which reduce generators, medium voltage the sale of the Unite system storage and offloading with switchgear, low voltage distri- some radio frequency commu- under its name, but will pro- drilling. nication limitations. bution boards, frequency con- gressively combine its It is designed for simultane- verters, safety and automation Sercel expects to be able to strengths, particularly its 25 ous drilling and production in use its seismic recording systems (including emergency employees with those of Sercel deep waters and harsh environ- shut down, fire and gas, power expertise to expand the capa- in all areas including R&D, mar- ments including ultra deep bilities of Vibtech products, and management, vessel automa- keting and manufacturing. water. tion), a dynamic positioning The vessel is 290 meters system, thruster control and long and has storage capability information management sys- ONGC extends WesternGeco offshore of one million barrels of oil. tems. India contract and development seismic programs will be undertaken The largest mobile oil www.westerngeco.com/q-tech- throughout both the 2006- drilling unit - to be deliv- nology 2007 and 2007-2008 acquisi- ered in Q4 2008 - will The Indian Oil and Natural Gas tion seasons. have a Wärtsilä power Corporation (ONGC) has extended its Under the existing contract, system contract for two years with ONGC used two Q-Marine ves- WesternGeco for Q-Marine* vessels sels throughout the 2005-2006 currently in place. acquisition season in offshore India. New surveys, covering Q* is a suite of seismic tech- targeted areas along the east- nologies for enhanced reservoir ern and western coasts of India, location, description and man- commit two WesternGeco Q- agement. Marine vessels to ONGC for a As a result, additional multi- further two seasons. ple high-resolution exploration

26 digital energy journal - November/December 2006 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 27

Automation Bridge" system, which is part of Kongsberg's K-bridge con- a new integrated shipwide net- Total first all elec- soles on Quatargas II project vessels work called K-Line. The K-Bridge navigation sys- tric subsea tem consists of a complete range of consoles, including K- Christmas tree rudder angle system and steer- www.c-a-m.com ing control systems. Other Total E&P Nederland has bought equipment within the integrat- what is thought to be the first all- ed navigation system includes electric subsea production system, Speed log, Echo Sounder, from Texas company CameronDC, to GMDSS and chart system, in be installed on two wells in the North addition to standalone X-band Sea. Radar. The installation includes all- Based on common system electric subsea Christmas trees, technology, K-Line provides part of Kongsberg's USD 3.2m and an all-electric control sys- safe and sophisticated solu- Kongsberg K-Bridge contract to supply bridge, tem. It will be installed on two tions for Navigation (K-Bridge), wells in a development called cargo, integrated automation in Quatargas II Automation (K-Chief), Dynamic K5F, in the K5 block of the systems and integrated naviga- Positioning & Joystick (K-Pos), Dutch sector of the North Sea. Newbuilds tion systems to all four vessels. Prop and Thruster Control (K- There are plans to expand to The four vessels are in pro- Thrust),Tank Gauging (K- www.kongsberg.com four wells in future. duction at Samsung and Gauge) and Safety (K-Safe). Deployment is planned for Marine electronics provider Hyundai for the OSG/Quatargas Each system can be installed Kongsberg Maritime has delivered its mid-2007 with production to II expansion project. as a standalone sub-system or start in late 2007. first K-Bridge consoles to four project The QuatarGas II project ves- as a greater ship-wide network The commitment was made vessels in Korea for Quatargas II. sels are the first to utilise based vessel management sys- as part of a Technology Co- These K-Bridge consoles are Kongsberg Maritime's "K- tem. operation Agreement, signed between Total and Cameron, in January 2004. Petrofac commis- the control system on the Kittiwake transferability of management Before signing it,Total con- production platform in the North and control information, ducted extensive technical and sions new Sea, from an Emerson Fisher Provox Invensys says.The system will economic reviews of the all- Kittiwake control system to a new Foxboro I/A series also take up less space. electric system, to see how it system. Invensys says that it has compared with electro- The project will be completed completed 450 control system hydraulic technologies, includ- system migrations to date, and it nor- during 2007. ing looking at the system avail- mally means that production www.invensys.com The new system will help ability, functionality and envi- needs to be shut down for one Petrofac Facilities Management has improve reliability of opera- ronmental performance. day. given Invensys a contract to upgrade tions and improve access and

First AlphaPrime seabed processing unit Siemens systems

for Odfjell rig measured continuously by sensors. The rig has two derricks, to all of the control systems. www.siemens.com/oil_gas facilitate a number of simulta- All of the equipment can be Siemens Industrial Solutions and neous operations, and both of monitored and controlled Services Group (I&S) has received an them have active heave com- remotely. order from Daewoo Shipbuilding of pensating drawworks (hence By doing things on the South Korea, to supply electrical the 'dual'). seabed rather than on the rig, equipment for a semi-submersible Passive heave compensat- savings can be achieved in cap- offshore drilling rig, to be used in ing systems use compressed ital and operating expenditure, air to dampen the effect of ves- deepwater drilling in harsh environ- and reservoir flow problems are sel heave on the movement of easier to solve, the company ments. the drilling block. says. The rig is being built for Odfjell The rig has Sinamics fre- Subsea systems like this Invest Ltd.The order is worth quency converters to control should be particularly valuable Eur 15m.The rig will be deliv- the drilling drives, including Alphaprime module loaded on small and marginal oil fields, ered in October 2008. the drawworks. at Malmo which do not produce enough The rig is the first to ever be Siemens will also supply www.alpha-thames.co.uk to justify the cost of a normal built with 'dual active heave generators, transformers, medi- rig, the company says. compensating drawworks'. um- and low-voltage UK company Alpha Thames has built a The module was transported This means that the draw- switchgear and an uninterrupt- prototype all electric seabed separa- from Malmö, Sweden, to Lumut, works (equipment to reel in ible power supply (UPS). It will tion and processing module, and Malaysia, as deck cargo on a and out the drilling line) has a carry out the engineering work shipped it to Malaysia to be used to vessel. computer system which can and do a power system study. demonstrate the concept. The System Modules are adjust the drawworks to com- The project will be man- Alpha Thames is promoting installed on a plug and play pensate for the movement of aged by Siemens Norway, with the idea of installing separa- basis which means that they the rig on the water, so that the components manufactured in tion, pumps and processing can be easily recovered for drill bit stays in the same posi- Norway, Germany, the Czech equipment on the seabed, modification or upgrading at tion as the ship moves. Republic, Switzerland and rather than on a rig, including any time in the life of the field. The vessel's heave motion is Indonesia.

November/December 2006 - digital energy journal 27 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 28

Automation Building intelligent wells Guy Vachon, Jaedong Lee and Patricia Vega, of Baker Hughes' Optimisation Solutions Group (Production Quest) have put together the following guide to how to set about making a well 'intelligent' and how it works.

ell monitoring, automation It begins when the well is put in produc- and more durable, minimising down time, and optimization technolo- tion. intervention frequency, intervention cost gies (together known as The production is monitored and com- and deferred production. 'Intelligent Well Systems') pared with the expected performance of They also provide the minimum lifting Wassist in the reduction of operating expen- the well. If it is found deficient, steps are cost per barrel of fluid produced. ditures and extending the life of operators' taken to restore the well's production to You can react to changing well condi- wells by: the expected level. tions and operate the ESP in the most effi- -Reducing or eliminating interventions, Fast loop processes typically include cient way at each particular point in time troubleshooting and repair time downhole monitoring of well performance during the productive life of the well. - Improving detection of subnormal oper- parameters, adjustment of flow control ele- The pump is equipped with a variable ating conditions ments within and around the well, and speed controller, which allows the operator -Improving problem root cause determina- modification to flow paths on a limited fre- to control the flow rate from a well at an tion quency basis such as treatments for flow optimum level depending on the current -Reducing or eliminating failure assurance issues. flow conditions. -Optimising field activities prioritisation New technologies have arisen that per- With these measured parameters, oper- -Optimising resources utilisation (crews mit observing problems as they develop ators can maintain the reservoir pressure, and equipment) and mitigate them through actuation of delaying solution gas liberation, water- -Reducing or eliminating equipment down wellbore devices instead of through inter- breakthrough, and downhole sand produc- time vention. tion, which in combination, will increase -Reducing or eliminating deferred produc- As a result, it is possible to close the fast the overall recovery rate. tion loop in hours or even minutes. An example of a closed loop system, -Reduce well count required to drain The slow loop, by contrast, is centred on with fast optimisation, would consist of reserves the reservoir, starting with the initial char- downhole monitoring of pressure, temper- -Accelerating production by acterisation and modelling. ature, and flow rate, together with a down- accessing more zones simultaneously Even with the best exploration technol- hole submersible pump and valves to con- -Improving management of sand ogy, the initial model of the trol the flow. production reservoir is built on many assumptions - it -Improving management of early water is a gross approximation of the actual Data connectivity breakthrough, leading to reduced cost of reservoir at best. In order for an intelligent well system to surface facilities for water management The development plan is designed work seamlessly, all the monitoring param- -Accessing otherwise uneconomical zones around this initial characterisation and eters from each component should com- -Resolving uncertainties and managing does its best to accommodate the uncer- municate with each other. risks. tainty in the model. Sensors including pressure, flow, water- A major oil and gas operator has stated As the development campaign begins cut, report a few bytes every few seconds. that reduced well intervention costs and new understanding and knowledge The majority of sensors and actuators account for only five percent of the relative accumulates, the new learning is accom- involved in optimising production in a well business impact of an intelligent well sys- modated in modifications to the reservoir are well served by industrial tem (with monitoring and control in the model. automation standards so well) while sixty percent of the benefits This process continues until the end of connectivity is not an issue. derive from increases in revenue from the the life of the reservoir. It takes very long The far greater issue is the reservoir. time to incorporate learning into the reser- algorithms to accomplish the Baker Hughes recently acquired Nova voir model, to reflect it in a modified devel- optimisation. Technology Corporation, QuantX and Luna opment plan and to mobilize resources to Both vendors and opera- Energy to form the Wellbore Monitoring drill and complete new wells. tors have subscribed to group within ProductionQuest, to deliver Each iteration around this slow loop SCADA interfaces developed permanent monitoring products and serv- takes months or years. by the process automation ices for oil and gas production. sector.There are multiple The Optimization Solutions Group of Submersible pumps such interfaces, like ModBus, ProductionQuest brings relevant abilities Electronic submersible pumps (ESPs) can HART, ProfiBus, Foundation from the Baker Hughes divisions, and offers be used to accelerate and maximize pro- Fieldbus. A vendor would an integrated system that will remotely duction as compared to other artificial lift make their hardware avail- monitor and compare the actual system solutions. able through these inter- performance with the expected for early With an ESP,you can operate the well at faces. detection of anomalies and enable proac- lower drawdown pressures, thereby Using these standard tive adjustments of well operating parame- increasing total asset recovery by increas- interfaces, a central control ters. ing the potential for recoverable reserves system can interface with and extending the life of the field. many different types of Control loops Also, ESP systems can be installed deep- devices. The way automation and computer tools er and can handle higher fluid volumes are used to optimise production can per- than any other artificial lift method. haps best be explained by dividing the sys- They can be used in combination with tems into two separate control loops: the The Baker Oil Tools Equalizer screen, wellbore monitoring and chemical treat- which makes it possible to control fast loop and the slow loop. ments. water production, adjusting the rate The fast loop is focused on maximising Electrical submersible pump systems of production from each interval in the performance of an individual well. operate more efficiently, are more reliable a horizontal well.

28 digital energy journal - November/December 2006 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:55 Page 29

Automation

A gauge in the well would detect water Sand control Managing water breakthrough breakthrough by measuring the difference Sand control is a complicated endeavour. A very similar situation to that of sand pro- in hydrostatic pressure from fluids coming The appropriate solution depends on both duction arises when managing water from the problem zone. the reservoir circumstance and the produc- breakthrough. At that point, production from the prob- tion plan. When water is the drive mechanism for lem zone would be stopped for a couple of Problems arise when a well is produced the reservoir, one must expect it to be pro- weeks and the cone allowed to relax while at a rate greater than the sand control duced along with the oil. an other zone was produced.The valve mechanism will sustain. Water, however, causes all kinds of prob- would later be reopened to continue pro- The well may produce temporarily at a lems. It can lead to the formation of scale in duction. higher rate but the increased flow rate will the matrix as well as in the production tub- Under normal circumstances, the prob- have enough energy to dislodge sand par- ing. lem zone would have had to be shut down ticles from the matrix. When water is combined with gas in without this arrangement, but instead, it The rock will weaken as it erodes, lead- low-temperature environments such as yielded an additional 100,000 barrels of oil ing to further increases in sand production. deepwater wells or cold weather reservoirs, for the cost of a gauge and a valve. If a sand control mechanism such as a it can lead to the formation of hydrates. screen is used, it can be designed to sustain Water, being more mobile than oil, can Chemical automation and prevent some level of sand production. cause oil to be trapped and be bypassed. The Chemical Automation Group of But if the screen is overwhelmed, by pro- Technologies such as Baker Oil Tools' ProductionQuest is building on the capabil- duction of fines, it will erode quickly and Equalizer screen make it possible to control ities of the SentryNet system developed by fail. water production.This is an inflow technol- Baker Petrolite. The conventional practice is to design ogy intended for long horizontal wells. The SentryNet system brings the bene- the sand control mechanism such that it In these wells, most production comes fits of wireless remote sensing and satellite will sustain the punishment of the expect- from the heel.This leads to early water or cellular data communications technolo- ed production regime.This may lead to an breakthrough at the heel. High permeabili- gies to oilfield chemical management. over-design of the sand control solution in ty intervals can have a similar effect else- Now operators can monitor fluid tank some instances and under design and fail- where. levels, and inject chemical treatments auto- ure in others. Open-hole packers, such as Baker Oil matically, and share the information with Sand control can be combined with Tools' MPas system, can isolate various pro- team members via any internet-enabled intelligent production technologies such as ducing intervals and the Equalizer screen devices. intelligent completions and well monitor- can adjust the rate of production from Chemical automation systems are used to ing. each interval. treat corrosion and product contaminants Doing so would make it possible to If properly designed, this completion such as scale, paraffin, hydrates, asphaltenes monitor the conditions under which the design will prevent early water break- and hydrogen sulphide. reservoir is produced and control them to through in any of the segments of comple- The treatment of the produced fluids for make sure the design specification of the tion. flow assurance requires injecting the right sand control mechanism are not exceeded. amount of the right chemical to avoid cor- Monitoring the pressure at the sand face Control water production rate rosion, formation of scale, deposition of would make sure the drawdown is not Water production can be mitigated by con- asphaltenes. excessive. trolling the rate of production of a well to If the volume and chemical composition Monitoring the flow verifies that the where it does not produce excessive water. of produced fluid changes it is also neces- rates of production will not damage the Control can be implemented either with sary to adjust the treatment of this chemi- formation. chokes or by controlling the artificial lift cal. Using chokes, be it in the well if there mechanism as with an electric submersible The chemistry of the formation of flow are multiple producing zones or at the sur- pump with a variable frequency drive. impediments is affected by the pressure face, makes it possible to control the draw- In one oil well, which had problems with and temperature of the produced fluids as down and the rate of production. water coning, Baker Oil Tools used a simple well. open / close valve, with an ESP in the well. Adjustments in the completion and the artificial lift system also will affect the pressures and temperatures of the produced A chemical automation operation in Colorado.The ProductionQuest Well Monitoring Group has fluids. technologies to monitor the production stream and administer chemical treatments accordingly, including mechanisms to prevent or remediate flow impairments caused by water and its effects, The monitoring tools can measure these avoid corrosion, avoid formation of scale and deposition of asphaltenes. changes but the flow assurance system must accommodate them.

About the authors

Dr Guy P. Vachon is director of Optimisation Solutions for the ProductionQuest business unit of Baker Hughes. Jaedong Lee is the senior applications advisor for ProductionQuest, with expertise covering reservoir engineering, formation testing and project management. Patricia Vega is the portfolio development manager for ProductionQuest, with expertise in field engineering, electrical logging, reservoir characterization, drilling and production operations, operations management, project management, product management and portfolio development.

November/December 2006 - digital energy journal 29 dej november.qxp 10/11/2006 13:56 Page 30

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