Electronic Purchasing Strategies Wi-Fi on Offshore Platforms Statoil's

novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:02 Page 1

Statoil's Integrated Operations Virtual reality for training Halliburton's Digital Asset

November - December 2007 Issue 9

Electronic purchasing strategies Wi-fi on offshore platforms

Media supporter Associate Member ™ novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 2

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET Vision for Energy

> Strategic consulting > Seismic imaging > Velocity analysis > Structural interpretation > Stratigraphic delineation > Formation evaluation > Reservoir modeling > Pore pressure prediction > Well planning

Vision is Certainty Leading science, breakthrough innovation and exceptional people. Providing customers with the intelligence to minimise risk and optimise subsurface asset management. Paradigm. Unconﬂ icted, unsurpassed. www.pdgm.com

Digital_Energy_Journal_1007.indd 1 9/12/07 8:53:59 AM novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 1

Contents Integrated operations at Kristin Statoil made use of organisational experts when working out the best way to bring workers from its Kristen asset onshore, but working closely with platform personnel. It reduced the number of people required to be on the rig, and also gained improvements in safety, uptime and production 2 Exploration and drilling Halliburton and enabling the Digital Double North Sea oil with rock physics? Asset Martyn Millwood Hargrave, managing direc- November/December 2007 Issue 9 Halliburton new range of services under tor of Ikon Science, believes that rock Digital Energy Journal the label ‘Digital Asset,’ highlighting how it physics based technologies could help find offers the people processes and technology and access a further 4 billion barrels of oil in 213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK www.digitalenergyjournal.com to help customers make best use of the the North Sea. Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935 latest digital tools. 10 Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344 6 New Online GIS system Analyse geology as 3D structures rather UK company Interactive Net Mapping has Editor than layers - ffA launched a new system for oil and gas com- Karl Jeffery [email protected] UK company Foster Findlay Associates (ffA) panies to view their wells, seismic surveys provides software for analysing seismic data and related information online. Technical editor/ IT manager to find and describe 3D geological structures, 11 Keith Forward ATCE preview [email protected] SPE’s IT subcommitte update 7 We asked some of the exhibitors at the Consultant writer We spoke to section chairman Mehrzad forthcoming SPE ATCE event in November Tracey Dancy, Paras Consulting Mahdavi about how plans for the Society of 11-14 what new and exciting digital tech- Subsciptions Petroleum Engineers (SPE's) IT technical sec- nologies they will be showing this year tion are progressing. Karl Jeffery 8 12 [email protected] Oil and gas production Advertising sales Alec Egan IQPC Houston oil & Gas Intelligent Energy Conference Tel +44 (0)207 510 4944 [email protected] Discussion at IQPC's Oil and Gas Exchange Plans are moving ahead for the Society of in Houston on Sept 12-13, delegates dis- Petroleum Engineers / Reed Exhibitions 'In- Digital Energy Journal is your one stop in- cussed ways to implement IT systems in oil telligent Energy Conference,' planned for formation source for new trends, technical and gas. By Tracey Dancy of Paras Consult- this Feb 25-27 in Amsterdam. developments, opinion, new products and ing. 28 best practise with digital technology in the 15 Offshore Europe upstream oil and gas industry. Managing your growing data Some of the highlights at the Offshore Eu- As oil companies' data stores grow expo- rope exhibition in Aberdeen Each issue of Digital Energy Journal print nentially, we asked EMC about their tools to 29 magazine is mailed to 2,000 oil and gas ex- assist. Phenomatics - training in virtual ecutives, with a further 500-1000 copies 17 reality distributed at trade shows, as well as be- Roxar 190 to 800 employees Phenomatics of Austria is pushing out the ing downloaded approx 2,000 times as Roxar has more than quadrupled its staff boundaries of what is possible with simula- pdf. count from 190 to 800 people in 5 years. We tor training,by creating a system where peo- asked group marketing director Svenn Hau- ple see the virtual world on a 3D headset, Subscriptions: £GBP 195 a year for 6 is- gen how they did it rather than looking at a screen. sues. To subscribe, please contact Karl Jef- 18 31 fery on [email protected]. Alternatively Integrated Operations Electronic purchasing you can subscribe online at A new ‘embrace variability' approach to To make an electronic purchasing strategy www.d-e-j.com safety, and how BG avoids standardised work, you have to segment your suppliers in processes - some of the highlights from the the right way. Chris Welsh of Eiro Consulting, Front cover: screen shot Integrated Operations conference in Trond- writing on behalf of oil and gas e-commerce from heim, Norway, on October 2-3. company OFS-Portal, explains. Paradigm's 20 32 new Common Communications Reflection Wi-fi on offshore platforms satellite communications technology on Angle display at Offshore Communications event The time is right for wi-fi on offshore oil Migration in Houston (CRAM) solution, a new high-resolution platforms, believes automation giant subsurface imaging solution designed to Invensys 39 improve the quality of information 38 Adjust your satcom power on the fly obtained from seismic data processing Offshore communications preview Hughes Network Solutions has launched a new satellite communications technology, There will be some exciting offshore Printed in the UK by THE MAGAZINE PRINTING COMPANY DVB-S2. www.magprint.co.uk 40 September - October 2007- digital energy journal 11

Digital_Energy_Journal_1007.indd 1 9/12/07 8:53:59 AM novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 2

Exploration and Drilling Integrated Operations at Kristin Statoil made use of organisational experts when working out the best way to bring workers from its Kristen asset onshore, but working closely with platform personnel. It reduced the number of people required to be on the rig, and also gaining improvements in safety, uptime and production

The Kristen platform is 240 km offshore from Trondheim, Norway, and is a conden- sate gas field with 12 wells. It is a high pressure (910 bar), high temperature (170 degrees C) reservoir at 4,500m depth, below water of between 240 and 320m depth. Production started in November 2005. NOK 20bn ($3.5bn) has been invested in the platform. Statoil estimates that NOK 200m (USD $36.5m) has been saved in operating costs over the first year from integrated operations, said Arne Bye, asset manager / platform manager at Kristin. "The first year of operation is normally costly." "Half of the savings was due to the way we work. The other half was due to having better quality plant," he said. "We had a goal Pleased with the progress - Arne S Bye, platform manager with Statoil's Kristin asset. Photo of no gas leakage, and managed it." Harald Pettersen StatoilHydro. Statoil wanted to use Integrated Opera- tions methods to be able to operate the plat- Work and play test program, we would get text messages. form with the minimum number of people The two teams even held a joint spinning When we received them, we would go to our onboard for safety reasons, maximise pro- (exercise bike) session (see picture). computers, and have a ten minute discussion duction and operational efficiency, and keep Traditional distinctions between work about what to do. That would conclude the the platform in optimum technical condition. and play are being lost, said Mr Bye. time required for the interaction." Currently there are 31 people on the "We had a problem with a completion - "I could do the work and prepare the platform at any time. The minimum allowed a leak - as you can imagine it happened at dinner at the same time. This is a vast im- number (for emergency preparedness) is 27 ten to four on Friday afternoon," he said. provement." people. "So we are close to the absolute min- "We had to collect a group of special- Mr Bye said that the platform had imum," said Mr Bye. ists to decide what to do. We worked until achieved 98 to 99 per cent uptime (known as The platform has two management 6pm, started tests and agreed to meet sat am 'regularity'), compared to 90 per cent on oth- teams, one onshore and one offshore, each at 7am to look at the results. We discussed er comparable North Sea platforms. located in a collaboration room, and there different options to do full test." The drilling was tricky, with wells at up are continuous video links from one room to "At 4pm on Saturday, I should have to 87 degrees deviation (from vertical), in another so both management teams can see been making dinner for friends at home." high pressure / high temperature reservoirs, each other at all times. "So we decided, at certain steps in the from a floating drill rig.

the first ever integrated operations spinning (exercise bike) session - simultaneously on the platform (left) and the operations support centre (right), monitored on big screens.The Operation room for managers offshore, which is continuously online with the onshore participants would like us to note that it was operations room. Photo Øyvind Hagen StatoilHydro held ten minutes before the shift started (ie not during working hours)

2 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 3

Exploration and Drilling

"We had no well control situation," he said. "Statistically - the industry gets a well control situation from every second well drilled in high pressures and high temperatures." Now Statoil would like more middle managers, supervisors and technicians to be brought into the collaborative working system. "The next step is to involve technical and discipline engineers and vendors," said Mr Bye. It also wants to develop a tie-in to the platform from the neighbouring Tyrihans field, without any additional personnel. Computer tools also proved very useful in managing maintenance tasks. "Normally the backlog on maintenance is quite a challenge to control," he said. The project team was able to do its own recruitment, and so make sure that all the The Kristin platform. people were suited to this kind of working. "They need to like to work with people," said has to be understanding of goals, and a agers," he said. Mr Bye. shared situational awareness, and a high de- "We have parallel and concurrent tasks gree of available information," said Mr Hep- being planned and executed by onshore and Social engineers sø. "Trust is very important." offshore teams in continuous communica- "We realised we needed some social engi- "We need co-ordination but also have tion, with shared situational awareness." neers - anthropologists," said Mr Bye. "All to facilitate for self synchronisation." "We have an increasingly demanding of us engineers have a belief we can fix This led to a change in atmosphere on work-force that want work challenges and everything. It is good advice to bring in some the platform. "You go from being instructed improved learning opportunities." people from other lines of work." to more participating," he said. "We had a "We have a hands-on offshore and on- Statoil put in a lot of effort to make sure successful integration of operation and main- shore management that is expected to spend that the organisation would work. "The so- tenance teams." time and attention in developing the work- cial interactions between people is very im- So Statoil wanted to create the tools and force," he said. "We can enable professional portant because it allows the shared under- invite offshore staff to use them, rather than support to the offshore work-force." standing," said Vidar Hepsø, principal re- force the situation. "In such an organisation, everything be- searcher and project manager with Statoil re- "The platform maintenance teams comes very visible," said Mr Hepsø. "You search and technology. wanted more management support," said Mr can't walk away. The peer pressure becomes Statoil used the term 'self-synchronisa- Hepsø. "They wanted to use IO to improve extremely strong. There is a lot of peer pres- tion' to refer to the way people were encour- collaboration with onshore experts." sure. aged to work autonomously / freely, finding Mr Hepsø said that many new things As far as resilience, Mr Hepsø said, their own ways to solve problems, rather are happening on the platform. "We haven't had a crisis bust we've had chal- than wait for instructions. "The personnel have a peak compe- lenges. I'm impressed by the team's ability For self synchronisation to work, "there tence not necessarily possessed by man- to solve surprising problems. There is certain robustness to this organisation." One delegate suggested that perhaps the project had worked very well because Mr Bye was a "charming, tough guy," able to get the job done but have people still liking him.

This article is based on a presentation given by Arne S Bye, platform manager for Statoil's Kristin asset, and Vidar Hepso, principal researcher and project manager with Statoil Research and Technology, at the Integrated Operations conference in Trondheim, Norway, on October 2-3. Further reports from the conference is on pages 20-26 of this magazine. Original presentations can be downloaded at http://www.ioconf.no

Morning meeting at Kristin's coffee bar offshore. Photo Øyvind Hagen StatoilHydro

November - December 2007 - digital 3 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 4

Exploration and Drilling

Ikon Science awarded $10m Oilexco Paradigm's new subsurface modelling ARKeX acquires Ark Geophysics project software www.arkex.com www.ikonscience.com www.pdgm.com ARKeX has acquired ARK Geophysics, creating what it claims to be the world's only Ikon Science has won a $10m, 30 month Paradigm has launched a Geologic Driven independent service company specializing in contract from oil company Oilexco, to pro- Modelling Solution, designed to speed up both Gravity Gradient Imaging and conven- vide rock physics directed prospect evalua- subsurface modelling workflow, by eliminat- tion, geomodelling and reservoir characteri- tional gravity and magnetics. The combined sation for Oilexco's exploration, appraisal company employs 60 people worldwide. and development drilling in the UK North The acquisition will see ARKeX's ca- Sea. pacity in data processing and interpretation The two companies have worked to- double, as well as bringing a non-exclusive gether since 2003. Working together the data library and brokerage business. companies helped to discover the Brenda field and its satellite field Nicol, which are Paradigm improves GOCAD interface both on production at 30,000 barrels of oil www.pdgm.com per day. Paradigm has released a new version of its reservoir engineering software GOCAD, Schlumberger acquires InnerLogix with an improved user interface. www.slb.com The new interface is designed to improve Schlumberger has acquired data quality quality control and knowledge management management company InnerLogix, a com- and provides for a fully configurable work- pany with 20 employees, based in Houston space, better data management tools and a and Stavanger, Norway. InnerLogix makes multi-viewer interface. software to automatically clean up data (see The new version also introduces new article in September 2007 Digital Energy Paradigm’s SKUA geologic modelling solution products, including a Local Grid Refinement Journal). (LGR) and Upscaler, Reservoir Data Analy- In connection with the acquisition, sis, Reservoir Simulation Interface Work- Schlumberger has founded a Data Quality ing many repetitive tasks and making other flow and Product Data Analysis. Centre of Excellence in Houston, with sup- tasks less complicated, including construc- port from Schlumberger domain experts and tion of multi-faulted models and pillar / ex- Roxar launches new structural InnerLogix personnel. trusion technology. modelling solution The software is the first component of Schlumberger's stake in PetroMarker Paradigm's new suite of subsurface model- www.roxar.com www.slb.com ling solutions called "Subsurface Knowledge Roxar has launched new software for struc- Schlumberger has acquired a minority inter- Unified Approach" (SKUA). tural modelling of reservoirs, with a more in- est in PetroMarker, a Norwegian company Paradigm believes that the new soft- tuitive user interface, new fault and horizon that specialises in marine electromagnetic ware can help reduce the amount of time tak- modelling tools, and improved 3D and inte- measurement technologies. PetroMarker en to build a subsurface model from weeks grated simulation gridding. It is integrated claims to have developed a unique method to days. with Roxar's reservoir modelling solution of electromagnetics measurement and inter- The system can be re-modelled quickly IRAP RMS. pretation. when additional field and production data is The improvements should lead to Schlumberger believes that marine added. It can handle both reservoir property quicker and more accurate characterizations electromagnetic information, combined with modelling and flow simulation. seismic data, can provide a 'step change' in reservoir definition. It provides electromagnetics services through its WesternGeco OHM acquires Rock Solid Images Electromagnetics business. www.ohmsurveys.com Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping (OHM) has completed the acquisition of Houston-based Paradigm's Venezuela data process Rock Solid Images (RSI), a company spe- contract cialising in using rock physics together with www.pdgm.com well data and surface seismic, to get a better SCAN Geofisica (part of SCAN Geophysi- idea about rock lithology, porosity and satu- cal) has awarded Paradigm a contract to ration. process and interpret data acquired for Following the acquisition, OHM plans PDVSA's Cardon II exploration project. Par- to invest further in RSI, and work on inte- Improve your structural modelling of adigm will assist with quality assurance and grating its Controlled Source Electromagnet- reservoirs with Roxar's new software control during the marine data acquisition, ic (CSEM) imaging technology with RSI's and process the data at its technical centre in software. CSEM can be used to try to detect Caracas. hydrocarbons using electromagnetic waves. of the reservoir and therefore better decision The overall project includes collection, OHM believes that highly valuable in- making, Roxar says, reducing the time re- processing and interpretation of 2D and 3D formation can be gained from using seismic quired to build a structural framework from data in a 400 km2 previously unexplored data together with CSEM, calibrated with months to weeks. area off Northwest Venezuela. well log information.

4 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 5

Exploration and Drilling

Landmark's 56-inch high resolution Landmark's data compression Landmark acquires GeoSmith monitor appliance www.halliburton.com/landmark www.halliburton.com/landmark www.halliburton.com/landmark Landmark has acquired GeoSmith Consult- Landmark has introduced a 56 inch monitor, Landmark has introduced a device, Storwize ing Group, a developer of software compo- M5600, with twice the resolution of today's STN 6000, which can compress data as it is nents for 3D interpretation and geometric 30 inch monitors, altogether 3840 x 2160 being stored, so up to three times more data modelling applications, including robust pixels. (and twice as much seismic data) can be topology engines capable of representing The monitor enables uses users to view stored on the same size storage device as be- subsurface geology. a large amount of information at once, with- fore. GeoSmith's development team will out zooming, scrolling, or jumping from Installation of the Storwize STN 6000 join Landmarks's geoscience interpretation screen to screen. does not require any changes to existing in- and modelling group. frastructure. It is manufactured by Storwize, a San Jose company which is one of Land- Schlumberger opens 'Breakthrough mark's strategic partners. Performance Centre' www.slb.com Patent for Petris Dynamic Model Schlumberger has opened a 'Breakthrough www.petris.com Performance Centre', an innovation lab and Oil and gas software company Petris has executive briefing centre in Houston to been awarded a second US Patent for its Dy- showcase, create and test the latest digital namic Common Model (DCM) data inter- technology innovations in the oil and gas in- change approach, part of PetrisWINDS En- dustry. terprise, which enables users to find and Schlumberger is collaborating with manage data from a variety of different Barco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Ne- View your geological information on sources, move the data reliably between ap- tApp, NVIDIA, Panoram Technologies and Landmark's high resolution 56 inch monitor plications and consolidate the information The Whitlock Group. into a single view. At the centre, clients will be able to cre- In days gone by, geoscientists would The patent describes a loose coupling ate and test solutions bringing together dif- view lots of data at once by pinning sheets of the system components, by extracting da- ferent technologies and services from the of paper on the wall, and they can have a ta from a datastore using XML, loading it in- companies involved.There will also be regu- similar experience with this large screen, to a catalogue, and using the catalogue as a lar client briefings about the technology. Landmark suggests. basis for searching. The monitor costs much less than pro- The first patent described a hub and Saft batteries in Weatherford's MWD jection systems with a comparable resolu- spoke approach for exchange of data be- www.saftbatteries.com tion, the company claims, and does not re- tween applications. quire any set up, wiring, or professional Saft, a manufacturer of specialty batteries for industrial applications, has signed a $3 mil- alignment, and works well in a room with Input/Output changes name to ION normal light. lion contract with Weatherford International, www.i-o.com to supply its LSH Input/Output has changed its company name TerraSpark / Transform software 20 HTS lithium- to ION Geophysical Corporation. thionyl chloride licensing The name change will be accompanied (Li-SOCl2) bat- www.terraspark.com by a rebranding initiative that reflects the tery packs for TerraSpark has signed a licensing deal with company's evolution from its legacy as a measurement Transform Software and Services of Denver, seismic equipment manufacturer to its pres- while drilling so that Transform can offer TerraSpark's In- ent position as a broad-based provider of im- (MWD) tools. teractive Drilling Planner (IDP) software to aging technologies, services, and solutions The batter- its clients. for the global oil and gas industry. ies must be able This means that customers can use Ter- The company will remain incorporated to perform in raSpark's drill planner software together in the state of Delaware and continue to trade temperatures up with Transform's visualization and interpre- under the ticker symbol 'IO' on the New York to +125°C and tation tools, which should help them plan Stock Exchange. endure very high their wells better. vibrations for a PDF3D releases latest version lengthy period of www.pdf3d.co.uk time, typically Ziebel's NOK 36.6 million investment Saft's speciality batteries, www.ziebel.biz PDF3D has released software development 24-48 hours, used downhole in Reservoir optimisation company Ziebel has kit (SDK) version 1.4.0 for its tools to create maintaining full Weatherford's logging announced funding of NOK 36.6m ($6.78m) three dimensional images that can be conve- power through- while drilling tools. from a consortium of Energy Ventures, niently viewed using free Adobe PDF soft- out. The batteries Viking Venture and Kristian G Jebsen ware and incorporated into PDF documents. were originally designed for use in space Group, following its first round funding of The new version has tools for directly probes. NOK 150m ($27.7m) announced in April injecting 3D view ports into existing PDF We published an incorrect website address 2006. template pages, updating and editing PDF for HRH Geological Services in our It will use the funding for product de- documents in-place. September 2007 issue. The correct website velopment, building sales infrastructure and A sample 3D PDF gallery is available is www.hrhgeology.com. further acquisitions. on the company's website.

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 5 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 6

Exploration and Drilling Halliburton and enabling the Digital Asset Halliburton has launched a new range of workflow solutions to highlight how it offers the people, processes and technology to help customers make best use of the latest digital tools when drilling and producing their reservoirs, called the 'Digital Asset'.

On a fracturing job, Halliburton can offer are doing. its ExacFrac service solution where the frac- "It's not a cookie cutter type of solu- turing and wireline teams and technologies, tion," says Bengisu Erenli, program manag- and Landmark reservoir modelling technol- er for the Digital Asset with Halliburton's ogy, all work together. First the job is mod- Drilling and Evaluation Division. elled using the data provided by the client, "We are addressing the business issues then the teams measure the effects of the job rather than just the specific problems that and collaborate in real-time with each other can be addressed with point products. You and with a real time centre when needed, to have to keep the big picture in mind." optimize the impact of the frac. "A lot of companies operate in silos. It's If the task is drilling, Halliburton can very hard to pass data from one part of the offer its Drill-to-the-Earth Model solution company to the next," she says. "Our goal is that combines services of Sperry Drilling to turn silos into synchronised teamwork. Services, its Azimuthal Deep Resistivity Our expertise can bring processes to clients (ADR) tool, which provides resistivity infor- that are in need of this. It's about ensuring mation about the rock ahead, Landmark soft- any qualified person can to access any data, "Our goal is to turn silos into synchronised ware, and its real time monitoring centres. any technology, any asset, anywhere, any- teamwork," Bengisu Erenli, program manager Halliburton's role in the Digital Asset time. for the Digital Asset with Halliburton's Drilling is to ally with its clients to connect the peo- "This is the Holy Grail; when we talk and Evaluation Division ple, processes and technology and make the about this everybody's eyes light up." decision making process more efficient by Halliburton is developing 'workflows', ferent teams working on different aspects of getting the right data to the right people at standard ways for staff from different depart- it. the right time. ments to work together in the most effective For example, you can look at rig avail- This entails focusing on customer prob- way. These staff could be working in the oil ability, expected reserves, oil price, subsur- lems and solutions that address them rather company, in the service company, or both. face equipment, necessary production facili- than selling just technology. There is often not a definitive line ty size, pipeline diameter, all in the same cal- The Digital Asset environment is, ef- drawn between what processes the customer culation. fectively, recognition that what clients want wants to do themselves and keep internal and The software looks at the entire produc- is a service incorporating many different what they might hand over to Halliburton to tion system, including the wells, in one go. technologies, the people who know how to do for them; this is the nature of the busi- This is much better than the conven- use them, and the people to be well co-ordi- ness, Ms. Erenli says. tional way of doing this, where the oil com- nated ('process'). They need more than just "The line between what the customer pany employs different teams specialising in to buy the technology. does and what we do is always changing, and each area, who do some work, make some For example, it's about clients wanting it can change from asset to asset within the decisions and then hand their work to the to reduce uncertainty in a frac job, or min- same company." next team. "These are major disconnects as imising the drilling risk rather than just the "Every company does things different- handoffs occur, we often lose a lot of infor- technologies individually - it's about having ly. But the key thing is getting the right data mation," says Mr Cullick. The technical ex- the technologies working together within the to the right person at the right time." perts can now work as single team so all right processes and with collaboration across The integrated workflow is often the have a common view of the system. all the people across various teams. missing ingredient between the desired re- The inputs to the system could include So as well as just the technology, Hal- sults (eg drilling in the right place), and the the field location, water depth, expected liburton will offer people who know how to existing software tools and IT infrastructure. reservoir size, number of wells to be drilled, use the technology, and established work "It's not one workflow; there are lots of and maximum expected output. processes, including co-ordinating the serv- different workflows. And we have the expe- From this data, the computer system ice company staff with the oil and gas com- rience and the people in those areas," says can calculate (for example) optimum costs, pany staff. Ms Erenli. schedules, cash flows, size / weight, draw- Selling services which make good use ings. of IT makes a refreshing change from com- The whole oilfield in one computer The computer system can also take in- panies which sell software but expect their Stan Cullick, senior technology fellow with to consideration uncertainties, such as rig customers to figure out how to make it work. Halliburton, spoke at the Offshore Europe availability and subsurface uncertainty, As readers of this magazine will be conference about how Halliburton is work- Alternatively, if there is a good under- well aware, you need all three - people, ing out ways to assess the different options standing of other factors, such as the amount process and technology - in order to make for producing a reservoir in a systematic of recoverable oil, the oil price, the rig rates, the best use out of the latest tools to do the manner, essentially modelling the entire oil the computer system can work out the best most with your reservoir, whatever task you and gas system at once, rather than have dif- number of wells, how big a production / pro-

6 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 7

Exploration and Drilling

cessing facility should be built, and how duction control equipment. in 50-200 wells in a single reservoir can take much oil and gas it should be designed to Digital Energy Journal readers will, we 4-5 days to process. handle. hope, be familiar with the concept of 'closed Halliburton is developing what it calls The computer system can evaluate loop control,' where you continually model 'proxy models' which do a simplified version many different scenarios, and assess them all and control your wells, so they are optimum of the calculation, so they can work out the for different metrics, such as net present val- all the time. optimum settings much more quickly ue or maximising reserves. One difficulty with closed loop control These models compare the relationship The tool is being developed and sold by is the amount of data which needs to be between the expected output and the actual Halliburton as a software product. processed, particularly if there are many dif- output, so the model is continuously im- ferent variables, such as different production proved. Multivariable control rates from different wells, and a source of The models can also be used to do fast Another Digital Asset solution is the contin- gas lift which needs to be optimally routed 'what ifs' - see what would happen if you did uous optimisation of production, where Hal- through different wells. something. "We look at - what is the opti- liburton works together with WellDynamics, Even with today's computers, working mum set of well points," says Charles Hill, a company which produces downhole pro- out optimum settings for the control valves technical adviser at Halliburton. Geology as 3D structures not layers UK company Foster Findlay Associates (ffA) provides software for analysing seismic data to find and describe 3D geological structures, such as faults and sand bodies, important to finding and exploiting hydrocarbons.

ffA has just released a new version of its soft- stand the subsurface." tures yourself) and services (if you want to let ware to enable core components to be avail- The software processes the seismic da- ffAA do it all). able to every seismic interpreter. ta; it doesn't process a reservoir model built Many companies initially work with ffA's software represents a very differ- on the seismic data (where a whole range of ffAA as a service, to see what it can do with ent way of processing the seismic data to con- possibly incorrect assumptions have already their data. Mr Henderson claims that ffA has ventional interpretation and reservoir model- been made). "You can find out objectively an enviable success record in the projects it ling software and can bring significant im- what the seismic data on its own is telling has undertaken so far. Ultimately, however, provements in accuracy and productivity. you," he says. companies want to be self sufficient and buy The software uses a set of processing Mr Henderson suggests that oil compa- the software so their own staff can work on tasks which enable it to identify and delineate nies should use the software as a supplement it. structures such as faults as 3D objects. In to their current tools, to provide a new view The software works either as a stand- comparison, conventional interpretation tech- on their data. alone application or as a plugin to existing niques aim to understand geology as a series It can provide them with extra insight, seismic interpretation packages (including of rock layers and leave it to trained geolo- completely independent of all of their other Schlumberger's GeoViz and Landmark's Geo- gists to try to work out the significance of geological modelling work, into what the da- Probe). Schlumberger and Landmark also sell these layers. ta indicates about the subsurface. the ffA software. "Most seismic interpretation gives you a The software is very flexible and can ffA has been working closely with Nor- representation of geology as a set of surfaces," handle seismic data sets of all sizes and work wegian oil and gas company Hydro for 5 says Jonathan Henderson, managing director at a wide range of different resolutions. For years - Hydro now uses ffA software it of ffA. "We provide important additional in- example, it has been used to analyse more throughout the company. Gaz de France is al- formation by creating a 3D representation of than 3000km2 of seismic data in one go for a so a major client. geological entities that retain the very high US company, to provide initial indications The technology was originally devel- level of detail that is required to fully under- about where the company should be paying oped for use in medicine including analysis the most attention. of brain scans; medical imaging is still an im- The software has been used in over 160 portant avenue for innovation for ffA. different projects since 2002, when it first The company found that by working in started working in the industry. The company the oil and gas industry it could find faster has a high quality group of geoscientists at its practical applications for what it was doing. offices in Aberdeen and 10 full time software "It's important to work with people who un- developers at its offices in Newcastle. derstand and use what you are doing," he The tools are very flexible and have says. "In the oil and gas industry, we're solv- been used successfully in diamond and gold ing someone's direct problem." mining applications as well as oil and gas. Mr "ffA's success comes in part from our Henderson also envisages that they could ability to work hand in hand with exploration Fault bounded bodies (Data Courtesy of prove very valuable in carbon dioxide stor- and production companies," he says. "We get Hydro) - The image shows a composite age, assessing the capability of a certain rock access to expertise, data and credibility and structural and stratigraphic volume which allows the relationship between detected structure to hold carbon dioxide securely. the exploration and production companies get faults and extracted high amplitude bodies to ffA provides both software (if you want to ensure that our development programme is be investigated. to have a go at defining the geological struc- really focused on their needs."

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 7 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:03 Page 8

Exploration and Drilling SPE's IT subcommittee - update The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) IT technical section has plenty of interesting projects, including an IT distinguished lecturer program and making an IT in oil and gas video.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)'s tion's board is Herb Yuan IT manager for on the development of what is commonly IT technical section has held a number of high performance computing at Shell, and a known as the 'digital oilfield,' where all the physical and teleconference meetings so far previous chairman of POSC (now Energis- IT systems are properly integrated. during 2007, and current projects include de- tics). Most oil and gas companies have cor- veloping a distinguished lecturer program Other board members include Dr. porate IT systems, surface IT systems and for oil and gas IT, working on the 2008 Dig- Mehrzad Mahdavi, vice president, Enterprise subsurface systems, which do not talk to ital Energy conference in Houston (May 20- Security Services, Schlumberger (chairman); each other very well. The subcommittee is 21), and developing a video showing how IT Patrick Hereng, chief information officer, working out how this can be improved. managers and geophysicists should working Total; Gary Masada, president IT, Chevron; "There is no choice but to move into a together. Don Moore, vice president and CIO, Occi- digital oilfield," says section chairman Dr. Broader aims include trying to identify dental Petroleum; and Washington Salles, Mehrzad Mahdavi. "As an industry we don't obstacles to connecting disparate IT systems president IT, Petrobras; Richard Jackson, have any other way to go. The efficiencies in light of the requirements for the digital chief information protection officer, required in the operation of the oilfields can oilfield in our industry and figuring out how Chevron. be achieved through implementation of the to overcome barriers; working out what the The next board meeting will be held at processes and technologies that we collec- IT managers' role should or could be and the SPE offices in Houston on November 29. tively call the digital oilfield." how much an IT manager needs to know There will also be IT Technical Section "The group has been getting together about geophysics; working out how IT man- members meetings at ATCE event in No- regularly and trying to define what are the agers can be given improved status in the in- vember. For more information on how to major pieces that need to be integrated to- dustry; and contributing to projects to im- join the IT technical Session, please contact gether, and if there are any practises that can Holly Hargadine [email protected] at help make this happen," he says. "We need SPE and plan to attend the members meet- to take as much input as we can - to try to ing at the ATCE. The time and room will be really understand the full extent of the prob- announced shortly. lem first." The idea for the Society of Petroleum "We have built all kinds of systems Engineers (SPE) IT technical section was based on silo mentality," he says. [The lack first mooted in December 2005, as a forum of connectivity] "is a big problem. Until you to discuss issues around IT security in oil and connect a good bit of these systems together gas. you really don't have a true digital oilfield During 2006, the plan evolved into four as we envision." separate subcommittees, looking at IT infra- "Our job is to identify the business structure, IT personnel, IT security and IT needs - and put some flesh around it - from events. the technical side - and from there identify the standards that need to be put in place, to Join make this idea work." The subcommittees are all holding regular The subcommittee will not do any meetings, both face to face (mainly in Hous- work on data standards itself, but will work ton) and via teleconference. closely with a standards body like Energis- Keen to get more people involved in SPE's IT Mehrzad Mahadavi, chairman of the tics. Technical Section - Mehrzad Mahdavi, vice technical section, says he is very keen to get The subcommittee is chairman is Yan- president, Enterprise Security Services, more people involved. ni Charalambous, IT director for Occidental Schlumberger (SPE IT subcommitte chairman) "We need to go to the next step, get petroleum. more critical mass into our subcommittees," he says. "Others need to work with them to New discipline subcommittee prove IT security. share the load and make sure what they come The new discipline subcommittee addresses All of this comes down to one princi- up with is more representative of the indus- what needs to be done to encourage the de- pal underlying motive, which is encouraging try." velopment of the oil and gas specific IT pro- the development of what is commonly The best way to join is to contact the fessional. This means a cross 'discipline', known as the 'digital oilfield', with all the Holly Hargadine, senior manager of the between a geophysicist or a petroleum engi- systems infrastructure, security, competence Technical Sections [email protected]. neer with IT. No longer can you create si- and knowledge required to make that hap- los between a petroleum engineer and an IT pen. Oilfield integration subcommittee professional. A recently added member to the sec- The oilfield integration subcommittee works This cross discipline can be chosen as

8 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 9

Exploration and Drilling

a university curriculum. The advantage and vice versa, so there are more people IT events subcommittee would be that the IT savy petroleum engi- around with an understanding of both The fourth subcommittee, chaired by Randy neer or geophysicist can design a system worlds, he suggests. Clark, CEO of Energistics, will work on oil with all aspects of the technology in mind The subcommittee plans to make a and gas IT events. therefore creating more efficiencies. video showing how IT managers can work The subcommittee has already started "IT and the geophysical science have together with people from other departments work on the 2008 Digital Energy conference been operating in 2 separate silos," says Dr. in the company. in Houston, to be held in May 20-21, 2008, Mahdavi. co-chaired by Don Paul, vice president and "Geophysical scientists have been do- Digital security subcommittee chief technical officer of Chevron, and ing their own thing." The digital security subcommittee will work Mehrzad Mahdavi. "An IT manager needs to understand together with the LOGIIC (Linking the Oil It hopes to attract 1,000 attendees, com- what a geoscientist does - and how they use and Gas Industry to Improve Cyber Securi- pared to 750 in 2007. the digital information to not only do their ty) program, which looks at making process Dr. Mahdavi believes that the industry own jobs but also to collaborate." control systems more secure. could be served better by fewer, larger "IT professionals need to know the Organisations involved with LOGIIC events. workflows and how the technical applica- include US Department of Homeland Secu- We want to bring some critical mass to- tions work together." rity, Chevron, BP, CITGO, Honeywell, Er- gether and have more substantial programs "Geophysicists know that they need to gon Refining and Sandia National Labs. in place," he says. "Experts do not have to talk to each other, they need to have an ef- LOGIIC is "a vision of Don Paul, chief make choices between smaller conferences." fective environment, they need to view technology officer of Chevron, and the man This subcommittee is developing an oil things in real time. But IT people are some- that's behind it is Richard Jackson, Chevron's IT distinguished lecturer program, finding times not in the loop with those requirements chief information security officer," says Dr. experienced individuals who can talk pub- as much as they should be. They don't un- Mehrzad Mahdavi. licly about how IT can work best in oil and derstand what the geophysicists do on a day "What we are trying to do is reach out gas, spread their enthusiasm and knowledge to day basis." and make sure that the project LOGIIC - gets about the subject, talking about projects Perhaps some of the current IT man- a good participation through our SPE tech- which worked well and ones which didn't agers could be trained to be geoscientists, nical section," he says. work well.

The key to the digital Oilfield ... The Gravitas ...a step ahead Software Suite ... Technology Driven, Field Proven

• Streamlining Workflows • Linking Wellsite and Asset • Improving Collaboration • Enhancing Real Time Data Acquisition • Swift, Accurate Reports, Logs and Charts HRH Geological Services 19 Silverburn Place, To find out more call our Specialist Software Team Aberdeen AB23 8EG, UK on +44 (0) 1224 347070 Tel: +44 (0) 1224 347070 or email [email protected] www.hrhgeology.com novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 10

Exploration and Drilling Double North Sea oil with rock physics? Martyn Millwood Hargrave, managing director of London-based company Ikon Science, believes that rock physics based technologies could help find and access a further 4 billion barrels of oil in the North Sea, on top of the 4 billion barrels thought to be left to be recovered through normal means.

"In the North Sea there are about 4 billion grave, "and we were awarded a $10m con- The barrels left to be found with conventional tract after that." link enables E&P methods but up to 8 billion barrels us- the same ing rock physics based technologies", claims About Ikon Science data to be Martyn Millwood Hargrave of Ikon Science. Established in 2001, backed by Enterprise viewed si- "Properly applied these technologies can Oil and Tullow Oil, Ikon Science has already multane- double the amount of oil we can find in the expanded to 70 employees, with a head of- ously in North Sea." fice in the UK, and offices in Durham, Hous- both pack- Mr Millwood Hargrave believes that by ton, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Bei- ages. The using rock physics techniques, it is possible jing. interactive to find oil which is stored in all kinds of rock The company does not claim any mo- link operat- Technologies to double the oil in the North Sea? - Martyn structures, not just the conventional structur- nopoly over rock physics - it is not promis- ing between Millwood Hargrave, managing al traps which geologists have predominant- ing access to any patented scientific tech- RokDoc director, Ikon Science ly looked for to date. niques - but it does claim to be making rock and Petrel But to reliably find oil which is stored physics accessible, easier to use and more means that any changes made by the user on in more subtle structures and sedimentary effective, particularly to smaller oil and gas one model are instantly updated to the other configurations (known as 'stratigraphic companies. It is also making rock physics model. traps'), you need to have much more insight easier to integrate with other geoscience Previously, these tasks were carried out into rock properties. For example, you might methods and processes, such as electromag- in two separate steps, now they can be com- notice hydrocarbon effects in real data out- netics and reservoir modelling. pleted as one seamless process. "It's an effi- side of obvious structural depth highs or up- "Other service companies may have ciency improvement and an insight improve- swept oil in depleted fields using time lapse their rock physics on spreadsheets, with bits ment combined," claims Mr Millwood Har- methods that depend on rock physics. of code here and there," explains Mr Mill- grave. Ikon Science calls this 'quantitative' in- wood Hargrave. "But they haven't been able He also believes that the word 'integrat- terpretation, the ability to use, model and to bring it all together. We're the only com- ed' is overused, or might imply that you were predict specific physical properties of the pany in the world that's dedicated to pulling able simply to import data from one applica- rocks remotely, rather than only looking for, it all together and helping interpreters work tion to another. "If this is the definition of trends and patterns in seismic and other geo- out what the rock properties mean and can 'integration' then maybe we need another physical attributes. do for their projects." word for when two pieces of software can Rock physics techniques can be used to The company offers both the leading both update each other automatically be- find new oilfields; they can also be used to software in its class - RokDoc and specialist cause it is a much more creative fusion". provide additional insight on current devel- services including rock physics based analy- "The analogy I use is: model making is opments and producing fields, to get a more sis and interpretation, helping oil and gas currently like a 56k modem. Modelling reliable idea of the presence of oil and gas companies integrate rock physics into their While Picking is like broadband - it's always before drilling. geoexploration processes. on. Any changes move through the model "We describe it as software and know straight away. This makes the model making Discoveries how," he says. "We've worked with oil com- far more fluid and dynamic, and makes the While it's not possible, of course, to know panies to integrate what they wanted into older systems look very static." how much oil is available in stratigraphic their asset groups. traps around the world, Ikon Science has al- "We explain how to use this informa- Future developments ready been involved in two major discover- tion, plus what it means commercially. That's Ikon Science is developing its technologies ies in the North Sea by using these tech- our USP (unique sales proposition). Our so it can incorporate a greater range of data niques. driver is the integration of this technology to sources into the model, creating a more ro- One discovery, which was drilled and create success for our clients and ourselves, bust and reliable result. is being produced by Canadian oil and gas that's what gets me up in the morning." For example, it is working on ways to company Oilexco, was a 80 million barrel include electromagnetic data in the rock oilfield now producing at over 30,000 bar- Modelling while picking physics model. "Electromagnetics are be- rels per day. Ikon's latest software release typifies this in- coming very important, but they don't work On the original seismic information, the tegration. The 'Modelling While Picking - well on their own. existing oilfield was only visible as a small The RokDoc-Petrel plug-in', enables users What's required are rock physics en- and insignificant closure. But rock physics to interpret seismic data using rock physics abled workflows which are linked to real- analysis spotted an anomaly in the data, (through the Ikon Science RokDoc soft- time integrations via inversion and forward which led to the discovery of the new field. ware), and draw predictive models (using modelling, that way you can really under- "It was a major transformation event Schlumberger's Petrel software) at the same stand what all the data types are telling you for them," claims a proud Mr Millwood Har- time. together," he said.

10 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 11

Exploration and Drilling

More on rock physics to make use of expensively collected infor- is fun, people tend to work better. We like to Rock physics is about discovering a lot more mation that we've already got now." live hard and work hard. Being in London is information about the rock - which will help Using knowledge of nearby rocks in or- also a bonus, because most people in the you get much greater insight as to presence der to understand remote rocks you know lit- world would like to spend some time of their of oil and gas and gain more understanding tle about is one of the staples of rock physics. lives in the city." from the subsurface data. "We say, rock physics is the DNA of Personal skills are ranked as highly as In the early years of oil and gas explo- exploration," says Mr Millwood Hargrave. academic skills in the recruiting process. ration, explorers only had seismic data to go "Rocks are quite complex things, aggrega- "You can almost take for granted their quali- on. But now most exploration data is being tions of minerals and chemicals, with the fications and intellect, but what's important generated from areas of the world which memory and overprint of the processes that is their character and personality," he says. have already been drilled. created them and reactive to their current "I look for some evidence that the peo- There exists a large amount of well log conditions." ple we recruit are independent thinkers, en- information that can be used together with ergetic and enthusiastic," he says. "We don't the seismic to provide greater insight into the Team say, we're only taking people with a certain rock physics. "Our staff comes to Ikon because of the flex- qualification. "There are not many areas of the world ibility we provide, and because we give peo- "I ask them, what got you interested in where you don't have well information," says ple a bit of free space to think and work. We the business, what makes you happy? That's Mr Millwood Hargrave. "The business needs also pay well," he says. "If the environment a very interesting question." New online GIS system for oil and gas UK company Interactive Net Mapping has launched a new system for oil and gas companies to view their wells, seismic surveys and related information online. UK company Interactive Net Mapping has kinds of data are available. You can zoom in tain), then launched a new system for oil and gas compa- and see documents connected to the different with Kestrel nies to view their wells, seismic surveys and re- areas. Ltd. lated information online. Oil companies can find out about nearby Mr The service, called Oilelefant, is aimed at relevant civil infrastructure, such as storage ter- Lloyd envis- companies which do not want to spend money minals, refineries and ports. ages that the on a fully comprehensive geographic informa- Companies can connect their documents software tion system (GIS). to the map, for example seismic records and would be ideal Costs range from £12,500 for 1-4 users to well logs, so they can easily be found. for independ- £30,000 for 25-34 users, with the licence fee It uses PPDM Lite data model for the spa- ent oil and gas including rights to use the map, and database tial model component. The server runs in Win- companies, software. dows Server. It is delivered on 2 CDs and takes who have as- You can see wells on the map using stan- about 2 hours to install sets around the David Lloyd, managing dard symbology, and areas covered with seis- world and director of Interactive Net Mapping, mic surveys and blocks acquired. Using it need to keep The system is used by exploration and David Lloyd, managing director of Interactive track of them, and do not want to pay large li- production company GB Petroleum, which has Net Mapping, has been working on develop- cense fees for high end systems (nor employ been using the software to manage data about ment of the system for the past 2 years. staff who know how to use them). license blocks purchased, seismic surveys com- Mr Lloyd has been working in oil and gas They want a system everybody in the pleted and wells drilled for its operations in Eu- data management for his entire career, includ- company can use to see what is available, rope and North Africa. ing working on large technical data projects for whether they are in the office, at home or trav- GB Petroleum says it could reduce the oil companies, and believes he has a good idea eling. amount of hard copy information it needed to of what is required. It could also be useful for state oil compa- store as a result of having the system, and man- “The industry needs a simple system for nies and governments who want to manage aged to install it without external assistance. entering data on a world map,” he says. their licenses, particularly companies just start- The company is now working on its ver- “It’s cost effective, it’s not costing the high ing to try to attract oil companies, such as E.g. sion 2.0, which will include modules for end license fees that other companies charge. Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Barbados, Jamaica. records and information management. People say, we don't need that, we've only 5 Companies could use it internally or even wells, we've only got 100 data seismic lines, we make it public facing, so anyone could see what Software only need a small little system - this will do it assets they have, he suggests. The software can take input data in various dif- for you,” he says. Many oil companies publish static maps ferent formats, and transfers them to a geo- “What I've tried to do - is keep things sim- of licenses they own on their website, wouldn’t graphical projection in WGS-84 standard. ple and straightforward,” he says. it be good if people could drill down to find out The software uses a map of the world with Mr Lloyd studied geology / physical ge- more information? water depths and mountain heights, and limited ography at university, and worked for Esso Eu- The software can be easily used by trav- civil infrastructure, such as roads, railways and rope and Africa division cataloguing maps for eling staff. Some large companies have also cities. them, then in technical data management for shown interest in using it in satellite offices. On the map, you can quickly see what Rockall Data Services (now part of Iron Moun- www.oilelefant.com

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 11 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 12

Exploration and Drilling Preview of ATCE We asked some of the exhibitors at the forthcoming SPE ATCE event in November 11-14 what new and exciting digital technologies they will be showing this year

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE’s) Annual Technical Conference and Exhibi- tion (ATCE) will be held this year in Ana- heim, California, on November 11-14. People with an interest in ‘digital energy’ might enjoy some of the following conference sessions. Monday morning: change in professional generation; Monday afternoon: reservoir characterisation; Tuesday morning: real time monitoring, field management, simulation or remote monitoring sessions; Tuesday afternoon: logging while drilling, reservoir monitoring, or well optimisation sessions; Wednesday morning: reservoir char- Everyone's going to this year's Advanced Technology Conference andExhibition (ATCE) - the big acterisation or drilling automation; Wednes- event of the Society of Petroleum Engineers,held in Anaheim this November. Photo of 2006 day afternoon: field case studies. event by Barchfeld Photography. The event will have over 300 exhibitors Paradigm and over 8,000 stands. Here is our preview Sensornet www.pdgm.com of some of the exciting digital technology www.sensornet.co.uk which some of the exhibitors will have on UK company Sensornet will exhibit its digi- display. tal flow profiling solution, which can provide continuous data about wells which is Crystal Ball normally only available from production www.crystalball.com logging tests (PLT), but with no need to stop Risk analysis and optimisation software production. company Crystal Ball (now owned by Ora- Sensornet provides the full service cle) will exhibit its software which can be from initial design, distributed temperature used to solve “almost any problem involv- system (DTS) hardware, installation, and da- Paradigm's improved GOCAD reservoir engineering software ing uncertainty, variability and risk,” the ta interpretation. company claims, transforming spreadsheets Oil and gas software company Paradigm will into dynamic risk models. Numerical Rocks release version 2.5 of its popular GOCAD The software is particularly useful in www.numericalrocks.com reservoir engineering software, which has an the oil and gas industry, because there are Numerical improved user interface and better data man- plenty of different risks and uncertainties to Rocks of agement tools. manage. Trondheim, “We know that a common user inter- The software is used by ChevronTexa- Norway, face and well-designed workflows lower the co, BPAmoco, Occidental, Shell, Saudi will exhibit cost of training and maintenance,” says Jean- Aramco, and Halliburton, among others. its e-core Claude Dulac, executive vice president and It is used to do probabilistic reserves technology chief architect at Paradigm. “Paradigm now analysis, plan capital projects, prepare for calculat- offers an interface to quickly navigate drilling Authorizations for Expenditure ing the through both simple environments and com- (AFEs), evaluate exploration opportunities, petrophysi- plex tasks that other industry packages can- estimate reserves and predict petrochemical cal and mul- not duplicate.” prices. tiphase Numerical Rocks - model a Paradigm will demonstrate its Common The software is based on Microsoft Ex- properties of large section of rock from a Reflection Angle Migration (CRAM) tool small core cel, and can do Monte Carlo simulation, oil and gas which can be used to improve the quality of time-series forecasting, optimisation and re- reservoir rocks, from analyzing a small sam- information gained from seismic data pro- al options analysis. ple of rock (either a core or drill cuttings). cessing. "Crystal Ball has improved insight, “Feedback from existing clients has The tool is based on a new procedure communication, and differentiation between been very positive and we’re already cross- which maps recorded surface seismic data to complex investment opportunities and is a selling licences and technical services with- subsurface image points. It is designed to cornerstone of our decision analysis in those major companies,” says Ivar Erdal, help resolve difficult subsurface illumination process,” says ConocoPhilips’ Matt Fox. CEO at Numerical Rocks. problems.

12 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 13

Exploration and Drilling

ABLE innovations NMR) deviation surveys, attributes, docu- demonstration of Halliburton’s “Digital As- www.ableinnovations.com ments, and history information. Recall in- set”, a collaborative environment for model- Language services company ABLE Innova- cludes a comprehensive suite of data editing, ing, measuring and optimizing oil and gas tions of Boston will exhibit its translation so- visualisation and management tools for well assets, connecting togtether people, technol- lutions for oil and gas, which have been used bore data analysis. ogy and processes. by GE Energy Services, Parker Drilling, Key At the stand, there will be presentations Energy, Xantrex. Roxar on new technologies every day at 10.30am, It helps companies translate their web- www.roxar.com on DecisionSpace Production (Monday), the sites and corporate communications into oth- Roxar will be demonstrating its new struc- Digital Asset (Tuesday) and Logging While er languages. tural modeling software, which integrates Drilling (LWD) sensors (Wednesday). The service is a mixture of human with its reservoir modeling software IRP translation services, with IT systems which RMS. Spotfire can help you manage your website and other The software has a new user interface, www.spotfire.com company content in different languages. new fault and horizon modeling tools, and Spotfire will exhibit its enterprise analytics improved 3D simulation gridding. software, which helps oil and gas companies Tigress Roxar claims that the new software manage their data much more powerfully www.tigress.co.uk should enable the time required to build a than they can do in Microsoft Excel. Geotrace Tigress Software will exhibit its reservoir structural framework from months “Traditional design and planning tools new data integration suite for engineers, to weeks, with higher quality grids. are powerful, but are too inflexible and hard which can be used to put together engineer- “The ability to build or update structur- to use for the new analytic challenges that ing work- al reservoir models accurately and rapidly is face the oil and gas industry,” says Spotfire. flows. one of the most significant productivity en- “Only by unlocking the hidden value of It is hancement opportunities available in reser- data and enabling experts to ask and answer an inte- voir management today”, says Roxar’s CEO their own questions in real time, can the in- grated Gunnar Hviding. dustry enable the best decisions in a timely database. Roxar will also exhibit its FracPerm manner. Using it, fracture modeling package, which can be cus- used for reservoir risk assessment, and its Knowledge Reservoir tomers, uncertainty management module, which can www.knowledge-reservoir.com can obtain be used to quantify uncertainties across the Upstream geoscience and engineering con- the latest entire reservoir characterization and devel- sulting services company Knowledge Reser- data from opment workflow. voir will exhibit its subsurface asset consult- the field Manage your field data with Microsoft ing services, production solutions and or other Geotrace Tigress software knowledge management services. software www.microsoft.com The company is also a silver sponsor of systems; produce well performance indica- Microsoft and its partners will be exhibiting ATCE. The company’s Dr David Shaw, VP tors in real time; integrate third party appli- its high performance computing (HPC) so- of knowledge services, will be presenting a cations software; access Tigress reservoir lutions, which can make HPC available to paper “Constant reservoir evaluation through simulator software. more employees in the company, because it real time data as a service” as a poster ses- They can easily integrate engineering can be run on people’s desktops and in their sion. The company will also do a presenta- data with well, seismic and mapping data. workgroups, not just in specialized high per- tion “RTAS services for production and They put together management reports. formance computing centres. reservoir surveillance) at 12.00 on Monday It will showcase reservoir simulation at stand 1111. Petris software which can run over the high per- www.petris.com formance computers. eLynx Technologies Petris will exhibit PetrisWINDS Enterprise, Microsoft and its partners will also www.elynxtech.com a data management and integration platform. demonstrate oilfield equipment design soft- eLynx Technologies will exhibit its oil and It can be used to find and manage data from ware solutions, running on Windows Com- gas production intelligence and field au- different applications whether or not it is pute Cluser Server 2003. This software tomation services. structured. It can be used to automate work- makes it easier for engineers and geoscien- flows, integrate different data sources, cap- tists to deploy compute clusters, submit sim- ture data associations, and track where data ulation jobs and monitor their status. has come from. You can also search data by text or geographical reference. Halliburton Petris will also exhibit PetrisWINDS www.halliburton.com Operations Center, a tool which enables data The theme of Halliburton’s stand at ATCE is to be entered once in the field or the office, “The Reservoir Delivered,” showing how and then made available to the whole com- the company is offering a combination of pany. technical expertise, commitment to service Petris will exhibit Recall, its database quality and proven technologies, to help cus- solution for handling and storing well bore tomers get what they want from their reser- data such as wireline data, mud logs, cores, voirs. borehole images, waveforms (including Visitors will be able to see a live Monitor field trends with ELynx Technologies

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 13 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 14

Oil and gas production

GRL launches DeepView and DeepLive Wescorp Energy's gas management Invensys upgrades InFusion Condition www.generalrobotics.co.uk solution Manager General Robotics Limited (GRL) has www.wescorpenergy.com ips.invensys.com launched version 2.0 of DeepView its sub- Wescorp Energy has launched new gas man- Industrial software and automation company sea visualisation software, and DeepLive, its agement software, for optimising field oper- Invensys has upgraded its InFusion Condi- real-time data capture module. ations. tion Manager software, which collects and The software can be used to visualize The software is part of the Navigator process analyses diagnostic information from indus- live Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) opera- management services, developed by trial plant and works out what action is ap- tions, so you get a clear computer generated Wescorp's sister company Strategic Decision propriate, as part of InFusion's Enterprise view of what is happening, rather than rely- Sciences. Control System (ECS). ing on the murky picture from the ROV's The software can be used to manage in- The new version, 2.2, has enhance- camera. The tool can also be used for train- formation from gas wells, including flow ments to enable equipment condition and ing and planning ROV operations. rates, leak detection data, compliance maintenance information to be displayed on records and gas composition. plant process control and engineering work- Invensys upgrades InFusion Condition Wescorp offers a full service to clients stations. Manager incorporating the software, to help them ips.invensys.com manage their gas wells. AVEVA launches PDMS 12 Industrial software and automation company www.aveva.net Invensys has upgraded its InFusion Condi- Donald Zmick joins Caesar Systems AVEVA has released version 12 of its Plant tion Manager software, which collects and www.caesarsystems.com Design Management Software (PDMS). analyses diagnostic information from indus- Oil and gas business simulation software The new version has enhanced tools for trial plant and works out what action is ap- company Caesar Systems has appointed designing equipment, piping, ducting, struc- propriate, as part of InFusion's Enterprise Donald Zmick VP client services. tural steel and supports. It has a new cable Control System (ECS). Mr Zmick was previously a principal at and cableway design tool. The new version, 2.2, has enhance- Decision Strategies and also worked with A new P&ID (Piping and instrumenta- ments to enable equipment condition and Chevron, Amoco and Murphy Oil. tion diagram) integration means P&IDs from maintenance information to be displayed on At Caesar Systems, he will help with imple- other software tools can be brought into the plant process control and engineering work- mentations of Caesar's software tools and PDMS model of the entire plant, and incor- stations. provide consulting services. porated in its 3D plant visualization.

About Digital Energy Journal

Digital Energy Journal is your one stop in- www.d-e-j.com. nology can improve (and maybe threaten) formation source for new trends, tech- Horizontally we cover everything from safety / system resilience, which is perhaps nical developments, opinion, new prod- seismic / geoexploration, through drilling, to more important than the benefits digital ucts and best practise with digital tech- integrated operations, automation, produc- technology can provide in helping compa- nology in the oil and gas industry. tion monitoring, data communications (satel- nies improve production. Every other month we bring you a lite / wi fi / fibre), intelligent wells, optimi- We report on all the major oil and gas highly readable colour print magazine sation, maintenance and accounting. IT conferences, including Intelligent En- with the latest innovation and creativity Vertically we cover all the layers from ergy, Digital Energy, IQPC, Offshore going on in the industry, with a mixture of IT infrastructure (hard drive, storage, back- Communications, ATCE and PNEC, interviews with industry leaders, confer- up, networks) through software / applica- where we report on the latest industry ence reports, news, new technology arti- tions, workflow tools and most importantly, opinion and practise. cles and industry contributed articles. how the tools are being used to help the cus- So to receive our free electronic mag- Best of all, the electronic version of tomers get more out of their reservoirs. azine and newsletter, and buy a print mag- our magazine (which you print out your- We cover the people issues more than azine subscription, register with us now, self or view onscreen) is free of charge, the technical issues, because that is where and encourage your colleagues and busi- our print magazine is available to paid sub- the biggest challenges and most interesting ness partners to do the same. scribers and we also have a free weekly developments are - most industry commen- Keep up to speed with all the latest newsletter. tators believe that the technical challenges developments in upstream oil and gas with To receive it, you need to fill in the have now been solved. Digital Energy Journal. registration form on our website We write a lot about how digital tech-

14 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 15

Oil and gas production Houston Oil and Gas Exchange Discussion at IQPC's Oil and Gas Exchange in Houston on Sept 12-13, delegates discussed ways to implement IT systems in oil and gas. By Tracey Dancy of Paras Consulting.

John Hanten, Chevron etary decision". Jim Lee, AQPC John Hanten, venture executive for Chevron, gave For example, if you have five projects with a Jim Lee, KM his advice about how to make the most out of new 50/50 chance of success, information that does not Practice Lead of technologies from start-up companies. change that percentage is unlikely to change a de- AQPC, a research Mr Hanten's role is to find and invest in new cision on whether to pursue the project. organisation that technologies, mainly through small start-up com- Ultimately risk neutrality can only be based serves NASA and panies, and to enhance business value for Chevron. on a portfolio of projects, some of which will fail, Rolls Royce Many technologies that were in their infancy but other s will succeed at a level which outweighs among others, pre- twenty years ago have now become standard as a the loss. "Uncertainty and risk at portfolio level is sented strategies result of investment and development, he said. acceptable". and tactics for re- Mr Hanten posed the questions: How did taining today's they get there, and how fast did your company Dr Alan Smith, OMV / Paras knowledge for to- How about a year overlap adopt new technologies? How do you seek, plan Dr Alan Smith, currently acting head of Informa- morrow's work- between a retiree and his and budget to take advantage of new innovations, tion Systems at OMV (and also a consultant with force. replacement? Jim Lee,AQPC and future technologies? Paras Consulting) said that companies should con- AQPC recently ran a benchmarking study Chevron makes decisions on which technol- centrate on people rather than technology. across different industries, to try to work out the ogy to invest in using the following rules of thumb: Dr Smith demonstrated that writing a manu- potential value and impact of knowledge loss as if it provides new capability, if it has a straightfor- al is not the answer to implementing new technol- older employees leave without passing on their ward interface with existing systems, if there is a ogy. knowledge, identify what knowledge needs to be low level change management required for imple- Gaining commitment from personnel to new retained, establish processes for capturing and mentation, if there is a clear value proposition, and technology involves investment in time and train- transferring it, work out how to align the strategy if there is no need for immediate corporate wide ing, and what may appear to be a large expense at to employee lifecycle strategies, and evaluate the scaling. the beginning of a project will result in long term, effectiveness. Conversely, it tries to avoid investing in new sustainable results, while a lack of commitment The study found that knowledge is being lost technology if it replaces existing capability, it sits from senior staff in terms of change management from increasing personnel movement across proj- in the critical path of major business processes, it often leads to project failure, he said. ects and jobs as well as staff retirement. is difficult to install, major change management is Jerry Hubbard, Energistics "On average, 1 in 5 people have worked for required, or there is a need for rapid scaling across their current organization for less than a year," he multiple geographies with global support. Jerry Hubbard from Energistics explained how im- said. "Knowledge through experience is being lost Chevron adheres to classic programme man- portant it is for the oilfield to have a universal before it is learned. agement process from opportunity to execution. ("open") language for data exchange. The Aerospace Corporation has dealt with The use of open data exchange standards the challenges of retaining and transferring key Patrick Leach, Decision Strategies could increase production by a surprising amount, knowledge through a variety of solutions, includ- Patrick Leach, engagement leader of Decision he claimed, because it makes it much easier to op- ing intensive content and document management; Strategies and author of the book "Why Can't You timise production. storytelling and oral histories; acculturation of new Just Give Me the Number?" gave the conference For example - to increase production in a employees and training; a retiree casual program; attendees a new look at risk, and discussed the way Gulf of Mexico field by only 5 per cent would re- and knowledge-stewarding communities of prac- in which we choose projects based on the risk ele- quire the building of two new platforms, with a de- tise (CoPs). ment involved. livery time of five years and at a cost of over $3bil- Michelin has a formal knowledge retention "A Risk- lion. and transfer strategy, he said. The company has a Neutral Ap- The same 5 per cent increase can be realised robust human capital management process, and proach to Re- by using production optimisation techniques, has created the concept of "a Michelin employee source Alloca- through the deployment of open industry stan- for life". tion" looks at dards. Structured interviews are video taped and analysing proj- Mr Hubbard talked about Energistics' open processed to be fully text indexed and searchable, ects in terms of data exchange standard PRODML for exchange and the use of transverse networks to bring people how much value of production data. together with common area of expertise has proved is added by hav- PRODML is a freely available "plug and to be invaluable. ing more infor- play" set of industry standards. These enable in- Mr Lee commented that we are looking to mation prior to terchangeability, and accelerate and encourage in- the "iPod generation" for the future of exploration starting the proj- novation in the design and configuration of opti- and production. ect. misation solutions, he said. They are used to virtual working, Commu- He stated Can you neutralise your The initiative is driven by energy companies, nities of Practise and a much more informal way risks? Patrick Leach, that "information Decision Strategies whose membership of Energistics enables the fur- of working, that does not encourage a mentoring adds value, only ther development of such standards, and is gaining process. if it has the potential to cause you to change a mon- worldwide approval. However, mentoring is one way in which

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 15 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 16

Oil and gas production

knowledge can be retained for future generations - oral knowledge sharing tradition over a large geo- edge. Models for knowledge management within overlap between a retiree and his replacement of graphical area, he said. BP were therefore based on knowledge from this up to a year is a way of enabling a great deal of The existing technical discussion forums are 30 per cent, he said. knowledge transfer. perceived to be ineffective, particularly from a Mr Palen noted that there were 5 critical suc- Mr Lee noted that it is often the failures that quality control perspective, while there is an in- cess factors: are remembered more than the successes. creasing time pressure on experts - the more ex- First direction and context - management Effectively, we learn more from failed proj- pert you are, the less physical time you have to pass steer. Without this, nobody sees the need. ects than we do from best practice, and "tolerated on that knowledge, he said. Second, people - otherwise its nobody's job. failure" is perhaps something that should be built Meanwhile, there are increased client/user Third process - otherwise no-one knows into any effective knowledge management project, expectations - the "now" generation, encouraged how to do it. he said. by faster and faster internet access, causes prob- Fourth, technology - otherwise people are lems of scaleability and quality control. "We want unable to share information quickly. Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge everything on time and on budget - we want to live Fifth, performance management and ongo- Dave Snowden, in paradise!", he said. ing support - otherwise it is impossible to sustain a founder and Currently the solution to such a complex project. chief scientific problem as knowledge management is a man/ma- A successful and sustainable knowledge officer of chine team, he said, allowing both formal management solution is therefore based on a com- knowledge (processed by computer) and informal (human) in- bination of these five key elements. management formation processing (the boundary between for- consultancy mal and informal is arbitrary and can be moved). E&P leaders' panel Cognitive Edge, Any approach to the challenge of knowledge In addition to the workshops, IQPC presented an spoke on more management should be model based, and allow exploration and production leaders' panel debate abstract views abstractions to control the complexity, he said. on linking knowledge to your own business im- of knowledge Tacit Knowledge is the most As we are very much aware in many areas provements in oil and gas. management, unstructured data we work of the E&P industry, there is no one model that Facilitated by James Kochan, managing such as how we with - Dave Snowden, solves all the issues, and any new applications must director of Vitesse Solutions and leading knowl- gain and pass on Cognitive Edge support any number of possible software architec- edge management consultant to Cono- knowledge, and what the challenges are. tures, and be vendor neutral, able to integrate data coPhillips, the panel comprised Dan Ranta, di- Three rules of knowledge management, he from a variety of sources. rector of upstream knowledge sharing, Cono- said, are that knowledge can only be volunteered, The knowledge management approach at cophillips Management; Walter Palen, Paula it can never be conscripted; we only know what Petrobras is technology based, supported by com- Hansen from research and development in we know when we need to know it; and we always munities of practise and organisational change Chevron, and David Smith from Halliburton. know more than we can tell and we will always management. Each of the panellists shared their experience tell more than we can write down. The advantages to Petrobras are several - of knowledge management in their own working Tacit knowledge is by far the most unstruc- easy customisation and integration with other cor- cultures, and it was clear from the discussion that tured data we will work with, in whatever indus- porate applications, as well as a separation of con- there are many ways of looking at the challenge try. cerns - software engineers work with domain ex- that KM represents. Mr Snowden felt that formalised knowledge perts and interface designers. Knowledge management was a buzzword in capture is inherently flawed, and we must there- Model based interface generation is a viable the 90's -possibly ahead of its time - and now with fore look to less structured means for passing on option, with suitable abstractions able to leverage a big crew change on the horizon, the need to share knowledge. reuse and adaptation, he said. knowledge has become a must to survive going New personnel should be encouraged to seek forward in the industry. out employees with experience and shadow them, Walter Palen, BP There are a variety of issues - time for exam- asking questions and enabling stories to be told, he Walter Palen, operations knowledge management ple. Halliburton has a "knowledge broker" to said. consultant for BP, spoke on the role of technology match the problem with the solution, while Knowledge projects must have a direct im- in a knowledge management framework. Chevron insists that knowledge sharing is an inte- pact on business processes, and allow for organi- Historically, knowledge management has gral part of any position. sational change where necessary, he said. had a rocky ride, he said. Business unit managers within BP have an They should be narrative based and focused In the late 90's BP had a common operating accountability towards knowledge management, on decisions and innovation, and have buy-in at all environment, but complacency at its success meant and their solution is to empower individuals to be levels of the company - top down enabled, bottom a halt to further developments. "knowledge champions". up created. Drilling operations effectively kept the de- Motivation is a key theme that has to be ad- sire for effective knowledge management on the dressed. The pressure of other projects and time Daniel Schwab, Petrobras agenda - hard facts lead to tangible business value, constraints means that "storytelling" takes a back Daniel Schwab, associate professor, with the de- and drilling has to be based on reliable informa- seat. partment of computer Science with the Pontifícia tion. All agreed that Communities of Practise aid Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, and IT A major project group within BP looked and abet knowledge sharing, but there has to be a Consultant for Petrobras, presented Petrobras' ex- again at knowledge management, and felt it was certain element of trust in the information given. ` perience with developing software IT solutions for vital to take lessons learned from existing projects, It is clear that managing knowledge is not knowledge management. and apply them to new projects. something that can be achieved through technolo- Petrobras has an aging workforce, exacer- Mr Palen noted that when asked, only 30 per gy alone, people, and trust in people, is vital. bated by a hiring ban in Brazil, with a widespread cent of people would willingly share their knowl-

16 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 17

Oil and gas production Managing your growing data As oil companies' data stores grow exponentially, managing it - including backing it up, making sure important information is readily available and archiving it - gets harder and harder. We asked EMC about their tools to assist.

We all know about the massive growth in the if it is non-changing content, to amount of data that oil and gas companies need to work out how they should be la- manage. belled and stored. There's no problem with storing the data, as "We perform a File System storage media gets cheaper and larger. The prob- Assessment, look at your systems, lem is with data backups, archiving and ensuring look at the data, and basically tell fast access. you what's there," says EMC's oil You know you've got a problem when your and gas marketing manager Peter knowledge workers spend upwards of 40 per cent Hodge. of their time looking for data, or your backups take "Often we find that between longer than the allotted window. 60 and 70 percent of data is not Meanwhile, moving data around the differ- changing- its fixed content. So why ent storage systems is becoming a headache. is that sitting on primary storage? Many companies have manual processes for "We have software that lets moving and managing data, which were fine when you set policies - e.g. if a file has a Managing corporate data storage - not tedious if you use the the company's total storage was a few gigabytes, particular suffix, or if it has not latest tools but start getting very tedious and time consuming been changed in 6, 9 months, it can automatically over 1 petabyte of it since it was launched 2 years as the data repository grows. go to secondary storage. We call it an active ago. Information infrastructure company EMC is archive because it is accessible at disk speed." he "There's always going to be a place for some developing solutions which can help store, protect, says. tape - because it's just still used by so many peo- optimize and leverage your investments in infor- ple," he says. "Seismic data is still recorded on tape mation management. Centera in some places, so the data originates on tape. But EMC's Centera system is designed for active many oil companies are realizing the benefit of Tiered Storage archiving, including fixed data stores, information backing up their valuable data assets to disk after EMC suggests segmenting your data into storage which needs to be accessed but not changed after they implement an active archive, decreasing the tiers, e.g. primary (data that people are currently it has been stored, or secondary data (using the def- volume of backups and enjoying more reliable re- using and need very fast access and reliable, regu- initions above). covery from disk." lar backups), secondary (data which people use in- One European geophysical company uses Oil and gas companies are increasingly like- termittently and need to access), and tertiary (inac- the system to store all of their seismic data. They ly to be asked to retrieve data from their archives, tive data that may become critical again, and there- store it onboard the ships on tape media, and then for example if a regulator asks them how they fore needs to be archived). offload it all into EMC Centera when they get to made their reserves calculations. Companies will Most people are familiar with a two tier sys- shore. appreciate the speed with which they can retrieve tem (online and archive), but three-level data tier- The system is self-healing, constantly moni- data from disk storage, Mr Hodge says. ing is a relatively new idea. toring the health of all the different disk drives be- The point is, it is very important that the sys- ing used. If one of them looks like it is about to Latin American company tems that supply the data that people are currently fail, it will automatically move the data onto a new- One large petrochemical exploration, production using work as fast as possible, so you don't want to er disk drive, and alert a technician to replace the and refining company based in Latin America clog these systems up with data which needs to be old one. asked EMC to assist after it realised it had out- available but isn't used every day. grown its backup processes. You also want to keep faster primary storage Archives / tertiary data EMC was asked to perform a File System available for your large data processing jobs, when For long-term archiving of inactive data that you Assessment, and found that the company was the speed limiting factor is often the speed with may use in the future, disk storage is much better backing up a lot of the same data every night, even which data can be pulled off the disk drives through than tape, because you can find and retrieve the though nothing about it has changed. the storage network. data you are looking for much more quickly. So EMC ran a software tool which scanned For example, data for reservoir models prob- But IT departments have a strange addiction through all of the files to identify which ones have ably should be kept in primary storage, because to tape for backups - they have been using it for been changed, and only back those ones up. there is a lot of it, it needs to be accessed quickly many years, Based on this assessment, they built an ac- and is changed regularly. To try to get the tape fans to switch to disk, tive archive and used EMC Rainfinity software to For each tier, your performance and accessi- EMC has developed what it calls a 'virtual tape li- migrate files to lower tier storage. bility requirements dictate the underlying storage brary' - a disk storage system that looks like a tape As a result, the company has much shorter media you employ, e.g. non-changing content and storage system to host systems. "It looks and feels backups and more reliable recoveries. Plus the stale data should not be stored on primary storage. like tape, but it's disk, with all the advantages of backups are more manageable. EMC has special software which goes disk," says Mr Hodge. For the active archive, the customer chose through all the files on your storage system and Virtual tape has proven very popular in the EMC Centera due to its reliability and security - tells you how recently they have been accessed, or oil and gas industry - EMC customers have bought each file is unique and cannot be changed. The

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 17 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 18

Oil and gas production

company moved the data from primary storage to "The CIO of one company said 'we don't load. Centera, saving time and money. want to spend more money on storage. Delete "File servers loads are often not balanced," some data to make space'. When the geophysi- says Mr Hodge. "Let's say you have 10 file servers. Strategic view of data cists heard this, they said 'no way'. and the CIO re- With this software, you can see, file servers A and It is important that IT managers take a strategic versed his decision and bought Centera.” B are not being hit, and E and F are being com- view about the best ways to manage data, and not pletely slammed." just focus on their day jobs of keeping the systems File Server utilization "If you were trying to be efficient about this, running, says Mr Hodge. One important factor in keeping the network run- you would distribute this load evenly." "IT shops can't afford to be reactive. IT has ning smoothly is balancing the load on your file got to think more strategically and want to get out servers. Security from under all this administration." Most oil and gas companies have growing On the security side, EMC believes in what it calls Sometimes the challenge of keeping data farms of file servers, but a lot of the load is improp- Information Centric Security and has technology backed up, and maintaining archives of old data, erly distributed across these filers. to automatically encrypt all data as it is being gets so enormous, IT managers start to question EMC's Rainfinity software analyses the load stored, so you are protected from inside threats, not whether the data should be backed up or stored at on all file servers, regardless of vendor, and can just those outside firewalls. "You need to protect it all. automatically move data around to balance the at the place it's stored," he says. Roxar - 190 to 800 employees in 5 years Roxar has more than quadrupled its staff count from 190 to 800 people in 5 years. We asked group marketing director Svenn Haugen how they did it Roxar, a Norwegian company which makes Roxar claims to have 50 per cent market which could work at temperatures of up to 200 de- flowmeters and reservoir modelling, simulation share for flowmeters on topside / land, and 65 to grees C, or 20,000 psi. and uncertainty management software, has in- 70 per cent of subsea flowmeters. The electronics on its downhole meters are creased its staff count from 190 to 800 employees provided by Honeywell, which also makes aero- since 2002, a growth most people would agree is New meters space electronics and has a lot of experience mak- staggering. Last year, Roxar launched the Roxar Oil-in-water ing systems which can stand 200 degrees Celsius CorrOcean, which 'acquired' Roxar earlier monitor, which provides accurate, real-time infor- temperature. this year (actually it was something of a financial mation on the amount of sand and oil in water. "We say our products should last 6 years at restructuring), added a further 70 employees to the Through its ultrasonic pulse-echo technolo- 225 degrees. If you're at 160 degrees, it will last company. "We still have an aspiration to grow," gy, the Roxar Oil-in-water monitor will distinguish much longer," says Mr Haugen. says Mr Haugen. between oil, sand and gas and provide detailed in- Roxar recently launched a range of sand de- Roxar has recently opened a new office in formation on the size and amount of sand and oil tectors, which use sound waves to work out if sand Vietnam; the company says that one of the reasons in the water flow. is entering the well. "We pumped considerable re- for opening it there was to help meet its hunger for The monitor is currently operating in a num- search dollars into it," he says. new employees and to meet growing customer de- ber of pilots, such as on Statoil's Sleipner A plat- The detector is helping Anadarko, the lead mand. "We could get some good folks there," says form in the North Sea. The pilot has confirmed the operator on the Independence Hub development Mr Haugen. "We found it easier to get very quali- Roxar Oil-in-water monitor's ability to provide ac- in the Gulf of Mexico, have an 'early warning' sys- fied people." curate information to Statoil on the size distribu- tem - an immediate response when sand is present, The company is undergoing a transition from tion and concentration of oil and is already playing and subsequently operate each well aggressively what Mr Haugen describes as a 'technology fo- a key role in monitoring Statoil's overboard dis- 'at the limit' of its capabilities. cused company' to a more 'industrially focused charge and separation process, Mr Haugen says. The company has put a lot of development company'. But it continues to spend 15 per cent of Plans are also underway for the Roxar Oil- into its multiphase (oil - gas - water) meter, which its revenue on research and development. in-water monitor to operate subsea and become an can now operate at 3,500m depth. The company is focusing around 2 business integral part of operators' wider subsea processing All of the electronics in the meter are in one lines: software and flowmeters. Of these 2 busi- operations. removable canister. So if there is any problem, the ness lines, the company is probably best known This will allow for water characterisation at electronics can be replaced, rather than replace the for its flowmeters. "Flow assurance is something an earlier stage and enable the monitor to become entire meter, and there does not need to be any halt we're good at," says Mr Haugen. an important tool in subsea processing. to production. The canister was developed follow- About two thirds of the staff work in flowme- At the moment, the majority of oil water sep- ing extensive qualification testing with ExxonMo- ters and the rest in software (Roxar employs 40 aration is being made onboard platforms, but a bil. software developers in Oslo). great deal of research is going into subsea separa- Roxar recently asked management consult- Roxar believes that there is going to be plen- tors, which will enable an oil-water stream to be ants McKinsey to examine every single compo- ty of demand for its flowmeters for subsea wells, separated on the seabed, rather than bringing the nent of the multiphase meter, to work out which with an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 subsea wells go- water up to the platform, separating it out of the oil ones were the most critical and how the reliability ing to be drilled in the next 3-5 years, particularly there, and sending it back under the seabed. could be improved. in West Africa and the North Sea. "We have very high hopes for this meter," Roxar also recently built a new test cham- Meanwhile many new meters will be re- says Mr Haugen. "We want to put it subsea, for ber for its multiphase meters, where it could test quired on mature fields, as operators start having when people do subsea oil - water separation. them out at high water pressures (up to 350 bars), to deal with much more water production, and At the end of 2006, Roxar launched a new similar to what they would experience at 3,500m monitoring flow becomes much more important. range of high pressure / high temperature gauges, depth, to check that all the parts work reliably.

18 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 19

How well are you managing your E&P data?

Design by www.intuitionmedia.co.uk Data Framework

The volume of data used in E&P is spiralling at an alarming rate. The need for a sustainable solution to manage data storage and accessibility is vital to the smooth running of your E&P business.

Paras has developed a Data Framework model to provide a sustainable and consistent approach, to transform productivity through the provision of easy to find and retrieve data and information.

Core Elements

Data Ownership Physical Data Management Data Architecture Data Access Standards & Procedures Data Publishing

A data framework can be applied to all types of data, not just that from the subsurface arena.

Paras can provide your E&P business with everything you need to build a sustainable data management solution. We work with the client to find the best way of using existing applications, implementing a framework and providing all aspects of training and organisational change management required for a solution that works.

Delivering For more information, please contact: Tracey Dancy Sustainable Solutions T +44 7876 243 478 E [email protected] www.paras-consulting.com novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 20

Oil and gas production Integrated operations - Trondheim The centre for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry (NTNU) of Trondheim, Norway, organised an excellence conference on October 2-3, showcasing how far Statoil, BG and others have come with their projects to connect platforms with shore offices, and the latest academic thinking and new technology The Integrated Operations Conference in tions to monitor rotating equipment in the iPod had been a success, not because of the Trondheim, Norway, held on October 2-3 Snorre Field, Statoil increased 'effective op- design of the product, but how Apple under- and organised by the Trondheim Centre for erational time' from 81 to 95 per cent, and stood the way the control points of the mu- Integrated Operations in the Petroleum In- created NOK 100m ($18.5m) of value. sic industry were changing, looking for new dustry, linked together the latest academic For Well E-1 BH in the Heidrun Field, approaches to licensing music downloads. work with the latest industry practise. Statoil estimates that through Integrated Op- "In the energy sector, the architectural The Centre for Integrated Operations erations it has increased reserves from 280 control points are changing," he said. "Ask was established by NTNU (Norwegian Uni- MNOK ($51.8m), and reduced costs by 10 yourself, how will energy companies com- versity of Science and Technology in Trond- MNOK ($1.8m). pete in the 21st century?" heim), SINTEF Group (the largest research "It is not yet business as usual," he said. "You'll still have to find oil to make organisation in Scandinavia) and IFE (Insti- "There is still a lot of work to do. We are de- money, but there will be emerging sources tute for Energy Technology) in Kjeller, near signing new work processes and new of control." Lillestrøm. See http://www.ntnu.no/iocenter/ changes. for further information. "In some cases, we have several pro- What is integrated operations? duction units, boats, platforms; we try to op- Adolfo Henriquez, Statoil timise production across them all. We opti- The term "Integrated Operations" means Adolfo Henriquez, director of Integrated Op- mise across fields and across reservoirs." getting the different departments in up- erations at Statoil, who originally launched stream oil and gas working more closely Statoil's Integrated Operations concept, said John Henderson, Boston University together, particularly teams on offshore he was very pleased at the company's John Henderson, Professor of Management oil platforms working more closely with progress and Faculty Director in the Information Sys- teams onshore. with Inte- tems Department, Boston University School This means that many staff members grated Op- of Management, explained that statistically, previously working onshore can be erations so 80 per cent of large change projects fail, brought onshore, leading to safety bene- far. mainly because people do not do good fits (it is safer onshore) and more people "Sta- enough change management. spending time after work with their fami- toil sees "Even though the new process is right, lies rather than their co-workers. this as a people do not absorb it," he said. It also means improved productivity way of re- "Start by asking, what are you trying to and efficiency, because the reservoirs and juvenating achieve?" equipment can usually be run much better the Nor- "If Integrated Operations is a capabili- with more information available to differ- wegian ty, you should start with the question, how ent people and more experts able to get in- Continen- 6 per cent more production for do you increase barrels of oil from the field volved. tal Shelf," practically no cost - Adolfo in a sustained way. Then work out how peo- An Integrated Operations project is he said. Henriquesz, director of ple process and technology must be com- not without its challenges. It is a major "We integrated operations, Statoil bined to achieve that," he said. change, and studies have estimated that 80 have seen the removal of boundaries and dis- "To see if you are capability driven, not per cent of large change projects fail. ciplines between companies. We want to process driven, go onto the platform, talk to Oil and gas companies can see the reach safer and better decisions faster." an operator, and ask them what the objective benefits, but they are also worried about To communicate its vision, Statoil pro- is. If they possible increases in risk as people's duces a number of company 'Integrated Op- say, it's to working practises are changed. erations' newsletters. "You can never com- produce municate enough," he said. more oil, The company recently completed its they are ca- The presentation by Arne Bye, platform first pilot project, and decided to do Integrat- pability manager for Statoil's Kristin asset, and ed Operations across the whole company. driven. Vidar Hepso, principal researcher and "We started very early in 2001, standar- Mr project manager with Statoil Research dising work processes and developing ways Henderson and Technology, is on pages 2-3 of this of working in each asset," he said. spoke issue of Digital Energy Journal In the Heidrun Field, "we got 6 per cent about the more production in one year from Integrated control Operations and the cost is practically noth- points of a All the presentations from this conference The energy industry has new ing," he said. "It has been a revolution in our business, control points - John can be downloaded free of charge from way of working." and how Henderson, Boston University www.ioconf.no For example, with Integrated Opera- the Apple School of Management

20 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 21

ASIA PACIFIC EXPLORATION & PRODUCTIONCONFERENCE Explore the upstream value and business

17th - 18th January 2008, Beijing With the decreasing amount of oil & gas on the earth, to discover new resources is becoming more & more important. Exploration and production is correspondingly playing an increasingly significant role in the whole industry chain. More and more oil companies are adjusting their upstream strategy, e.g. further enhance upstream business, enlarge upstream investment and transfer E & P to the global areas out of Europe and North America etc. Widely expanded upstream business means complicated situation and problems. Different policy, economy and culture backgrounds call for better international communications to explore not only oil & gas resources, but also new opportunities and value of upstream industry.

Asia Pacific Oil & Gas Exploration & Production Conference is the first one based in China to discuss oil & gas upstream industry, covering topics of policy, industry profile, research & technology and field construction, as well as upstream investment and international coopera- tion. From China’s E&P to Asia Pacific region’s, presenting and discuss- ing regional oil & gas upstream development to achieve better understanding of every aspects. Speakers from Asia Pacific region will draw an integrated picture for regional oil & gas E&P, with different experience from every important aspect describing problems, solutions and trends. Meanwhile, senior level executives of E&P will provide pointed networking to explore new businesses.

ASIA PACIFIC E&P OVERVIEW GROWING THROUGH POWERFUL UPSTREAM PARTNERSHIPS E&P IN SOUTH ASIA INVESTMENT CHALLENGES IN ASIA PACIFIC CHALLENGES IN ASIA PACIFIC COAL-BED METHANE E&P

Confirmed speakers President / Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, PetroChina Vice President, Internation Business Development / Anadarko Director / Shell China Exploration & Production General Manager, Pertamina Upstream / PT PERTAMINA (PERSERO) senior vice president of Worldwide Exploration / Marathon Oil President / StatoilHydro China CEO & President / Far East Energy Corporation

Organized By Associate Sponsor Register Now ! Please Contact

Phone: +86 21 5160 8888 Media Partner Fax: +86 21 6236 3719

E-mail: [email protected] Overseas Media

Website: www.e-psummit.com

Mail: 13th Floor, Shanghai Mart Tower No. 2299, Yan An Road (West) Official Publication Shanghai 200336 P.R. China novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 22

Oil and gas production

Tony Edwards, BG "The initial temptation was to build not going to work." Tony Ed- rooms with nice screens, say if we build it "We took the approach of putting peo- wards, head of they will come," he said. "But a lot of apple in a room and telling them to get on with iValue with proaches didn't get past building the rooms." it," he said. BG Group, "The technologies are already avail- "Do strategic experiments - don't put said that his able, there's nothing new about it," he said. together a 5 year plan," he said. experience Mr Edwards cautioned against trying to "Say we'll learn as we go along, this is with integrat- get the whole company to follow standard a generic approach. You need to adjust your ed operations processes. "You can't go in with a fixed vision and learn." is that "you al- process, unless perhaps you're Exxon," he "The companies that have been most ways get more said. successful have focused on the people," he value than you you always get more value "A lot of people have tried this and got said. "People either allow you to move for- anticipated, than you anticipated - Tony stuck. Fixing the process can be a barrier to ward or stop you dead. In our industry, we and the value Edwards, head of iValue, BG innovation and improvement. How a process often talk about people but don't do much you get, you Group will be done in Azerbaijan, Norway, about it. wouldn't have anticipated." Trinidad, is very different." "We define 'people' as looking at the An important driver for integrated op- "What works in one part of the world soft behavioural changes," he said. erations at BG is the need to provide better doesn't work in another," he said. "If you do the people bit well and the support to far flung locations like Sakhalin, "For example, white Anglo Saxons other bits badly, you'll get partial success." he said. want to keep away from cameras. In some "When you're bringing communities to- The important questions to answer other parts of the world, they'll practically gether offshore / onshore, you need to focus when implementing a system are: What are dance in front of the cameras." on the communities." you trying to do? What technologies do you "The costs of standards is enormous, it One tricky issue was that office staff need? What skill, technologies and behav- takes so much time and so much cost to do did not like to see how relaxed the platform iours do you need? What organisation fac- it. And what's the value to the frontline op- staff were in office hours, he said. tors - structures, incentive relationships do erator? None. He doesn't care if its version "If drillers onshore have their feet up you need? 5.5 or 5.6," he said. reading the paper in the middle of the day, "The integration of these elements is "Doing it like an engineering model - that's unacceptable behaviour in an office. what gives you the platform," he said. analyse it to death and blueprint it - that is "What emerged - in office hours, it was *T:PVS%JHJUBM&OFSHZ*OJUJBUJWF 0O 53"$,

#VTJOFTT3FTVMUT0O5BSHFU 0O5JNF 0O#VEHFU )PMMBOE%BWJT --$t.BSBUIPO0JM5PXFSt4BO'FMJQFt)PVTUPO 59ttXXXIEJODDPNEPGIUN

4FSWJOHFOFSHZDMJFOUTGPSPWFSZFBST

#VTJOFTT4ZTUFNT&OHJOFFSJOH t1SPHSBN.BOBHFNFOU 'PSBOBTTFTTNFOUPGIPXZPVSFQPTJUJPOFE t1SPKFDU.BOBHFNFOU JOZPVS%JHJUBM&OFSHZJOJUJBUJWF DPOUBDU)PMMBOE%BWJT t$IBOHF&OHJOFFSJOH 22 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 23

Oil and gas production

office norms, in weekends, it was platform hour reservoir model was run through a norms," he said. 'coarsening filter', which could create a mod- There are plenty of other problems in el with a close match to the 18 hour one, but bringing different groups of people togeth- which would take between 2 and 5 minutes er. "You have problems of people in differ- to run. ent teams with different leaders, different The 'coarse' model would still provide KPIs, different bonus schemes," he said. high resolution reservoir models around the "If you want to monitor all the rotat- wells. ing equipment for the whole company in Statoil created a 'coarse' reservoir mod- one room, you have to have the rotating en- el which would run much more quickly than gineer for each rig in that room, and the op- the full reservoir model (2-5 minutes com- erations managers don't like that very pared to 18 hours), but would still create a much." Statoil created a 'coarse' reservoir model high resolution model around the wells. "We were putting HSE first and put which would run much more quickly than the people last, in a management meeting, and full reservoir model (2-5 minutes compared to Arne Helge Anderson, ConocoPhillips the people issues often drop off. I appeal to 18 hours), but would still create a high Arne Helge Anderson, senior health, safety you to put people at the top of your agenda resolution model around the wells. and environment engineer with Cono- after HSSE. We find it very difficult to do would also actually be able to control the op- coPhillips, presented his view on how Inte- this touchy feely stuff." eration. grated Operations systems could impact "It is important to build shared situa- "We wanted to extend the advanced health and safety. tional awareness - you need real time data process control from topside to pipeline, The driving forces for Integrated Oper- and shared understanding," he stressed. wells and reservoirs," he said. ations are "regulatory requirements, extend- "Many times, as an operations manag- The computer system could be used by ed operation of old platforms, increasing er, I would get a phone call ‘where's my well everybody working on the WAG cycle, in- reservoir exploitation and reducing cost," he test data, don't you know the well will col- cluding 40-50 people working around the said. lapse next week.’ I would have to say some- world, from Houston to Minsk. The average manning level on Cono- thing like, didn't you know the compressor Mr Sagli believes that the project was coPhillips platforms is 130 men, he said. is in bits." successful. "We believe we achieved a 10 per "We want to give them technology "The key thing is trust," he said. "Peo- cent increase in net present value (NPV) which connect them, informs them and en- ple say - why can't you do this by e-mail. The from the additional production we achieved ables them to collaborate and succeed," he answer is, you don't get the trust." from smarter injection," he said. said. "People work more safely together than One large possible benefit, he said, The system continues to improve over on their own." might be "integrating midstream and the time. "We believe optimisation tools im- ConocoPhillips only sends crew to downstream - involving the traders." prove as time goes on," he said. work when they have the procedures, tools, "Intuitively I feel there is huge value in The computer system maintains consis- team members and materials they need, he that. I don't know if anyone knows the an- tent, updated and integrated models of the said. "If something is missing, they get frus- swer - but I think the opportunity is enor- subsurface and topside facilities, to enable trated and it's a safety hazard." mous and the value to be gained absolutely production to be optimised in real time. To ensure that the onshore team were huge." "We have a field performance analyser accepted by the offshore team, Cono- to go into specific problems," he said. coPhillips took experienced offshore fore- Jean Richard Sagli, Statoil The control variables are anything that men and asked them to work on the onshore Jean Richard Sagli, project manager at Sta- is possible to control, such as the injection offices. toil (who has a Phd in cybernetics), talked flowrates and production choke settings. "We needed to have people onshore about work Statoil has done to try to improve The computer system can help people who understood the challenges they were the water alternating gas (WAG) cycle at work better together, he said. facing," he said. Snorre B field. "We wanted a workflow approach. Now, engineers on shore go to onshore In WAG, water and gas are injected in- Workflows that can be automated should be foreman to ask for the status, not go to off- to the reservoir alternately (water, then gas, automated," he said. "We developed differ- shore foreman, he said. then water, then gas) to drive oil out of the ent tools for different workflows." ConocoPhillips aims to mix experi- reservoir. Data from the field, such as pressures enced crews with inexperienced crews, he The aim was to try to achieve 'smarter' and flowrates, is stored in a database. "If the said. injection, that is to say, injecting the right data is good enough, it can go straight into It maintains a system of yellow cards amount of injection fluids at the right pres- the process control systems," he said. "Oth- for safety infractions. "When someone N sures at the right time, to successfully push erwise it goes through visualisation, analy- breaks the rules, he has a conversation with the maximum oil out of the reservoir into the sis, integrated models, and then to the his foreman, it's not registered anywhere, but production well with least energy consump- process control system." they both know they had that conversation," tion. One problem is the long time it typical- he said. T To achieve this, Statoil wanted to cre- ly takes to run a reservoir model. "Reservoir ate a comprehensive computer system, models can be too time consuming and Erik Hollnagel, Paris School of Mines which would have knowledge about every- sometimes clumsy. It is not possible to use Erik Hollnagel, Industrial Safety Chair, Paris thing which was going on both subsurface models which take 12-18 hours," he said. School of Mines, presented many of the (from reservoir models) and topside, and To reduce the amount of time, the 18 weaknesses with the conventional approach

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 23 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 24

Oil and gas production

go right because people learn to overcome design flaws and fundamental glitches, and they can adapt their performance, detect and correct when things go wrong." "We understand systems are underspec- ified and unpredictable," he said. "If we take any performance variability, we take away the successes." One positive variability is when people feel that they have to work hard to meet the expectations of their workmates. Mr Holl- nagel called this "socially induced variability." People normally think of the word 'safety' to mean an absence of negative things, he said. A more positive way to approach risk management might be to think of it in terms of resilience. Around 250 delegates attended the conference organised by the centre for Integrated Resilient systems should be able to Operations in the Petroleum Industry (NTNU), in Trondheim, Norway monitor threats in a flexible manner; it to industrial safety. ter, because they have worked out that many should be able to anticipate potential threats. People try to understand how accidents risks can be avoided if the procedures are Resilience is the state of being con- happen as a sequence of events, like one followed closely. stantly aware of possible dangers. "You domino which falls over and knocks over the Don't they realise that things never should always have a sense of unease. Its next one. work when people follow procedures too like Bill Gates saying, Microsoft is always 3 "The traditional view is that accidents closely? We all know that when unions say years away from a disaster," he said. are due to failures, malfunctions, perform- they will 'work to rule' everything will fall "Resilience is used to characterise chil- ance deviations," he said. "People draw an apart, he pointed out. dren and politicians, but not industrial sys- event tree and a fault tree. You assume In any case, it is very difficult, if not tems," he said. "It could be a quality of a ma- events develop along a path of predefined re- impossible, to create and implement com- chine or organisation." lations." pletely comprehensive procedures, because "Accidents are often due to unexpected it takes too much time. "It will be underspec- Eliot Rich, New York State University combination of conditions that are not in ified, because you don't have time to do it Eliot Rich, assistant professor, management themselves unusual," he said. "Many adverse properly," he says. science and information systems, with the events can be linked to breakdowns, but "It's an illusion to think that perform- School of Business at the State University of many cannot." ance will be stable," he said. "We have to try New York, presented the results of his work This approach to safety also assumes to understand the nature of the performance with an undisclosed oil major, into how im- that things are bimodal (either on or off, ei- variability." plementing integrated operations would im- ther working or not working). Many things Mr Hollnagel criticised conventional pact overall risk, and how long it would take in an industrial system are bimodal (eg does 'feedback' control systems as being like to get risk levels back to normal. the pump work or not), but many things are walking backwards through a room full of "We built a formal situation model, to not. conference delegates on a coffee break. You try to quantify what we're talking about, a "Humans and social system are not bi- change the direction you are going in, based modal," he said. "Humans are not machines, on your experience in the past. "You only in- we get tired. "We are smart, creative and vest in the things which have happened." adaptive and find new ways of doing things, Instead, he suggested 'feedforward con- which are often improvements." trol', where you are trying to work out what Mr Hollnagel called the traditional ap- will happen and how well prepared you are proach to safety a "closed system perspec- for it. tive." "Do you see variability as a threat, or "We say, things go right because sys- say it is ubiquitous but is both a risk and a tems are well maintained, procedures are resource," he asked. correct; people behave as we told them to, We all recognise variability is unavoid- and that's why systems work," he said. able for any working system - for example, "If you buy this view, variability in hu- with public services. "Sometimes they are man performance is bad. According to this very efficient, sometimes they are very logic, to avoid failure, avoid malfunction. slow," he said. Force the system to remain within bound- In any case, variability (people doing aries. This only works if you believe in this things slightly differently each time) can be closed system perspective." desirable for safety, if it means that people “New integrated operations processes could Safety managers create procedures work out ways of doing things safer. mean increased vulnerability for 6 years after which they expect staff to follow to the let- "The alternative view is to say, things being introduced” - Eliot Rich, New York State University

24 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:04 Page 25

Oil and gas production

series of scenarios," he said. surface is not flat," he said. Mr Rich developed computer models Tracking objects is easier if they are which would simulate the knowledge gap lines, such as pipelines, rather than pin- over the years after introducing a new inte- points. grated operations system. Mr Shimoda called this 'augmented re- The simulator showed that the vulnera- ality', because it is a mixture of reality and bility of a system would steadily increase for 'virtual reality' (when the person views 6 years after introducing integrated opera- something entirely in a computer generated tions, and would steadily decline after that. world). However, with more "knowledge inte- The Kyoto University did tests where gration," ie making efforts to help people subjects were asked to complete a specific gain knowledge of how to use new process- task using 'augmented reality', and the re- es quickly, the maximum vulnerability searchers recorded their performance in would not be so much, and would decline ap- completing the task, their mental workload, prox 28 months after the new systems were and their eye fatigue. introduced. “Can we use computer generated Virtual reality applications have al- When a new process is introduced, peo- information to supplement people's actual ready been developed for nuclear power, Mr ple need to know how to work with it, and it view?,” Hiroshi Shimoda, Kyoto University Shimoda said. "It is used for procedure plan- takes time for this knowledge to be assimi- show which (real world) nut an operator ning and decommissioning." lated, he said. In the interim time, there is a needs to turn, or point out an area with dan- The virtual world can be constructed knowledge gap, which can lead to increased gerous radiation. from data in the maintenance systems, and risk. Mr Shimoda suggests that users could from the computer aided design (CAD) sys- "The presence of a knowledge gap wear special glasses (known as 'head mount- tems used to create it. changes the vulnerability of the platform," ed displays'), where the computer informa- he said. "It may be that something happens tion is superimposed on the person's view. Børge Kolstad, Kongsberg Intellifield and you don't know what to do. The technology with headmount dis- Børge Kolstad, CEO of Kongsberg Intelli- "But as our processes mature we expect plays is not yet ready for use in this kind of field, explained how his company is putting resilience to go up again." application, he said, because they are not yet together visualisation systems which can en- "Your vulnerability will grow for years suitable for use in a hazardous environment, able people to see what is happening on the during your move to integrated operations," and because the field of view is not wide platform in real time (see screenshot on fol- he said. "Vulnerability only starts to fall enough. "It needs to be safer and lighter lowing page). when you start to iron out the bugs." weight," he said. The system can take data from a range "If you try to compress the time [to in- An alternative approach could be for of sources. For example, it can receive data troduce new working processes], you've got the operator to carry around a tablet comput- on the location of vessels and helicopters more chance of a bad outcome," he said. er with a camera pointing forward. A video from their radio transponders ('Automatic "If problems aren't happening, it does- image from the camera would be displayed Identification Systems' / AIS). n't mean you are not vulnerable," he warned. on the tablet computer's screen, with the A 3D system has been developed for One delegate commented that it is im- computer generated text or images superim- ConocoPhillips' Ekofisk platform, where it portant to emphasise the possible safety up- posed on it. is used for logistics management. side of integrated operations. "When we had If a tablet computer was used (rather The system will shortly be also used as problems of gas coming up on the Gulfaks than a head mounted display), people found an aid for inspections, he said. platform, we had access to the best person that the lightest computers currently on the Intellifield has created a similar system in the company within minutes," he said. market (weighing 492g) were too heavy, for the port in Stavanger, so people on the when you have to hold it in front of you for platforms Hiroshi Shimoda, Kyoto University an hour. However for shorter tasks (eg 5 can watch Hiroshi Shimoda, from the Kyoto Universi- minutes), it could be plausible for someone a comput- ty Graduate School of Energy Science, to hold a 492g tablet computer in front of er created talked about research he has done into tech- them, he said. view of nology which could enable people to see The system can be used to record work their sup- computer generated information superim- completed and make sure procedures have ply ves- posed on the things they are looking at. been followed. The systems can be used for sels being This is similar to the 'heads up display' design, procedure planning, training, and loaded used on aeroplanes (and being introduced on tele (remote) operation, he said. and un- cars), where text is shown on the wind- A principal challenge with this technol- loaded in screen, so the driver can see the information ogy is 'tracking', ie, making the computer real time. while they are looking through the wind- generated image (ie the arrow pointing to the "We screen, rather than having to look down at right nut) sit properly on the item it connects say, if you the dials. with (ie the nut). can visu- “Computer generated visualisations reveal things you Mr Shimoda takes this concept a step To accurately track an object in real life alise it, can't see with your eye,” Børge further, and suggests that the computer in- against a computer generated image, the you can Kolstad, Kongsberg Intellifield formation can track the actual real life ob- camera cannot be more than 1m away from optimise jects. the object, which is very difficult to do. it," he said. "You can see things instead of For example, a computer pointer could "There are many objects in the plant and the just talk about numbers."

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 25 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 26

Oil and gas production

The tool can be used to augment the real view. For example, if the platform has shallow pipelines which vessels must not anchor on top of, the computer can show the location of the pipelines and the real time location of vessels in the same view. Most companies have their logistics information held in many different databases, which makes it hard for people to get the full picture, he said. It can be brought together on a system like this. Mr Kolstad hopes that systems like these can enable engineers to focus on more value added work, rather than spending time looking at screens. "Supervisors onshore can spend 70 per cent of their time writing reports to tell people onshore what is happening," he said. "With this system, people on shore can watch what is happening on a screen, all in Kongsberg’s visualisation systems enable people to see what is happening on the platform in one system that can be navigated in 3D." real time and see things you can't see with your eye, like underwater pipelines

Torbjørn Johansson, IBM people. Your representation in the virtual We could create a virtual world which they Torbjørn Johansson, technical assistant to world is an 'avatar'. can walk through first." IBM's VP technical strategy and innovation, People normally create avatars accord- Virtual worlds are already being used talked about how IBMers are starting to use ing to their fantasies, for example, if they to train fire fighters how to deal with real tools such as Second Life for their internal have a private wish to be a teddy bear, skele- fires, he said. meetings and discussions with customers, ton, or attractive over exposed female Mr Johansson also talked about how rather than teleconferences. teenager. the role of new IT tools has changed from "It's not a slightly enhanced teleconfer- "Second Life is the most well known helping people automate repetitive tasks to ence; it's a slightly less efficient face to face virtual world, although it's not the best be- enhancing what people can do and improv- meeting," he said. "Over 4,000 IBM people cause we want to hold some meetings pri- ing co-operation. "We are focused on help- use it to conduct internal meetings and meet vately," said Mr Johansson. ing the individual become better," he said. with customers." There are plenty of other applications Mr Johansson said that multiplayer One indication of the success of a for virtual worlds, for example, they could computer games could provide surprisingly (physical) meeting is whether people are in- be used to help people get familiar (and com- good leadership training. "If we are as harsh clined to stay and chat to each other after the fortable) with a certain place before they in evaluating and sacking managers, as some meeting, rather than get out of the door as have to physically go there, he said. "People of the games are in evaluating and sacking fast as possible, he said. get nervous about doing things the first time. leaders, we would end up in court," he said. After a teleconference, people general- ly want to put the phone down as fast as possible. But with Second Life meetings, people often linger afterwards to chat to each other, he said. "People can interact in richer ways with their avatars, as opposed to teleconferences," he said. "You get vastly different behaviour than with a teleconference," he said. "It hu- manises the meeting." People tend to pay more attention in a virtual world conference than a teleconference, he said. "In a teleconference you find that someone said your name and you don't know what they asked for," he said. "It happens to me at least once a week. It's hard to even know who's in the teleconference." For those who don't know, Second Life is an online world which people can spend time in, walking around and talking to other Some companies are starting to hold business meetings using Avatars in Second Life, because it is more immersive experience than a teleconference

26 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 27

One good decision leads to another

Every day brings fresh challenges. Responding to them is part of the job. Whether you want to boost production, enhance ﬁeld operations or optimize maintenance schedules, you will encounter both opportunities and obstacles. To succeed, your team will have to share knowledge and apply it in new situations. How can you help your colleagues reach the right decisions?

Faster decisions, greater efﬁciency and better use of resources Epsis provides the world’s leading oil and gas companies with advanced technology and service solutions for integrated operations.

Our user-friendly software tools make it easy to develop and manage workﬂows, collaborate, visualize the asset and make real-time decisions. By drawing on years of experience in this ﬁeld, we can help you to implement integrated operations solutions that enhance your collaborative environment.

Epsis: Helping you make the important decisions

www.epsis.no novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 28

Oil and gas production Intelligent Energy Conference Plans are moving ahead for the Society of Petroleum Engineers / Reed Exhibitions 'Intelligent Energy Conference,' planned for this Feb 25-27 in Amsterdam. The event attracted 1300 people when it was This is a particular problem for drilling and gas industry last held in March 2006. For the Feb 2008 operations in West Africa, where it is hardest to explaining what event, the organisers are hoping for 2,000. find senior employees prepared to go to work they believe is Industry stars set to speak include Sta- on the platforms. possible; and al- toil's chief executive officer Helge Lund, "Every oil company says, I want a 15 year so a young pro- Schlumberger's chief executive officer An- experience person," he says. "But when you're fessionals ses- drew Gould, and Malcolm Brinded, execu- 55 years old, you're not so excited about going sion, where tive director E&P for Royal Dutch Shell. to Luanda." 'young people' Satish Pai, president Europe, Africa Schlumberger's remote collaboration from the Nin- and Caspian at Schlumberger (and previous- technology enables staff to supervise the tendo genera- ly head of Schlumberger Information Solu- drilling job from a shore office, they don't need tion can explain “We're making more use of tions), is co-chairman of the executive commit- to go to the platform. This enables Schlumberg- what they might experienced professionals”.- tee. er to meet the oil major demands. expect the oil Satish Pai,Schlumberger "We have an image of our industry all of It also makes it possible for one senior and gas industry to be doing right now. us try to propagate," says Mr Pai. "This confer- staff member to supervise a number of projects "They will say what they think about our ence is an opportunity to show our industry us- (each being run by junior staff members) at use of technology," says Tony Edwards, chair es technology at the cutting edge." once. "We'll get them to work for another 10 of the program committee and head of iVal- Although the whole industry is in theory years," he says. "We're making more use of ex- ue at BG Group. agreed that "intelligent energy" systems are a perienced professionals." Themes of the technical program include good thing, there are still plenty of obstacles, If this technology wasn't available, technology and data; people, processes and notably people who didn't grow up with this Schlumberger would have problems, because it management of change; and case studies. The level of technology, Mr Pai says. is not possible to suddenly find more drilling papers will cover technology enablers, integra- "Take up is slow in the beginning, then supervisors with 15 years of experience. "You tion and innovation. reaches a tipping point and takes off," he pre- can't compress 5, 6 years in 1 years of training," "We've been oversubscribed in the num- dicts. "But we have not reached that tipping he says. ber of papers and we've got a good spread," point yet." says Mr Edwards. "We have a lot of papers The future, Mr Pai says, will be about Conference from Europe, Middle East, North and South making better decisions faster. The future will The conference will kick off with a 'vision ses- America." also be about lower weight equipment (for ex- sion', with star speakers Malcolm Brinded, "It's not just about technology, if it was, ample, smaller equipment on the subsea instead Helge Lund and Andrew Gould, and a senior we would have done it a long time ago," says of on platforms), but communicating with a vice president of Saudi Aramco is promised. Mr Edwards. high data bandwidth. "The whole development There will be a session with live connec- "There's still a lot of resistance to change concept changes," he says. tions to platforms in Brazil, Azerbaijan, Hol- that has to be overcome, eg people who say, its Mr Pai says that one of his biggest chal- land and the North Sea, so staff can see the sys- big brother watching me, you must be joking," lenges is meeting oil major demands for expe- tems at work. he says. "You're bringing communities together rienced staff to supervise their drilling jobs. There will be speakers from the IT and oil - the onshore and the offshore community."

Receive the latest news and feature articles in your inbox every Monday

28 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 29

Oil and gas production Digital Energy at Offshore Europe Some interesting stories we picked up at the Offshore Europe exhibition in Aberdeen

Simulia - use more finite element ABB launches "Evolution for Life" One advantage of upgrading the au- analysis Automation giant ABB has launched a pro- tomation system is that you can make it eas- gram "Evolution for life," to encourage ier to integrate into other systems, and do North Sea oil and gas companies to upgrade more with the data. their automation systems, and give out the For example, one customer is display- message that upgrading an automation sys- ing data on a wall size visualisation display, tem does not have to be a production-stop- says Mr Harding. You can also incorporate ping experience, you can do it in small, man- data from other systems such as management ageable steps with minimal interruption. systems. This program also extends to systems in all It is easier to configure the systems to other industries. be more ergonomic, for example, create bet- Simulia - testing oil and gas equipment using ABB pledges that new systems sold to- ter alarm systems which fit in better with finite element analysis day will work with systems it has sold since how people work (rather than just besieging Simulia, part of French design and product the early 1990's, and in some cases before them with hundreds of alarms when some- lifecycle management company Dassault this. ABB will also support the core of these thing goes wrong when one alarm will do). Systemes, wants to encourage oil and gas previous generations of ABB systems until companies to do more finite element analy- 2025. AVEVA - new plant design software sis processes on oil and gas equipment, to So you won't have problems with new UK company AVEVA, which makes soft- test how well they are likely to perform be- software not being compatible with old hardware for design and construction of plant fore they are actually built. ware. projects, recently announced a new release Oil and gas companies have done finite ABB has over 100 mission critical con- of its Plant Design Management Software element analysis on important pieces of oil trol and safety systems running in the North (PDMS). and gas installations, such as risers and the Sea, and it was used for nearly 50 per cent The latest version has improved tools legs of platforms, for many years; the tech- of 2006 production, says Dennis Harding, to help people around the world collaborate nology is nearly 30 years old. VP customer support. "We need to make sure on a project, and keep their designs synchro- But Simulia believes there are plenty they are running reliably." nised. more pieces of oil and gas equipment which Many customers now want to extend The P in PDMS originally stood for would benefit from this kind of stress analy- the life of their platforms from what was 'piping' (because the software was designed sis. originally intended, from 2010 to 2020, even to design piping systems), but the software For example, Weatherford has been us- 2030. has since been extended to cover plenty ing the processes to test its designs for down- By making smaller, planned changes, more aspects of the plant, including ducting, hole tools before building them or setting the disruption is much less. For example steel, supports, platforms, stairs and ladders. them to work. there is no sudden need to do a large amount "This release is very robust and practi- It can work out exactly what amount of of retraining. cal to use," says Bruce Douglas, VP industry pressure the rollers on the tool could with- "We can break the upgrade down into solutions, with AVEVA. stand downhole. smaller steps," he says. "They can increase AVEVAalso unveiled a new Piping and Weatherford used the software to mod- the system reliability with no risk." Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID) approach el stresses when laying a pipeline, and to One client of the program was BG based on the creation of a common schemat- model outer forces on an expandable sand Group, who wanted to upgrade the system ic model to represent the complete logic of screen. on its North Sea Armada With developments in computing pow- Platform, which was in- er, it is possible to run finite element analy- stalled over 10 years ago. sis tests much faster, on smaller computers. ABB managed to help them The capability of the software has also increase the life of the plat- increased a great deal in recent years, says form by 15 years. Tom Dianchi of Simulia. They wanted the plat- "You can get more accurate results," he form to be able to handle says. "Previously the computing power was- more gas, and also wanted a n't available to run it in so much detail." new spares management sys- The same software is used in many dif- tem, and wanted to adopt ferent industries, including aerospace and new safety practises, says automotive. BG's Tim Shepherd. For ex- It is used to analyse world cup foot- ample, The new system balls, to see how they will spin and respond complies with new require- to contact; it is also used by clothing manu- ments for alarm manage- facturers to model skin contact. ments. ABB wants to persuade oil and gas operators that upgrading their automation systems won't be a nightmare

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 29 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 30

Oil and gas production

systems in a project. As well as financial management, SAP This enables users to consolidate and can be used to manage logistics and supply manage all of the P&ID data for a project, chain. It can also be used to integrate sys- independently of their P&ID authoring tool. tems with RFID communications, document The software has new visualisation ca- management systems, handheld inspection pabilities that allow teams to review and tools. mark-up 3D models of any size and email the comments to other reviewers. TRAC ID SYSTEMS AVEVA also recently launched version www.trac-id.com 12 of its AVEVA marine software, which is Trac ID systems of Stavanger, Norway, is used to design marine vessels. The new ver- running pilot projects with Statoil and Odf- sion has, amongst others, tools to do design jell to fix RFID tags on piping, to make it of cabling systems, including cable routing easier for the company to keep track of the and calculation of necessary cable length. condition of different pieces of pipe. Putting a damaged pipe downhole can Absoft's SAP for oil and gas Creating a version of SAP for oil and gas - Ian be very expensive for oil and gas companies, UK company Absoft has developed a new Mechie, managing director of Absoft so it is essential that they keep track of the version of financial management software Selling SAP software is a new business condition of different lengths of pipe. SAP, specially for smaller oil and gas com- direction for Absoft, which was previously With the Trac-ID system, each piece of panies. selling SAP services. pipe has a radio tag affixed to it, which is au- Normally, companies buy SAP and Virtually all oil majors use SAP to man- tomatically read whenever it is put in or tak- then employ expensive consultants to con- age some aspects of their business, says Ian en out of the hole. figure it to their needs, but Absoft is selling Mechie, managing director of Absoft. The company is developing a software a specially preconfigured SAP package for "We think there's an opportunity to sell package which will be able to store data the oil and gas industry, so they don't have SAP to the mid market," he says. "We're about the pipe, and the forces which has been to pay the consultants. aiming this version at smaller independents." under. Having the package pre-configured The oil and gas industry has plenty of "You can have some lifecycle manage- means it can be installed in 3-4 months, not unique challenges, such as working with low ment for the pipes," says Jan Gunnar Skul- 18-24 months as with a normal SAP instal- communications bandwidth, which is why stad, technical manager, Trac Networks, lation, he says. The first client, already SAP takes a lot of adaptation to work prop- Trac ID systems hopes to launch a signed up, is Madagascar Oil. erly. commercial product shortly. Shell - optimising gas lift

Shell recently upgraded its Excel based system for optimising gas lift on its North Sea Nelson Platform with a more sophisticated computer system. Engineers Ian Taylor and Carl Gerrard explained how it worked

Ian Taylor, production engineer with the available gas to bubble down each well. sophisticated system to work out the opti- Shell, gave a presentation at Offshore Eu- "We don't have sufficient gas lift," said mum settings for the gas lift, says Carl Ger- rope about how Shell installed a new system Mr Taylor. "We need to optimise it." rard, who was running the project on the to optimise gas lift on its Nelson Field. Shell developed an optimisation soft- Nelson platform. The problem with its existing system ware over the past 10 years, which has a Mi- The project started with a 1 day work- was that it was taking too long to optimise crosoft Excel front end. Users type the pro- shop in April 2006, and a risk assessment in the gas flow after a trip (retrieving the production information into the software, and it June 2006. A software company was asked duction tubing from one of the wells, which suggests what the gas lift settings should be, to create a new optimiser. "The first version meant switching off the gas lift system). and this can then be input into the control of the optimiser turned up in August 2006 With the new software, the amount of system. and it didn't work," said Mr Gerrard. time it takes to re-optimise the gas lift re- Unfortunately the knowledge about The system was finally working by duced from 25 hours to 18. how these settings were calculated and why November 2006, and the company managed The Nelson Platform is 200km North is no longer in the company. to turn off its previous system. East of Aberdeen, and first produced oil in "Through the course of time the un- The new system also takes into con- 1994. "It is one of Shell's biggest assets," he derstanding of the macros has evaporated," sideration the price of oil and gas, and this said. he says. "When it breaks, everyone is can be factored in to the decision of how to The platform uses gas lift; gas is bub- scratching their heads." use the gas. bled down the oil wells and used to help re- Shell was finding it was taking too It uses the relationships between dif- duce the pressure down hole, to encourage long to get to optimum production after a ferent lift gas flows, the choke applied, the more oil out of the reservoir and into the production stoppage in one of the wells. oil / gas / water ratios in the production well. The problem is choosing how much of The company wanted to install a more stream, and the total production.

30 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 31

Oil and gas production Phenomatics - training in virtual reality

Phenomatics of Austria is pushing out the boundaries of what is possible with simulator training, by creating a system where people see the virtual world on a 3D headset, rather than looking at a screen.

TRAINING IN VIRTUAL REALITY - The trainee is refilling lubication oil in agas compressor. On the left, you can see the trainee with his head mounteddisplay, as other students look on. On the right you can see the what thetrainee sees.The system tracks the person's hand position and headposition, so they can look around and move their hand in the virtualdisplay. Below image: a view of the system from the front.

Phenomatics of Austria is pushing out the where they really are when they take the "People get much more enthusiastic boundaries of what is possible with simula- headset off. about safety training," says Dr Holm. tor training, by creating a system where peo- After a while, people accept the virtual ple see the virtual world on a 3D headset, world as a representation of the real world," rather than looking at a screen. says Dr Roland Holm of Phenomatics. "If The system tracks which way the per- they take off the helmet, they are surprised son is looking, so if the person looks down, about where they are." the image on the screen in their headset Different scenarios can be built into the shows what they would see if they looked simulator like a computer game, eg if you down. open a valve, gas will leak. The user wears a special glove, and the The system has been used since 2003 computer tracks the position of the glove. So for safety training in a refinery in Schwechat, if someone can put their real hand forward, Austria. All new refinery employees are re- their hand on the screen moves forward. quired to complete the training before they Inside the headset, a slightly different are allowed to start work. screen image is put in front of each eye, so In a typical training session at the re- the person feels that they are seeing in three finery, there is one instructor and four stu- dimensions. dents, with one of the students wearing the Traditional simulator manufacturers headset, the others watching what he can see have gone to a lot of effort to make their sim- on a large screen. ulators immersive, to make the person be- The instructor will give the student lieve that they are on a real ship's bridge or tasks to complete. Each of the students will aeroplane cockpit, for example with controls then complete the task, with small variations from a real ship, a large screen, real sounds, in it so they cannot just copy what the last even a room which shakes or tilts as a real person did. The course has been put together aeroplane cockpit or ship's bridge would. by refinery staff. But the Phenomatics team believe that The trainer can alter things in the virtu- with a 3D headset, they take the level of im- al world, for example, change the pressure mersivity one step further, to the point where in a vessel, or put something on fire, so the people fully believe that they are in the vir- trainees can be challenged to work out how The headmounted display and hand tracking tual world, and are very surprised to find out to deal with it. device

November - December 2007- digital energy journal 31 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 32

Oil and gas production Segmenting your suppliers - in electronic purchasing To make an electronic purchasing strategy work, you have to segment your suppliers in the right way. Chris Welsh of Eiro Consulting, writing on behalf of oil and gas e-commerce company OFS-Portal, explains how this can be done

Many cases of poor supplier adoption and sup- (ii) Domain collaboration - customer rela- per cent of spend. plier enablement failures have been cited as the tionship management, product development, Large transactional volume suppliers of- main cause of poor performing or even failed joint marketing fer the most opportunity to implement efficien- e-procurement initiatives. (iii) Product and service optimisation - cies in the document exchange with suppliers Invariably these projects have taken very supply chain, planning / execution, information and are typically the targets for the implemen- simple criteria to perform supplier segmenta- sharing. tation of electronic B2B document exchange. tion, such as "Top 80 per cent spend", as the on- As you go through the phases, the impor- ly criteria for supplier selection. tance and complexity of the supplier relation- Know the benefits Before embarking on a supplier segmen- ship increases, and the shared value of the trad- A sample of the various e-Procurement bene- tation activity it is important for an organisa- ing relationship increases. fits is shown below. Each benefit enhances the tion to understand what it is trying to accom- supply chain process in its own discrete way. plish from supplier segmentation. Procurement implementration filters An organisation's position on the procure- To do an effective supplier segmentation, Many organisations implement key filters dur- ment development axis will limit which bene- the initial steps are to collect and document the ing the procurement process and these can be fits can be brought to bear. procurement strategy, the landscape in which used to help prioritise suppliers during the seg- Each organisation must therefore set its the activity is to take place and the external in- mentation process. These are some common fil- own procurement improvement targets in line fluences (sometimes constraints) into which the ters: with its e-procurement maturity. segmentation activity will operate. Gated vs. Non-Gated - Suppliers with Compliance benefits (transparency and contracts and good governance around the buy- visibility of spend for regulatory purposes, map Procurement goals ing process can be classed as non-gated suppli- spend to preferred suppliers against known con- Most large organisations have some form of ers. Organisations often allow direct purchas- tracts) procurement strategy ranging from decen- ing from these suppliers without procurement Transactional benefits (automate pur- tralised and individual buying at the operating intervention. Gated suppliers may have con- chasing, automate purchase to pay process); unit or site level to full supplier performance tracts in place yet a check or intervention is Management information benefits management on a global basis with strategic forced in the buying process to ensure any buy- (have information to improve the procurement suppliers working on collaborative developing activity is authorized. process) ment and marketing of services and products. Contracts and Price Books available - Price benefit (have a higher spend with E -procurement is increasingly being This implies that the supplier could be capable preferred suppliers potentially leading to im- adopted as part of the drive for the efficient sup- of implementing an electronic catalogue. This proved discount) ply chain and is moving from the early adopter is usually a prerequisite for non-gated suppli- Payment benefits (electronic invoicing, phase of the deployment cycle into a commod- ers. electronic funds transfer, reduced payment pro- ity process. Volume and Value Thresholds - Spend cessing burden) You can describe three phases in the pro- thresholds are the most frequent filter used to Intangible benefits (visibility of supplier curement development plan. target suppliers, many organisations target their performance, getting easier financial approval (i) Enabling communication - purchase 2 procurement improvement opportunities on the for spend, knowledge of employees' roles in the Pay, Order 2 Cash, catalogues top 20 per cent of suppliers which make up 80 procurement process, implementing master data management).

Channel delivery strategy There are many e-procurement delivery mech- anisms, or channels, examples being RFx, PCARD, B2B, WebPortal, Catalogues, paper/ fax, e-mail, and ERS. For each channel it is important to understand the value delivered by engaging suppliers using the channel. Many organisations assume that a comprehensive list of channels is needed to ensure complete cover for supplier enablement and yet they have not determined the cost to deploy or the benefits derived from the channel.

32 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 33

THE FUTURE IS HERE – THE VALUE OF INNOVATION AND INTEGRATION

I Shared learning from industry leaders I Intelligent solutions at project, business, and industry levels I Technology-led transformation

International plenary speakers include: Andrew Gould, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Schlumberger Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director E&P, Royal Dutch Shell Amin Nasser, Vice President, Petroleum Engineering & Development, Saudi Aramco Helge Lund, President and Chief Executive Officer, Statoil Ben Verwaayen, Chief Executive, BT

Find out more and book now to attend the conference and exhibition at: www.intelligentenergyevent.com Intelligent energy. Optimised efficiency. Smarter business.

Organised by novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 34

Oil and gas production

Understanding this benefit allows a prag- The standards adoption strategy needs to matic approach to deployment, for example, if address these specific areas: it costs $1000/year to support a supplier on a B2B Document Standards (both XML web portal and the supplier only submits 12 and Legacy EDI); secure and reliable Internet documents/year with benefits from using the Protocol (IP) standards; data standards for clas- portal being $10 per transaction, should the or- sification of products and services; and cata- ganisation deploy the portal to that supplier? logue access standards to enable the procurement process. Supplier performance management Knowing the norms of operation within Classifying suppliers for e-procurement has to your industry allows the selective adoption of be aligned with and should be steered by the channels for e-procurement. classification used for ranking suppliers by the If your industry is well advanced at im- procurement function. plementing EDI, this can be considered an in- In this way, e-procurement becomes an industry norm and your supplier base should be tegral part of the procurement function's every- receptive to implementing this channel technol- day activities and is seen to enhance supply success of a business and with whom collabo- ogy. chain management activities, an important step rating programs are in place governed by exec- to gaining ownership for e-procurement. utive sponsorship Know Your Spend Middle Tier - Critical Relationships - Most organisations do not progress past this Supplier Preference Those hundreds of suppliers that are critical to phase of data collection and simply use the his- Each organisation will have its own measures sustaining the day-to-day operations across an torical spend and transaction count as the basis to determine how suppliers are classified as pre- organisation yet which may not be participat- for the whole supplier segmentation strategy. ferred suppliers. ing in a collaborative end product (Global or Parametric tools have been developed and An industry accepted model is the Suppli- Regional, Direct Suppliers) used effectively to perform this analysis and er Preference Quadrant; parameters to the quad- Foundation Tier - Local suppliers criti- when tied to the business case ensure projec- rant can include items such as ease of doing cal to a small portion of Operations and those tion of maximum benefits is sustained. business with, are we a key customer for Sup- thousands of suppliers who have a purely trans- plier, dependence on customer revenues for the actional relationship (Local MRO, Indirect Summary of inputs supplier, is it a critical supplier for buying or- Suppliers). Supplier Segmentation sits within a framework ganisation. There is normally many more suppliers in of a larger purchasing activity, the key inputs the foundation tier than the middle tier, and on- that need to be considered are as follows: ly a handful in the top tier. Supplier performance; supplier technology capability; procurement strategy and goals; Supplier technology progression industry standards; supplier classification; sup- Supplier capability can limit the adoption of an plier preference; supplier supply chain perform- e-commerce strategy if an organisation's sup- ance; channel strategy; transaction volume and plier base is technically more than one-step spend; current procurement implementations; away from its customer. There are tools and industry operating norms. processes available to assess the readiness of your supplier base. It is important to understand that your channel delivery strategy has external depend- encies, a major one being the ability and readi- Supplier Classification ness of your suppliers to embrace the technolo- Purchasing organisations with the most devel- gy required to implement the channel. oped supply chains tend to have rationalised Matching the right channel delivery with each supplier according to a set of criteria such your suppliers based on business benefit de- as Strategic, Value Added, Leveraged or Local. rived is a key activity performed during the Furthermore, the best buying organisa- Supplier Road Mapping. tions will not only have mapped each supplier into their particular hierarchy, they will also be Industry standards This is part one of a two part article on sup- engaging with the suppliers in a manner which An area which progresses slowly, is the devel- plier segmentation - part on discusses the is in accordance with the position in the hierar- opment of standards for e-business document steps to identify and prepare for a benefits chy. exchange. driven supplier segmentation strategy, and Understanding and positioning suppliers Having said that, there are numerous stan- part 2, to be published in the January 2008 in the hierarchy is an integral part of supplier dards available, some industry specific, some issue of Digital Energy Journal, discusses segmentation, it dictates the amount of effort a technology focused. applying the knowledge captured to gener- buying organisation is willing to put into estab- Successful Supplier Segmentation will ate a supplier road map, matching the most lishing and maintaining supplier engagement. adopt the right standards for each commodity effective supplier enablement channel with An example hierarchy is shown below: sector in your organisation whilst ensuring a the supplier profile, and deliver the biggest Top Tier - Strategic Alliance/Partnership strategy for adopting the least number of stan- business value. - Top handful of suppliers that are critical to the dards is the prudent approach.

34 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:18 Page 35 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 36

Oil and gas production Improve your rig scheduling Vancouver company Actenum has 5 mathematics Phds developing algorithms to optimise scheduling. Saudi Aramco uses it to optimise their rig scheduling, other companies use it for planned maintenance.

The software goes through all the possible Producers can use Actenum's software Maintenance assignments of rigs to well locations, to work to make sure that they always have their rigs Actenum's technology was originally put out which one is the optimum according to scheduled in an optimum way, and can also through its paces scheduling planned main- different metrics, for example net present quickly work out the costs of any changes. tenance jobs for a Canadian oil sands com- value or maximised production. "They have to decide, is it worth mov- pany. The software can quickly recalculate ing a particular rig?," he says. "If a the optimum way to deploy the rigs after any "For example, when you are going to company operational change-for example, a break- send a rig to a particular well, and the rig is has 12 large down, or drilling taking longer than expect- not ready when expected, you might have 2 pieces of ed-so producers always know what expected other suitable rigs which are available, but equipment rig movements and costs will be, and how to quite far away," he says. "The software will made up of reschedule rigs as conditions change and dis- help you determine which one you should 2,000 sub ruptions occur. bring in, based on the schedule for the rig." assemblies, The software takes into consideration The tool can also enable rigs to be re- including the daily rate at which a rig is chartered out scheduled after a change to the drilling plan. pumps, (fixed at the time of the charter), and its For example, there might suddenly be a re- valves, transportation cost. quirement to drill more wells, that wasn't in compres- "Normally, when you reschedule, you the schedule before, or wells which had been sors, do it based on your past experience and planned and no longer required. Drillers pipelines knowledge. But you do it in the dark. You might want to move certain wells up in the and pro- don't really know ahead of time if your deci- schedule because they are more important, cessing 30 seconds to work out how much more production you sions are going to be productive or not, or if for example injection wells. units, the would get from adding they will cost a lot of money," says Many companies use Microsoft Excel software another rig - Owen Plowman, Actenum's marketing manager Owen Plow- for this kind of work, but Actenum's soft- will auto- Actenum man. "Our tool lets you assess the value of ware can do a lot more than Excel can. matically produce a preventative mainte- your decision." "If management asks how much more nance schedule for all that equipment for any "Saudi Aramco tested the software for production would result from adding a rig, given time period," says Mr Plowman. 3 months, used it in a major planning exer- it's very hard to get an answer like that using "If things break down, or you find out cise, and then they came back and said we're Excel," Mr Plowman says. "If you use our that a maintenance crew will be delayed for getting some results from it, and they signed Rig Activity Scheduler you can answer a some reason, the software can revise the up," says Mr Plowman. question like that in 30 seconds." schedule quickly and intelligently. A Saudi Aramco employee heard Actenum giving a conference presentation on maintenance scheduling, and realised the approach could also work for rig scheduling. Actenum has also been asked to look at using its technology to optimise steam as- sisted gravity drainage (SAGD) projects in the Alberta oil sands.

Actenum Actenum was founded in 2003, to commer- cialise optimization research work started at a university in Vancouver. The company still has close links to the research community. The optimization technology is based on new mathematical techniques; of the 18 employees, 5 of them have PhDs in a specific area of mathematics, Mr Plow- man says. Actenum will present a joint paper with Saudi Aramco at the ATCE in Anaheim this year, entitled 'Increasing production and re- Actenum's software is used by Saudi Aramco to optimise ducing rig costs in complex drilling opera- scheduling for 135 drilling and workover rigs tions."

36 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 37

Communications

Wintershall central monitors North and control its 18 gas production platforms says. Wintershall also believes it can make Sea platforms in the Dutch sector of the North Sea. Com- substantial savings in materials procurement, www.wintershall.com munications will be by microwave radio. maintenance, production planning, staff Wintershall has installed what it claims is This means that it should no longer be planning and logistics. one of the most modern platform control necessary to staff the control rooms onboard Total investment in the system is Euro rooms in the world, for centrally monitoring the platform during night time, the company 11.5m (USD 16.3m).

Views of Wintershall's control room for monitoring 18 gas production platforms in the North Sea with (top right) Dr.Ties Tiessen, member of the board of executive directors of Wintershall responsible for production, and Theo Bergers, operations manager of Wintershall Noordzee, at the platform control rooms in Den Helder.

CapRock launches enhanced remote SeaTel antennas with Hughes modems RigNet's Mark Slaughter now CEO video streaming www.hns.com www.rig.net www.caprock.com Hughes Network Systems reports that it has Oil and gas satcom company RigNet reports Oil and gas satellite communications com- completed interoperability testing between that Mark Slaughter, appointed president and pany CapRock has upgraded its satellite re- its IP satellite broadband modems and Sea- COO in January this year, has taken on the mote video service, enabling users to see Tel marine stabilized VSAT satellite commu- role of CEO. proper streaming video from offshore oil nications antennas. Mr Slaughter has 20 years experience platforms, rather than rapid image snapshots The two companies have put their prod- in oilfield services and communications, in- as it provided in the past, the company says. ucts together to create a packaged maritime cluding various senior roles in Halliburton The company suggests that the service VSAT system which can be used offshore. and as president of Stratos Global Corpora- could be used for sending image data from Users can take advantage of the band- tion’s Broadband Division. cameras on remote operated vehicles width allocation and quality of service tech- RigNet co-founder, Omar Kulbrand- (ROVs) back to shore, so experts can view niques on Hughes modems. stad, who had been serving as CEO, will the images from the cameras in real time and continue as a director of the company. Mr diagnose potential problems from the office, Brunei Shell extends asset tracking Slaughter will also retain the title of presi- without the need for expensive remote as- contract dent, but the COO position will remain un- sessments. www.astratagroup.com filled. Sending underwater images tends to re- Brunei Shell Petroleum has extended its as- Meanwhile Michael Press has been ap- quire a much higher image resolution than set tracking services contract with Astrata pointed to RigNet's board of directors. video from above water, CapRock says. until September 2008. Mr Press spent 17 years with Standard Secure access to the video is available Astrata provides services for tracking Oil Company where he was VP corporate through the Internet or clients’ private net- assets using a mixture of wireless communi- planning and later senior VP Crude Trading works. cations, GPS, and geographical software. and Transportation.

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 37 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 38

Communications Wi-fi on offshore oil platforms The time is right for wi-fi on offshore oil platforms, believes automation giant Invensys

Most of us are getting quite familiar with wi- The biggest obstacle is the challenge of an alert if someone turns the wrong valve. fi now, we've used it at home, in the office, persuading people to make the first step and Wireless technologies can be used to and when travelling. start testing things out - people are very com- work out where people are, by triangulating The experience many of us have had fortable with their wires. the strength of signal from their communi- with wi-fi so far has been mixed. But Stuart Young, Invensys' principal cations devices with different fixed trans- We all know it's extremely convenient, account manager for upstream oil and gas, ceivers. you can do your e-mail at home downstairs North West Europe, says that many oil and Another suggestion is that people could on a laptop, you can steal your neighbours' gas companies are currently showing inter- have a 'mote' (a wireless communications internet connection when yours isn't work- est in the technology with a view to in- modem) clipped to their back pocket (inside ing, and get your e-mail at airports. stalling it. the safety suit). But on the downside, often it doesn't The first full scale implementation has They can then wear a throat micro- work, you can't log onto your own network, already been made in 2006 on a PEMEX rig phone, which will enable them to speak to you don't have the coverage you need in your in the Gulf of Mexico, with data being com- someone remotely over the wi-fi. own house, there's not much point in being municated over 24 mile distances at speeds wireless when your battery runs out, and you of 24 mbps. Coverage know that you're not supposed to be letting BP is also doing a few pilot projects on- One of the biggest challenges is coverage - your neighbour use your own wi-fi network board offshore oil platforms to see how well making sure the wireless communications is (even if you don't know how to stop him). it works. available and absolutely reliable. So with these concerns, it's not surpris- There are a few wireless installations in Invensys takes pride in its ability to ing that most oil and gas companies are tak- the US, but on shore installations, not off- make sure the platform has adequate wire- ing a very cautious approach to putting wi-fi shore. less coverage for the task in hand. on their offshore oil platforms. Invensys conducts a comprehensive But automation giant Invensys believes What you can do with it study, to work out where to place the that most of the concerns, including about Once everything is set up with wi-fi, it be- transponders, and what the coverage will be security, ease of use, battery life and cover- comes possible to do many things, including like with its planned transponder locations. age, can now be answered. So you just get read devices and change controls remotely. Then it can calculate how good the ra- the extraordinary benefits without the prob- Invensys has set up a wireless demon- dio coverage will be to an accuracy of lems. stration centre in its offices in Aberdeen, 99.994 per cent. Today's industrial wireless communica- which can indicate how you can read a me- Saturation wireless coverage is not tions technology is just as reliable as cable, ter, or change settings on a remote device, cheap; therefore the oil and gas company, to- Invensys believes, and there are plenty of by touching the screen of your palm pilot, gether with the service provider, may decide further advantages of wireless communica- even if the device is in another room. that there are certain areas of the installation tions, including the flexibility, ease of instal- No longer is it necessary to physically (for example, in the tank farm), where wire- lation, and lack of need to lay cables. go to the specific meter to read it or change less coverage will not be provided. Many older oil and gas installations it. The final radio coverage will also de- have problems with corrosion on cable trays, You don't need to completely reinstall pend on the temperature and climate (eg hu- which means they face expensive rewiring all your electronics in order to do it; every- midity in the air), and this can all be taken jobs. It can prove much cheaper to fit a wire- thing Invensys makes is backwards compat- into account when working out how good a less system to an old oil and gas installation ible to 1987 - or in other words, so long as proposed transponder layout will be. rather than refit all of the cabling and cable you originally installed it after 1987, Inven- To keep in the forefront of wireless trays. sys will make sure it works with the equip- technology developments, Invensys is is ac- Ultimately, Invensys sees these tools as ment it is fitting today. tively involved in the Wireless Industrial taking oil companies to what is becoming Invensys is also developing software Networking Alliance (WINA); the current something of a Holy Grail, being able to re- tools which can connect the platform control president of WINA, Hesh Kagan, is also In- duce the number of experienced personnel systems with enterprise management soft- vensys' director of technology. which need to be working on the rig, by hav- ware such as SAP, so the systems which ing experienced personnel working in their business managers use can take data directly Security homes or shore offices communicating with from the control systems. You might be worried about security - if you the rig. Personnel can be wirelessly enabled as can control your equipment remotely, then it Invensys is not aiming to promote any well. Invensys suggests a device which is fit- could be controlled from a pirate's boat half specific products, but is more focusing on ted to the person's safety helmet, which also a mile away, as much as from the accommo- providing the service of wireless solutions. has a panic button on it, and can tell if the dation block. So it does not have any incentive to try to person lies down (eg if he has collapsed) and Invensys' answer to this problem is to sell you more equipment; some of its com- sounds the alarm. have very, very good IT security. petitors, the company says, sometimes act as By connecting the person with the The company considers its encryption though this is their main priority. equipment, the computer system can sound standard 'government grade'.

38 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 39

Communications

Invensys believes that its WPA2 secu- "WiMax" technology can send data up another, and all the wireless devices in the rity system would take about 10 years of a to 50 km - this is different to the "wi-fi" most area can talk to each other, so there is no sin- Cray supercomputer to crack the encryption of us are familiar with, with a much shorter gle point of failure in the system - eg if one (or four Cray computers working together range. of them breaks, then the data communica- for 2.5 years). Data could be downloaded over WiMax tions will continue. In order to access the system, you need to support vessels around the rig. It can also Zigby uses small (approx 6 inch cube) to have 4 independent data keys correct. be used for rig to rig communications. computers which are fitted around the plant, A variant of wi-fi is Zigby, which can called 'motes', each with a battery life of 44 Different technologies be used for 'mesh' communications. Like months. Invensys is working with different wireless with the internet itself, there are many dif- These computers can be positioned technologies. ferent routes data can take from one place to close to plant equipment. Offshore Communications Houston There will be some exciting offshore satellite communications technology on display at Offshore Communications event in Houston Offshore Communications, to be held in Hous- Arqiva can find out the ton on November 6-8, is the largest conference www.arqiva.com exact weather and exhibition in the world focusing on com- UK satellite communications company Arqiva and wave munications in the oil and gas industry. will demonstrate its competency as internation- height condi- Conference topics include microwave al satellite experts, providing satellite coverage tions on the communications, fibre optic submarine net- through 10 teleports and 100 uplinks around the platform or rig. works, optimizing satellite connections, Asia world. It also would Pacific satellite communications, telemedicine, It will present its range of satellite solu- know how regulatory and licensing, economics, hybrid tions for the offshore oil market, including ad- much a drilling systems, incident response, tracking equipment vice, license support, design, installation and rig is moving in and personnel, and remote monitoring. maintenance of satellite communications sys- the water, its Here is our round-up of some of the new tems. position, anchor technology which will be on display at the ex- tension, inclina- RigStat - record and hibition. tion, and im- Patriot Antenna transmit weather data, www.sepatriot.com ages of the rigs motion data and video on RigNet Patriot Antenna Systems of Michigan will ex- condition. an offshore oil platform - www.rignet.com hibit its 1.0m backpack antenna (see photo), The data useful if you have to RigNet, which claims to provide communica- which can communicate in Ku and Ka bands. is communicat- evacuate all personnel tions services for 25 per cent of the world’s off- The antenna folds up to fit in a backpack ed back to shore shore rigs, will exhibit its special services for and weighs under 65 pounds. It can be set up in by satellite, ei- oil and gas satellite communications. 10 minutes and has tools to fine tune the eleva- ther low earth orbiting satellites (Iridium / Glob- This includes RigNet Medical, a tion so it points accurately at the satellite. alstar / Orbcomm /) or by Inmarsat, and is view- telemedicine service able by Internet browser. RigNet Data Management, sending RigStat The service was developed during 2004. drilling data from rigs back to shore www.rigstat.com Already, over 20 systems have been imple- RigNet SOIL, a private data and collabo- RigStat of Sug- mented in the Gulf of Mexico, one in Australia ration network with guaranteed security, relia- ar Land, Texas, and one in Nova Scotia. bility and performance will be exhibit- "We provide a robust, cost effective solu- RigNet Wifi, providing wi-fi onboard rigs ing its rig log- tion under $100,000," says Russ Roy, CEO. for casual and business use. ging system, RigNet is based in Houston and has of- which can log Global Marine fices in Louisiana, Brazil, Malaysia, Nigeria, data about www.gms-telecoms.com Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE weather, motion UK submarine cable company Global Marine and the UK. and images of will exhibit its new joint venture work with an offshore oil Huawei of China, to provide telecoms services CapRock platform or Patriot Antenna Systems - a using submarine cables. www.caprock.com drilling rig. Ku band antenna you can The joint venture combines Huawei’s ex- CapRock will exhibit its video streaming serv- The serv- carry around in a backpack pertise in fibre optics with Global Marine’s ex- ices, which can be used for remote engineering ice is designed pertise in submarine cable engineering. and problem diagnosis, off-site data analysis to display, store and transmit information that The joint venture expects to win 20 con- and collaboration. reflects conditions on the rig, especially during tracts in 2007, totaling 100,000 cable kilome- The services can be used for monitoring evacuations (for example, during a severe storm ters, including from two transpacific cabling subsea maintenance and repair operations from or hurricane). contracts and a number of medium sized (2,000 shore, installations and cleanup. So, for example, an oil and gas company to 10,000km) projects.

November - December 2007 - digital energy journal 39 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 40

Communications

Uplogix coverage of all ocean regions. 902 and ETSI’s latest EN 320 340. www.uplogix.com In the oil and gas / maritime industry, the Uplogix, based in Austin, Texas, specializes in services are used for voice / data / internet / Infosat remote management technology. It will demon- video communications, fleet management, www.infosat.com strate its Envoy equipment, which can be used weather monitoring, and ship to ship commu- Infosat Communications will exhibit satellite to connect remote systems with a satellite com- nications. communications equipment and services for In- munications network, for remote monitoring. marsat, Iridium, Msat and Connect. This in- It will demonstrate its Envoy Manage- SeaTel cludes Inmarsat BGAN and ment System (EMS), which enables a compa- www.seatel.com It will also demonstrate its security and ny to manage the data streams from its Envoy SeaTel is travel mug sponsor of the event. audio-video services, providing closed circuit applications around the world. It will be draw- TV, access control and audiovisual equipment. ing attention to SES New Skies its new 60cm Deltawave Communications www.ses-newskies.com Ku band VSAT deltawavecomm.com SES New Skies will exhibit its satellite com- antenna, which Deltawave Communications of Louisiana will munications services used by the oil and gas in- is fully compli- exhibit a range of Inmarsat satellite communi- dustry. ant with FCC’s cations services for oil and gas, including a SES New Skies has seven satellites, with 04-286, WRC- FleetBroadband maritime terminal and the new two new ones under construction, providing 03 resolution SeaTel VSAT antenna family of isatPhone mobile Inmarsat terminals. Adjust your satcom power on the fly Hughes Network Solutions has launched a new satellite communications technology, DVB-S2, which enables the power of satellite communications to vessels and offshore platforms to be automatically adjusted.

Users of satellite communications on offshore tions for personal use. na technology has been continually improved platforms have long been aware that the com- "These guys are away from home for a and antenna cost has reduced," he says. munication speed often drops during rain. long period of time," he says. "It's nice to be "We think there are exciting opportunities But with DVB-S2 technology, the power able to get on the internet, and stay in touch with to use Ku band in regional areas - such as the of the satellite signal can automatically be in- your family." Gulf of Mexico and North Sea," he says. creased to compensate for the rain's effect on Hughes is involved in a number of instal- Ku band satellites have smaller antennas the connectivity. lations on Gulf of Mexico platforms to enable than C band, but only cover regions of the For users of VSAT on vessels, the DVB- workers to communicate over the satcom link world, whilst C band can cover the whole S2 technology can be used to automatically in- via their mobile phones. world. "With the bigger the antenna, the costs crease the power of the satellite signal, as the This works particularly well when there dramatically increase," he says. vessel moves towards the edge of the satellite are a number of platforms in close proximity, "You can do Ku band with a 60cm effec- footprint. because one system can provide a mobile serv- tively. With C band, you're talking 1.8 or 2.4m. Satellites are set up to point at certain ar- ice to all of them. It's a huge difference." eas of the world, and the signal is much stronger Mr Rehbehn estimates that the costs of However the long promised Ku full roam- in the middle of the beam than at the edge. mobile phone calls from the platforms can be ing services, where users can go from one Ku Users of VSAT terminals can typically as low as 2 cents per minute. satellite to another, is not yet available, he says. spend a lot of time adjusting the system to try Many platforms are also setting up voice "Its not like GSM handsets," he says. "We to get the best signal, and this is no longer nec- over IP systems, so that voice calls made on the don't know of anybody who's able to take a re- essary with this technology. platform can connect with terrestrial VOIP sys- mote terminal and go from one DVB RCF sys- "It's always seeking the optimal transmis- tems such as Skype. The amount of data re- tem to another. I don't think you're going to see sion point," says Dave Rehbehn, marketing di- quired to send Skype calls over a satellite can roaming." rector of Hughes Network Systems. "It's be as low as 5 kbps, there is very little data over- Instead, service providers are putting to- squeezing out the most bandwidth, continually head from the IP protocol. gether systems which can work in different and automatically." Another driver for satcoms on platforms parts of the world, but as long as they are on the The specific technology involved is called is systems to send equipment monitoring data same satellite constellation, such as Intelsat or Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) and back to shore. SES. Adaptive Inbound Selection. Ku band Dave Rehbehn, marketing director of Growing market Mr Rehbehn says that technology for Ku band Hughes Network Systems, will speak about Mr Rehbehn says that the market for satellite VSAThas improved a great deal in recent years. the new technology at the upcoming Off- communications in the oil and gas industry is "In recent years, the satellites have got shore Communications event in Houston growing, with much of the growth due to de- more powerful, new communications technolo- (Nov 6-8). mands from employees for more communica- gies like DVB have been implemented, anten-

40 digital energy journal - November - December 2007 novdec07.qxp 19/10/2007 16:05 Page 41

2nd Annual Standards Summit & Reception

Open Data Exchange Standards are part of the critical path to fully implement Integrated Operations for Production Optimization and greater Operational Efficiency.

Join oil and gas industry leaders from around the world for a one-day, open forum to discuss:

Collaborative Standards Development Global Standards Adoption Deep Standards Deployment

Date: Tuesday, 6 November 2007

Location: St. Regis Hotel, Houston, Texas USA

Theme: How Open Standards Enable Knowledge, Information and Data Management

Agenda: North America Region & SIG Meeting y WITSML Drilling Standards y PRODML Production Standards y Data Management Standards General Session y Keynote address by Dr. Agustín Diz of Repsol YPF y Round Table moderated by Mr. Bill Pike of Hart’s Energy Publishing y Public Forum Reception

Come see us at:

IPTC Dubai 4-6 December

Hyderabad 2008 14-16 January

EnergyTech-Africa Sponsors: 23-24 January

For more details about Energistics and online registration, visit www.energistics.org. or email Energistics at [email protected] or call +1.713.784.1880

Reserves Reserves

Feel squeezed? Turn things around.

Risk Risk

Enabling the Digital Asset™

When technologies work better together, people work better together. So you can increase reserves while reducing risk, operational costs, NPT and more.

Unleash the energy.™

H142-07 Digital Asset Orig.indd 1 8/16/07 1:31:18 PM Process CyanProcess MagentaProcess YellowProcess Black