DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
14:55
Page 1
Red Spiders technology to cut the
cost of intelligent
wells
What if we could choose
our own assignments?
Tuning an oil and gas
company
September / October 2008
Issue 14
A shortage of satcom capacity?
Using simulators for training
Associate Member
Managing human resources better
™
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
14:57
Page 2
ANNOUNCING THE ONLY NEXT-GENERATION ICV WITH THE SMARTWELL® NAME
The HS-ICV is the only next-generation interval
control valve that’s based on the WellDynamics
11-year track record of reliability and innovative
engineering.
Rated to pressures of 10K psi and temperatures of 40ºF to 325ºF, the new HS-ICV is
ideal for deepwater environments.
FIRST. INNO
VATIVE. RELI
ABLE.
SMART.
FEATURES
Debris-tolerant closure seal
Durable, proprietary metal-to-metal flank seal,
enabling 5K psi differential unloading
Optional dual position sensor that provides
real-time positioning of the valve trim
Open/close or 8-position choke trim
Extended working pressure and temperature
based on upgraded materials and elastomers
Compatible with WellDynamics SmartWell®
equipment for improved ultimate recovery
Want to know more about the next-generation
HS-ICV? Visit WellDynamics at Booth 2155 at the
SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition
in Denver, visit our website, or contact your local
WellDynamics representative today.
www.welldynamics.com
© 2008 Halliburton. All Rights Reserved.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:00
Page 1
Contents
Leader
What if people could choose their assignments?
People can be extremely motivated when they have the freedom to choose which projects to
work on based on how they feel they can add value, and unexpected innovation happens when
you allow open collaboration to achieve a goal, says John Gibson, CEO of Paradigm
3
Exploration and drilling
Intelligent wells – slashing the costs by 75 per cent
6
Red Spider Technology says it will be launching a new intelligent well system which has the
potential to cut 75 per cent off the cost of systems currently on the market
Collaborative well planning
September / October 2008
Issue 14
Digital Energy Journal
213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK
www.digitalenergyjournal.com
Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935
Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344
Editor
Karl Jeffery
jeffery@d-e-j.com
Technical editor
Keith Forward
forward@d-e-j.com
Subscriptions
Karl Jeffery
jeffery@d-e-j.com
Advertising sales
Alec Egan
Tel +44 (0)207 510 4944
aegan@onlymedia.co.uk
Gary Schottle, drilling and completions director for Landmark, sheds light on how collaborative
well planning can help clients efficiently develop the most productive reservoirs in complex
drilling environments such as Colorado’s Piceance Basin
Rowing across the Indian Ocean
In April 2009, Michelle de Groot, daughter of the president of Dutch geoscientific software
company dGB Earth Sciences Paul de Groot, is planning a charity row across the Indian Ocean
A new microchip from NVDIA promises to let you have high performance computing in your
desktop PC for under $10,000
Texas Instruments has launched a new projector chip, which can create much clearer and
brighter projections than others on the market, the company claims
Caesar Systems – helps you make
decisions
PIDX – first Aberdeen meeting
Houston software company Caesar Systems has
software to help oil and gas exploration and
production companies solve their toughest
challenge – good decision making
21
PIDX, the e-commerce committee of the
American Petroleum Institute, held its first
meeting in Aberdeen on July 9th, with 50
participants including representatives of
Chevron, ENI and Shell
Jindal Drilling of India has signed a contract with
SpecTec Asia Pacific to install its AMOS
maintenance and purchasing software on
two new jack-up drilling rigs being built at
Keppel Yard in Singapore
Can you imagine your oil and gas company
being as finely tuned as a process plant?
24 Chesapeake and Oracle PeopleSoft 40
Jindal Drilling to use SpecTec’s
maintenance and purchasing software
US oil and gas company Chesapeake Energy
recently started using Oracle's PeopleSoft
software to help manage people aspects of
the business, including human resources,
payroll and benefits administration
26 BP and Crystal Ball
Invensys simulators for safety
Invensys is pioneering the use of simulators,
combining human factors and virtual reality, for
improved safety, integrated operator training
and as an aid in the design of oil and gas
facilities
28
45
Shipdex – a new standard for data
A standard has been developed for technical
data for ships, drilling rigs and offshore
platforms, which should enable technical
information to be supplied electronically
oil and gas asset
value
29 Communicating
Making digital energy work
Houston change management consultants
Dr Dutch Holland and Bob Bobst give their
advice
BP uses Oracle’s Crystal Ball software on
nearly 90 per cent of its new wells, to help
keep its costs and schedules on track
44
46
Offshore simulation
Featuring the Offshore Simulator Center in
Ålesund, Norway and a new offshore
simulation focus at Kongsberg
38
Tuning E&P companies like a
process manufacturing plant
Each issue of Digital Energy Journal print magazine is mailed to 2,000 oil and gas executives,
with a further 500-1000 copies distributed at
trade shows, as well as being downloaded approx 2,000 times as pdf.
Czech Republic. www.printo.cz
16
Oil and gas production
Working out who should get what out of the
returns on an oilfield can get very complex,
EnergySys has developed software which
should make it easier to manage
Printed by Printo, spol. s r.o., 708 00 Ostrava-Poruba,
14
Texas Instruments - new projector chip
Splitting up the allocations
Front cover:
Testing out the
new eRed device
which can block
or unblock
downhole
tubing after
specific time
intervals, or when certain pressures are
reached. From left to right: Michael Christie,
Stuart Gordon and Mike Reid (see page 6).
13
Lowering the cost of high performance computing
Digital Energy Journal is a magazine for people
in the upstream oil and gas industry who would
like to keep up to date with the latest industry
IT and communications technology, services,
opinion, practise and lessons learned.
Subscriptions: £195 a year for 6 issues. To subscribe, please contact Karl Jeffery on jeffery@de-j.com. Alternatively you can subscribe online
at www.d-e-j.com
12
34
UK software company Palantir Solutions has
developed a standard way for oil and gas
companies and their lenders to put a value
on their assets, even if they disagree on what
the oil price will do
48
Communications
Warning – possible satcom shortage
Satcom technologies must evolve
Increased demand for satellite capacity,
particularly for cellular backhaul, means that
oil and gas companies can no longer take its
availability for granted in West Africa, South
America and the Middle East, warns James
Trevelyan, head of enterprise sales at Arqiva
In order to provide effective satellite
communications services to oil and gas
companies, you need to have an in-depth
understanding of their increasingly complex
and comprehensive needs, says Broadpoint’s
new President and CEO, Errol Olivier
50
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
1
49
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:01
Page 2
4TH INTERNATIONAL
INTERNATION
NAL CONFERENCE
CONFERENCE ON INTEGRATED
INTEGRATED OPERATIONS
OPERATIONS IN THE
T PETROLEUM
PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
INDUSTRY
TTRONDHEIM,
RONDHEIM, NORW
NORWAY,
WAY, 21–22 OC
OCTOBER
TOBER 2008 A
AND
ND SSME
ME IINNOVATION
NNOVATTION FFORUM
ORUM
M 23 OC
OCTOBER
TOBER 2008
IO 08 Sc
Science
cienc
i
e and
d Pr
P
Practice
actic
i e – the
he ttechnologies
echnolog
h l ie
i s tto
o
integrate
in
tegrate people and
an
nd work
work processes
proc
o esses
Where
Wher
e Science
Science a
and Practice
Practice meet
meet
This conference
conference is abou
about
ut the me
methods
thods and tools
tools for
for integrated
integrated oper
operations,
ations, today
today and in the future.
future. The place
place where
where science
science and
d practice
practice meet.
meet.
*U
XJMMQSFTFOU UIF FYQF
FSJFODF GSPN TPNF PG UIF NPTU BEWBODFE PJM DPNQBOJFT BOE TZTUFNTV
VQQMJFSTJOUIJTçFMEUPEBZ *U XJMM BMTP MPPL BIFBE
*UXJMMQSFTFOUUIFFYQFSJFODFGSPNTPNFPGUIFNPTUBEWBODFEPJMDPNQBOJFTBOETZTUFNTVQQMJFSTJOUIJTçFMEUPEBZ*UXJMMBMTPMPPLBIFBE
and reveal
reveal recent
recent rresearch
ese
earch rresults
esults on futur
e IO solutions from
fr
f om leading
leading universities
universities and rresearch
esear
a ch laboratories
laboratories ar
ound the w
orld. By contrasting
contrasting
future
around
world.
UUPEBZ×TCFTUQSBDUJDFXJUIGPSXBSEMPPLJOHQFSTQFDUJWFTUIJTXJMMDSFBUFBQSPEVDUJWFNFFUJOHQMBDFGPSHFOFSBUJOHOFXJNQVMTFTJOUIFGVSUIFS
PEBZZ×TCFTUQS
Q BDUJDF XJUI
X GPSXBSEMPPLJOHQFSTQFDUJW
HQ Q
FT UI
IJT XJMM DSFBUFBQS
Q PEVDUJWF NFFUJOH
HQMBD
H
Q F GPSHFOFS
H
BUJOHOF
H XJNQVMTF
Q FT JO UIF GVSUIFS
EFWFMPQNFOUPGJOUFHSBUFEPQFSBUJPOTQSBDUJDF*0XJMMTQFDJçDBMMZIJHIMJHIUJOUFSOBUJPOBMBTQFDUTBOEIBTJOWJUFEJOUFSOBUJPOBMMZSFDPHOJ[FE
EF
WFMPQNFOU PG JOUFHSBUFEPQFSBUJPOTQSBDUJDF *0 XJMMTQFDJçDBMMZIJHIMJHIU JOUFSOBUJPOBMBTQFDUTBOEIBTJOWJUFE JOUFSOBUJPO
OBMMZSFDPHOJ[FE
TQFBLFSTGSPNPJMDPNQBOJFTTFSWJDFJOEVTUSZBOEVOJWFSTJUJFTSee:
www.ioconf.no
TQF
BLFST GSPN PJM DPNQ
QBOJFTTFSWJDF JOEVTUSZBOEVOJWFSTTJUJFT See: www
w..ioconf.no
Who should a
attend?
ttend?
5IF*0JTPSHBOJ[FEGPSQSPGFTTJPOBMTGSPNUIFPJMBOEHBTJOEVTUSJFTPJMDPNQBOJFTTVQQMJFSTBOE3%PSHBOJ[BUJPOT
XIPIBWFUIF
5IF
*0 JT PSHBOJ[FE GPSQSPGFTTJPOBMT GSPNUIFPJMBOEH
HBTJOEVTUSJFTPJMDPNQBOJFTTVQQMMJFSTBOE3%PSHBOJ[BUJPOT
XIPI
IBWF UIF
FTQPOTJCJMJUZGPS UIF EF
FWFMPQNFOUBOEJNQMFNFOUBUJPO PG OFX XPSLQSPDFTTFTUPPMT BOE JOGPSNBUJPO TZTUFNT GPS JOUFHSBUFEP
PQFSBUJPOT
S FTQPOTJCJMJUZGPSUIFEFWFMPQNFOUBOEJNQMFNFOUBUJPOPGOFXXPSLQSPDFTTFTUPPMTBOEJOGPSNBUJPOTZTUFNTGPSJOUFHSBUFEPQFSBUJPOT
*0 JT BMTP EFTJHOFEGPS UIPTF XPSLJOHXJUIçFMEEFWFMP
PQNFOUSFTFSWPJSNBOBHFNFOUXFM
F MT BOE ESJMMJOHQSPDFTT DPOUSPM BOE
E NBJOUFOBODF
*0JTBMTPEFTJHOFEGPSUIPTFXPSLJOHXJUIçFMEEFWFMPQNFOUSFTFSWPJSNBOBHFNFOUXFMMTBOEESJMMJOHQSPDFTTDPOUSPMBOENBJOUFOBODF
UJDTTBGFUZ)&4
IVNBOSFTPVSDFT BOE PSHBOJ[BUJPOTTTZTUFN EFWFMPQNFOUSFTFBSDIBOE*0NBOBHFNFOU
MMPHJT
PHJTUJDTTBGFUZ)&4
IVNBOSFTPVSDFTBOEPSHBOJ[BUJPOTTZTUFNEFWFMPQNFOUSFTFBSDIBOE*0NBOBHFNFOU
Topics and sessions
IO 08 will highlight aspects of the technologies that integrate people and work processes.
1. Breakthrough processes and technologies for IO – challenging traditional practices
2. Experience from other businesses
3. New work processes and enabling technologies in IO
4. Smarter well solutions and better reservoir interfacing
5. Real-time reservoir management and production optimization
0QFSBUJPOTNBJOUFOBODFBOENPEJçDBUJPOTÔDMPTFSMJOLUPQSPEVDUJPOPQUJNJ[BUJPO
7. IO and HSE – Risk exposure and solutions for improved safety solutions
*03PBENBQGPS&1QSPKFDUTBOEçFMEEFWFMPQNFOU
Sp
ponsoring or
ganization 5IFD
POGFSFOD
F FJTPSHBOJ[FECZUIF$FOUFSGPS*OUFHSBUFE0QFSBUJPOTIPTUFECZUIF/P
PSXFHJBO
Sponsoring
organization
5IFDPOGFSFODFJTPSHBOJ[FECZUIF$FOUFSGPS*OUFHSBUFE0QFSBUJPOTIPTUFECZUIF/PSXFHJBO
OJWFSTJUZPG 4DJFODF BOE 5FDIOPMPHZ 55IF *0 $FOUFS XBT FTUBCMJTIFE JO CZMFBEJOHJOUFSOBUJPOBM PJM DPNQBO
OJFTTZTUFN
6O
6
OJWFSTJUZPG4DJFODFBOE5FDIOPMPHZ5IF*0$FOUFSXBTFTUBCMJTIFEJOCZMFBEJOHJOUFSOBUJPOBMPJMDPNQBOJFTTZTUFN
QQMJFSTBDBEFNJDJOTUJUVUJPOTBOEUIF
F3FTFBSDI$PVODJMPG/PSXBZXJUIUIFPCKFDUJWFUPVOEFSUBLFSFTFBSDIJOOPWBUJPOBOE
TVQQMJFSTBDBEFNJDJOTUJUVUJPOTBOEUIF3FTFBSDI$PVODJMPG/PSXBZXJUIUIFPCKFDUJWFUPVOEFSUBLFSFTFBSDIJOOPWBUJPOBOE
TV
www.ntnu.no/iocenter
ww.ntnu.no/iocenter
education
operations.
ed
ucation on integrated
integrated oper
ations. ww
Conference CCommitee:
Conference
ommitee:
"SJME//ZT
UBE/5/61
1FUSP.BOBHFNFOU
$POGFSFODF$IBJSS
"SJME//ZTUBE/5/61FUSP.BOBHFNFOU
$POGFSFODF$IBJS
7JEBS)FQT¹4
UBUPJM)ZESSP
7JEBS)FQT¹4UBUPJM)ZESP
*OHFS'K§SUPGU4UBUPJM)ZESP
*OHFS
*OHFS'K§SU
'K§SUPGU4
U 4UBUPJM)ZESP
&TQFO3
PLLF'.$
&TQFO3PLLF'.$
3PBS#ZF5FFLBZ1FUSPKBSMM
3PBS#ZF5FFLBZ1FUSPKBSM
#
KBSOF'PTT/5/6
#KBSOF'PTT/5/6
+PO
+PO,MFQQF/5/6
+PO,MFQQF/5/6
,MFQQF /5/6
+PO-JQQF*0$
FOUSF
+PO-JQQF*0$FOUSF
Partners
P
artners in the Center
Center for
for Integrated
Integrated Operations
Operations in the Petroleum
Petroleum Industry:
Industry:
Cooperating
Coope
erating academic partners
partners::
$ISJTUJBO . #BDILF.JEOPS$/*"
F
4
$ISJTUJBO.#BDILF.JEOPS$/*"4
4PMWFJH+PIOTFO*0$FOUSF
4PMWFJH+PIOTFO*0$FOUSF
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:02
Page 3
Leader
What if people could choose their
assignments?
Linux and Wikipedia have taught us two valuable lessons. First, that people can be extremely motivated
when they have the freedom to choose which projects to work on based on how they feel they can add
value. And second, that unexpected innovation happens when you allow open collaboration to achieve a
goal. Are these lessons that the oil and gas industry should take to heart? John Gibson, CEO of Paradigm,
thinks they might be.
In his concluding keynote speech at the
Digital Energy conference in Houston,
Texas on May 20th, John Gibson, CEO of
oil and gas software company, Paradigm,
raised an interesting question.
What kind of unexpected innovation
could occur, he asked, if people in oil and
gas companies could choose their projects
based on their own interests and where
they thought they can add the most value?
It works for Wikipedia and Linux, Mr Gibson noted.
In his speech, Mr Gibson suggested
that staff would be much more motivated
and feel that they were making a real contribution if this were the case, and teams
and individual competencies would be allocated more effectively, as well.
The talent pool could be expanded,
allowing retired experts to also get involved in projects. Students and postgraduates could respond to a company’s invitation and apply their skills to solve difficult industry problems.
To make his case, Mr Gibson pointed
to the vast amount of available data our industry collects, noting that only a fraction
of it is currently used to make decisions to
efficiently identify, develop and produce
reserves.
“For a simple 3D offshore wide azimuth survey, there are often two hundred
terabytes of data,” he said. “We drop it
down to a couple hundred gigabytes to do
the interpretation. It’s the standard approach and method.
“I think within the next five years
you’re going to see us take advantage of
all two hundred terabytes of captured data. To do this, it means we will have to fundamentally change our approach. I think
there are some real breakthroughs required, and that are imminent.”
Mr Gibson admits that opening innovation to a broad self-selecting community of talent wouldn’t be the easiest thing
to organize in a company with 20,000 people.
But, he suggests, since the current
system is hardly perfect, perhaps a differ-
ent method of organization is in order.
When you consider that managers often don’t have a deep understanding of the
problem—and certainly don’t know what
the solution is—Mr Gibson’s suggestion
that people self-select based on what they
have a passion for, and where their capabilities lie, rather than being assigned to
jobs based on what managers feel is best
for them, seems to make sense.
GoldCorp.
In his speech, Mr. Gibson told the story of
Goldcorp, the Vancouver company that
found gold by publishing its information
on the Internet1.
Goldcorp had a 55,000 acre asset in
Red Lake, Ontario, and a $100M market
capitalization. The company was taking a
conventional ‘proprietary’ approach to
their data—drilling core holes, bringing
core data back to the office, analysing it
with a team of geologists, and then identifying prospects where they needed more
data. It would have taken them a couple of
years, or more, to determine where to engineer shafts to mine the gold.
Rob McEwen, the company’s new
CEO, had no background in mining. He
had, however, recently attended a conference and heard about how the computer
operating system Linux is created and
maintained by people collaborating and
self-selecting which projects they work on,
based on their interest and expertise.
Mr McEwen asked Goldcorp’s geophysicists to put their data on the web.
Goldcorp put up $575,000 in cash rewards
to people who could come up with good
prospects. Within weeks, more than 1,400
people were working to locate prospects
on the company’s 55,000 acres.
“That included ex-military people,
engineers, college professors, grad students, retired mining professionals, school
teachers. Anybody that could get on, they
signed up and attempted to solve this problem,” Mr Gibson said.
“People worked on it part-time; they
played with their grandchildren, they did a
“I think, in some ways, the more senior
someone is, in an organisation, you realize
that the only thing that matters is
performance.” - John Gibson, CEO of
Paradigm
little fishing, then they went in and prospected for Goldcorp over the Internet.”
As a result of implementing this
method of organization, McEwen had 110
prospects submitted that were not previously identified by his personnel. 50
turned out to be major producers for Goldcorp.
As a result of using this approach, the
corporation produced eight million additional ounces of gold, and the company’s
market capitalisation went from $100m to
$20bn.
But Mr Gibson points out that Mr
McEwen had to overcome cultural issues
in order to implement his plan.
“We often see our data as proprietary,” Mr Gibson said. “He broke through
there to say that the data is not what’s proprietary.
“I think, in some ways, the more senior someone is, in an organisation, you realize that the only thing that matters is performance.
“As an industry, we’re not defining
our companies in terms of performance,
but instead, and perhaps incorrectly, we
September /October 2008 - digital energy journal
3
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:03
Page 4
Vision for Energy
> Strategic consulting
> Seismic imaging
> Velocity analysis
> Structural interpretation
> Stratigraphic delineation
> Formation evaluation
> Reservoir modeling
> Pore pressure prediction
> Well planning and drilling
WHAT
YOU
SEE
IS
WHAT
YOU
GET
Vision is Certainty
Leading science, breakthrough innovation and exceptional people.
Providing customers with the intelligence to minimise risk and optimise
subsurface asset management. Paradigm. Unconflicted, unsurpassed.
www.pdgm.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:03
Page 5
Leader
are defining terms of intangible things like
proprietary data.”
Mr Gibson emphasises that what is
really important is how a company performs at producing properties efficiently
and effectively and getting the product to
market at the lowest possible cost.
“Thinking in terms of Goldcorp,” he
says, “[Does the oil and gas industry] have
the right models in place to deliver affordable energy that the world is demanding
today, or is there a different way of doing
it?”
Encyclopedias
Mr. Gibson also shared another story of
how collaborative innovation works in the
case of Wikipedia’s competition with Encyclopedia Britannica2.
At one point, said Mr Gibson, Encyclopedia Britannica was stating publicly
that it was better than Wikipedia.
A university decided to test this statement. They began by comparing articles,
and determined that there was only a four
to five percent difference in the quality of
the material. There had to be some other
dynamic differentiator, so they introduced
error into Wikipedia by inserting obscenities into a large number of Wikipedia articles, and in less than 90 seconds, all of the
obscenities had been removed.
“So now you’re Britannica, and
you’re trying to publish once a year, something that takes a dolly to move back and
forth to your home, and that’s the processes that you put in place and the legacy that
you have,” Mr Gibson said.
“Then you have a network of unpaid
people that have a passion and have selfselected to do this kind of work. So, within 90 seconds of you goofing up an article,
they’ve got it fixed because they have accountability for it.”
can only afford 2,000 researchers to increase the talent pool and deploy 20,000
researchers on a problem,” Gibson said.
When it comes to delivering the energy that the world is demanding today,
Gibson concluded, we need to ask, “Do we
have the right process and organizational
models in place? Is there a different way
of doing it?”
If the examples he referred to in his
speech are any indication, it’s clear that he
might know the answer.
InnoCentive
The final example of a collaborative problem-solving model that Mr. Gibson cited
is that of InnoCentive, an Eli Lilly spinoff
founded in 2001.
InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, and public sector and
non-profit organizations with a global network of more than 145,000 registered
“Solvers” from 175 countries.
”Seeker” organizations post challenges on the InnoCentive website, offering awards of between $5,000 and $1M for
a successful solution provided by a member of the Solver community3.
InnoCentive has categories for many
different disciplines, from medicine to
manufacturing to the oil and gas industry.
Thousands of problems are presently posted on its website.
“InnoCentive allows a company that
References
Wahl, Andrew: Most innovative CEO
2006: Rob McEwen, US Gold Corp.;
Canadian Business Magazine,
http://www.canadianbusiness
.com/innovation/article.jsp
?content=20061009_81416_814
16
1
Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony
D. (December 2006): Wikinomics:
How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything, Portfolio
2
Wikipedia: InnoCentive;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
/InnoCentive
3
Register to receive regular copies of
Digital Energy Journal
www.digitalenergyjournal.com
If you like Digital Energy Journal, you will
be pleased to hear that we offer free
subscriptions of our magazine as pdf or on
print, as well as a free bi-weekly e-mail news
service.
To register, please visit our website and type
in your email address in the box provided
(red arrow) and press ´go´.
September /October 2008 - digital energy journal
5
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:03
Page 6
Exploration and drilling
Intelligent wells – slashing the costs by
75 per cent
Red Spider Technology, a well technology company founded in Aberdeen in 2003, says it will be launching
a new intelligent well system which has the potential to cut 75 per cent off the cost of systems currently
on the market.
It will achieve these savings by removing
what the company feels is superfluous features provided on the intelligent well systems currently on the market, taking the
product to its bare bones and making installation simpler and quicker – a sort of plug
and play concept.
However it will still perform the most
important function of an intelligent well: the
ability to control the flow from different laterals into the main well bore, and to be powered and controlled from the surface.
Red Spider has managed to do this by
designing the equipment to have only the essential features. “We’ve taken out all the
bells and whistles and shrunk it down,” says
Gary Smith who heads up International Marketing and Technology at Red Spider. “This
can shave an enormous amount off the manufacturing cost.”
“You get feature creep as these tools
evolve,” he says. “We said, let’s take out all
the features which might only be required
once in ten years.”
Having a simpler product also means it
is much simpler and quicker to install, he
says.
Reducing the cost of intelligent well
technology should make it much more accessible.
Many oil companies have avoided installing intelligent well systems on some of
their wells, due to the high CAPEX cost,
which is driving them to think much more
carefully about whether they actually want
the systems. If the upfront cost is lower, the
eRED circuit board
6
decision will be easier to make.
“There are many wells producing 1001000 barrels a day –they can’t sustain the
capital expenditure associated with an intelligent well installation,” he says. “But they
could benefit from flow control. That’s
where we see there’s a sizeable market.”
“As soon as the equipment gets cheaper, people can start putting it in every well
that would benefit from it,” he says. “You
then get to a situation where reservoir and
completion engineers have to justify why
they wouldn’t put it in the well.”
As well as its cost effective intelligent
isolation and control valve called ‘Simplus’,
Red Spider will launch a higher end intelligent well offering equivalent to those currently on the market by other manufacturers
called ‘Optimus’.
Going wireless
Red Spider has started work to crack the nut
which nobody has managed to crack yet –
creating an intelligent well system which can
work wirelessly.
Having wireless intelligent wells would
be very attractive, because there would be,
in effect, no limit to the number of zones or
laterals that can be controlled and run from
a single well head; with hydraulic lines,
there is a firm limit, because of the number
that can fit through the well head. The lines
transmit hydraulic power to the flow control valves in order to open and close them.
Its first step along that road is the development of a valve called eRED which can
be set to open and shut, by applied pressure,
after a certain time, or when the pressure
around it reaches a certain level. eRED
draws power from a battery, and has an operating life of 3-6 months.
Red Spider is looking into utilising other technologies which would avoid the need
for a hydraulic lines such as batteries which
can charge themselves up by flowing liquids
over a turbine.
Sending wireless data communications
through a long well full of fluid is also not
easy.
“There’s high pressure and high temperature,” says Mr Smith. “You’ve got one
of the most hostile environments in the
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Accepting the 2008 Sir Ian Wood award for
innovation at the Grampian Award for
Business and Enterprise.
world.”
“You’ve got a well flowing which causes a lot of noise – it’s not like a wireless or
mobile phone when you’ve just got air and
ambient temperature to worry about,” he
says. “It’s pretty fraught with problems.”
“If you can communicate then ultimately, you could end up with flow control
valves that could receive instructions and
even think for themselves,” he says. “That’s
the direction we’re going in,” he says.
“We’ve got to go down that road – and see
where it takes us.”
The company
Red Spiders currently has 40 staff members,
including two people at an office in Dubai,
and 6 in Norway, the remainder at head office in Aberdeen. The staff include engineers, production, sales and assembly testing personnel.
“We’ve got big plans,” says Mr Smith.
“We see ourselves becoming a medium sized
player in 5 years, with 2, to 300 people.”
The company recently won the Sir Ian
Wood Award for Innovation at the Grampian
Business Awards, which are given every year
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:38
Page 7
Exploration and drilling
www.senergyltd.com
for small and medium sized companies in
Aberdeen district.
Red Spiders does not do any manufacturing in house; it is all subcontracted to other companies, mainly in Scotland.
“We’ve been in companies where
they’ve had in house manufacturing facilities, and it can become a beast that needs to
be fed,” he said. “It tends to become a business within a business and something where
the team have limited experience in running.
So we made a conscious decision not to go
down that route – leave it to the people who
are experts at it”.
Third party manufacturers can often
manufacture tools as fast as they can be
made in house, he says.
The company may start working with
local manufacturers near its Dubai and Stavanger offices as well.
The eRED
The company’s newest product to the market is eRED, a tool which, when installed,
creates a temporary plug to the downhole
flow (ie works like a downhole tap),and is
more easily operated than conventional technology such as prong and plug.
Engineers might want to temporarily
plug the well while equipment is installed,
tested or changed and the eRED helps them
do that efficiently by removing cost , time
and associated risk.
It was designed to be installed during
a completion or intervention process and removed at the end. However several operators now intend to use the device for liner
and completion deployment and the leave
the device in situ once it has completed its
purpose. The eRED is powered by a battery
which can last 3-6 months.
The conventional way of installing a
plug is to run the plug body first (with a hole
through the middle) in the one trip, and then
do a second trip to drop a prong (a vertical
metal bar with seals) through the middle of
the plug, to block flow through the tubing.
With the eRED, all of this can be done
in one trip; the device is run on the plug body
and deployed into the well. open or closed
The eRED can be programmed to open
and close after a specific time interval, or
when the pressure above or below it reaches
a certain point. You can also send it commands from the surface to open and close,
by adjusting the pressure of the fluid in the
tubing above it.
So, for example, it can be programmed
to open when the pressure applied above the
device has been between two pressure values for a certain amount of time.
The aim is to help companies cut back
on rig time. For example, a normal operation
Michael Christie with the eRED
to install a plug will take 6-12 hours, at rates
of as much as $400,000 per day these operations can become very expensive, and the
risk increases with the complexity of the job.
The tool has its own onboard computer, which can store well data such as time,
temperature and pressure, above and below
the seal. This data can be downloaded once
the unit is retrieved.
It has been tested in temperatures of 0125 degrees, differential pressure of up
to10,000 psi, and operating with sand and
debris packed above the seal
“Originally it was just going to be an
open and close device, but people said, can
you do this, can you do that,” says Mr Smith.
“We ended up with a dozen different applications that we never thought of and as a
consequence have made the tool multi open
and close to accommodate them.”
Tasks which might need a temporary
block to flow include installing a blow out
protector, setting a production packer, testing tubing, isolating zones for testing, firing
perforating guns, pressure testing a well before fracing, isolating and opening multilateral legs.
Red Spider sees eRED as a first step towards making devices for the well which can
receive commands to open and close from
the surface.
Red Spider aims to eventually integrate
the eRED with wireless and acoustic communications technologies, which can send a
command to the valve to open and close
from the surface, or upload the data.
We’re listening
Partnership based on a
close working relationship
Leading Oil & Gas consultancy,
Senergy, continues to grow
internationally as a diversified
energy services organisation.
With over 250 people, Senergy
brings an unrivalled breadth
and depth of expertise together
to meet the challenges of the
evolving energy sector.
Senergy understands that
you want to enhance the
productivity and performance
of your asset
We believe by integrating Senergy
know-how from subsurface
evaluation through marine site
survey to drilling and operations,
we can deliver optimum value
for our clients.
Please contact Kjetil Fagervik
Email: Kjetil.Fagervik@senergyltd.com
Tel: +47 51 50 65 00
senergyltd.com
results driven by Brainergy®
Oil and Gas Survey and GeoEngineering
Alternative Energy Technology Training
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:38
Page 8
Exploration and drilling news
Stingray fibre-optic monitoring goes
deepwater
www.stingraygeo.com
Stingray Geophysical will be conducting a
deepwater field test of its fibre-optic reservoir
monitoring solutions during the second half of
2008 jointly with Bergen Oilfield Services.
This is part of a project to commercialise
Stringray’s seabed fibre optic seismic reservoir monitoring system, sponsored by BP,
ConocoPhillips and StatoilHydro.
Schlumberger’s Carbonate Advisor’
analysis service
www.slb.com
Schlumberger has released a new ’Carbonate
Advisor’ analysis service, which provides a
systematic analytical framework to deliver a
comprehensive petrophysical evaluation of
carbonate rocks, including a petrophysics
analysis and a productivity analysis.
The system integrates information from
magnetic resonance and elemental capture
spectroscopy, logs and core data, to produce a
single, complete formation evaluation of carbonate reservoirs.
In field tests in a wide variety of carbonate reservoirs, relative permeability and water
saturation measurements from Carbonate Advisor matched discrete core analysis data.
These continuous measurements permitted a
more accurate prediction of fluid flow leading
to better production performance, said
Schlumberger.
exploration prospects.
IES employs 40 people, most of whom are
in Aachen, Germany. The Aachen location will
become a Schlumberger Center of Excellence
for Petroleum Systems Modeling.
IES expertise will be combined with WesternGeco and Schlumberger technology to give
customers a fully integrated exploration service.
The company said the combination of surface seismic data with Schlumberger measurement technologies, integrated with petroleum
systems modeling from IES and other risk management technologies, would lead to reduced
uncertainties and enable customers to better
manage their exploration risk.
Wavefield Inseis to conduct large 3D
seismic survey for BP Libya
www.wavefield-inseis.com
Wavefield Inseis has received a letter of interim
arrangement from BP Exploration Libya Ltd.
for one of the world's largest 3D seismic acquisition and onboard processing contracts ever to
be awarded.
The survey, which will take place in
Libya's offshore Sirt basin, will be acquired with
Wavefield's latest 3D vessel Geowave Endeavour and is expected to take approximately 1 year
to complete.
According to the company, the contract
will incorporate the industry's largest ever onboard processing project that includes SRME
(surface related multiple elimination) and full
Pre-Stack Time Migration.
Hess to use range of Schlumberger
software
Paradigm donates software to South
Korean University
Hess Corporation of New York has signed an
agreement with Schlumberger to use a range
of its geological, geophysical, reservoir engineering, economics, drilling, and production
software.
Hess will deploy GeoFrame reservoir
characterisation, Petrel seismic to simulation,
ECLIPSE reservoir simulation, Merak project
economics, and OFM and Drilling Office software.
The agreement includes data management services and enhanced application and
workflow support worldwide.
www.pdgm.com
Schlumberger acquires Integrated
Exploration Systems
Schlumberger has acquired Integrated Exploration Systems (IES), a supplier of petroleum
systems modeling software and services for the
exploration and production industry.
IES specialises in the modeling of the generation, migration and entrapment of oil and gas
using the industry-leading software PetroMod.
The technology is used to estimate undiscovered hydrocarbons in frontier basins and to
enable oil and gas companies to mitigate risk in
Paradigm SeisEarth Next Generation
Interpretation
Paradigm has donated its SeisEarth and GOCAD reservoir engineering and seismic interpretation applications to the department of geology at Kyungpook National University (KNU)
in South Korea.
The software will be installed on two
workstations within the department of geology,
giving students hands-on experience with Paradigm software.
SeisEarth is a multi-survey seismic interpretation solution for volume interpretation,
H111 08
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:38
Page 9
accuracy
“ We not only avoided
obstacles—we dramatically
increased reservoir contact.”
risk
Navigate the unknown
without missing a turn.
Our Drill-to-the-Earth Model SM workflow does more than help ensure
precise wellbore placement. It refines earth models to let you adjust well
paths in real time—and maximize reservoir exposure. Change the way you
work: Increase the accuracy of your wellbore placement and reduce the
risk of running into trouble areas.
From exploration to production, the Digital Asset™ environment’s integrated
workflows allow you to fully realize the highest asset performance possible.
For more information, go to www.halliburton.com/digitalasset.
Make decisions. Not compromises.™
© 2008 Halliburton. All rights reserved.
H111 08 DEJ i dd 1
8/14/08 4 06 34 PM
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:38
Page 10
Exploration and drilling news
reservoir characterisation, reservoir imaging and
well planning.
GOCAD is a solution for reservoir engineering and geologic and seismic interpretation.
Shell, Qatar Petroleum and Imperial
College research carbonate reservoirs
www.imperial.ac.uk
Shell, Qatar Science & Technology Park
(QSTP) and Imperial College London have announced plans to collaborate on research into
further understanding carbonate reservoirs,
which constitute the vast majority of hydrocarbon reservoirs across the Middle East, and CO2
storage.
Researchers will characterise carbonate
reservoirs in detail and develop computer modelling and simulations to establish an in-depth
knowledge of rock structures and the way fluids
like oil, water, and natural gas and CO2 move
within them.
This will improve understanding of how
these rocks trap gas and fluids. With this knowledge, researchers will be able to propose new
CO2 management plans and processes, and
identify suitable carbonate rock formations to
potentially store CO2 emitted from power stations, the group said.
The venture will be funded by Qatar Petroleum, the Qatar Science & Technology Park,
and Shell, who will contribute together up to
$70 million over a 10-year period.
The aim is to provide the foundation for
new CO2 storage technologies that can be applied in Qatar, elsewhere in the Middle East and
beyond.
Applications which have been updated include DecisionSpace, OpenWorks, PowerView,
GeoProbe, OpenWells, Nexus, and FieldPlan.
The R5000 release is the culmination of a
multi-year integration effort to bring all Landmark applications in all exploration and production disciplines to a common technology platform.
The release includes a new Software Development Kit (SDK) to help application vendors to create integration between products to
R5000 solutions and build custom workflows.
Paradigm releases Interpret 2008
www.pdgm.com
Oil and gas software company Paradigm has
launched a new software tool, Interpret
2008, for design and analysis of pressure
transients obtained from a variety of tests on
exploration, appraisal and production wells.
It includes new functionality for performing deconvolution for improved analysis clarity, and a new option for fitting gradients in multi-session Wireline Formation
Test (WFT) analysis.
The package also offers data compatibility with Paradigm Geolog formation evaluation software, enabling the sharing of field
and analytical data for improved model construction and deeper analysis of results.
Paradigm releases Geolog 6.7
Hess contract for Paradigm
www.ggs-spectrum.com
Hess Corporation has signed a multiyear contract for Paradigm software, training and onsite
consulting services for its exploration and production operations worldwide.
Paradigm will provide a its suite of geophysical and petrophysical applications for
workflows, ranging from seismic data processing, imaging and petrophysical analysis to standard and advanced geophysical subsurface data
interpretation and formation evaluation.
Paradigm will provide training, both onsite and from regional Paradigm support centers, as well as onsite application support to Hess
Corporation employees, and onsite consulting
services, such as data migration and workflow
best practices.
Landmark launches integrated product
release ’R5000’
www.halliburton.com/landmark
Landmark has made a synchronous software release, dubbed R5000, which includes upgrades
to more than 70 products spanning multiple disciplines within the E&P domain.
Geolog 6.7 well module showing new
coherency plot and cross-plot broken down
on a per facies basis
Paradigm has released Version 6.7 of its Geolog petrophysical analysis, well data management and geological interpretation software.
The new version focuses on four areas
of new development: support for the generalist and geologist, improved usability
through newly designed user interface and
workflows, creation of the foundation elements for 3D petrophysics and development
of additional tools and analysis techniques,
the company says.
It has a new module combiner that enables users to more easily build, execute,
record and play back workflows.
The software strengthens Paradigm Geolog's multilog analysis and rapid quality
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:38
Page 11
Exploration and drilling news
control (QC) capabilities with multiple
cross-plot and histogram views and composite coherency plots and spidergrams, which
are ideal for development fieldwork.
Additionally, Paradigm has extended
the current geosteering solution with 3D
model support and a refresh capability, allowing the drilling engineer to evaluate the
impact of real-time updates on the 3D model.
Landmark new AssetObserver version
www.halliburton.com/landmark
Landmark has released a new version of its
AssetObserver web-based data monitoring
and integration application, which allows
production experts to access and integrate
data from a range of sources and monitor
complete workflows and assets in real time.
The new version has been integrated
with the IncuityEMI platform, allowing it to
read, update and delete data from almost any
third-party or proprietary data source.
California-based Incuity Software is a
leading provider of business intelligence
software to the manufacturing industry.
AssetObserver is a component of Landmark’s DecisionSpace for Production suite,
a production solution that offers integrated
data access, data management, workflow
construction, visualisation, collaboration,
and real-time optimisation.
SMT sales manager
www.seismicmicro.com
SMT, a leading provider of PC-based geophysical and geological interpretation software, has appointed of Bill Stephenson as
Vice President of Sales, Americas. Mr
Stephenson was previously senior director
of sales at Symantec.
GeoMechanics launches 3D
geomechanics services
www.geomi.com
GeoMechanics International (GMI) has
launched a new service that provides 3D mechanical simulations of the stress field
around salt structures.
GeoMechanics says the service avoids
possibly unrealistic assumptions that are often used for wellbore stability analyses, such
as the vertical stress being a principal stress.
It is therefore capable of providing a far
more reliable prediction of safe mud weights
than a standard analysis, says GeoMechanics.
"Recent application of this service in
exploration wells in the Gulf of Mexico
showed that the prediction of the frac gradient was significantly improved and the salt
exit location could be optimised from a stability aspect," said the company.
ffA opens new London office
www.ffa.co.uk
ffA, a leading provider of 3D seismic analysis
software and services to the oil and gas industry, has established new office premises in central London.
The company says the new office will support its planned growth, help it to capitalise on
market opportunities and strengthen its coverage and support to clients world-wide.
The new office is located in central London, just off Trafalgar Square, and will be in full
operation from the 2nd June 2008.
Spectraseis extends collaboration with
StatoilHydro
www.spectraseis.com
Spectraseis, the Swiss-based low frequency
spectral analysis technology company, has
announced plans to extend its technical collaboration with StatoilHydro in the field of
low frequency (LF) passive seismic technology.
Spectraseis researches and applies technologies to acquire and analyze low frequency (<10 Hz) seismic background waves continuously present in the Earth's subsurface in
order to identify spectral attributes indicating the likely presence or absence of hydrocarbons within a survey area.
The collaboration will include the
analysis of passive seismic surveys.
StatoilHydro has also expressed interest in joining a newly formed Joint Industry
Project (JIP) established by Spectraseis and
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
(ETH Zurich).
The JIP has been set up to further advance the understanding of LF passive seismic technology for enhanced applications in
the detection of hydrocarbon reservoirs.
Spectraseis has
also
appointed Vassil
Bliznakov
as
Chief
Financial Officer.
Mr
Bliznakov
previously
worked for
Schlumberger,
where
he Spectraseis has appointed
Vassil Bliznakov as Chief
was
in
Financial Officer
charge of
the company's business in Continental Europe and part
of a management team responsible for a
budget of $400 million over 22 legal entities
in 32 countries, and 1100 employees.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 12
Exploration and drilling
Collaborative well planning
A recent conversation with Gary Schottle, drilling and completions director for Landmark, a product
service line of Halliburton, sheds light on how collaborative well planning can help clients efficiently
develop the most productive reservoirs in complex drilling environments such as Colorado’s Piceance
Basin.
Colorado, which is also home to large oilshale deposits, has one of the biggest accumulations of natural gas in North America.
Although exact amounts are almost impossible to gauge, the 6,000-square-mile
basin is thought to contain at least 200 to 300
trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Although reserves are enormous, the
Piceance Basin’s sandstone has low permeability and relatively small drainage area, increasing the complexity, difficulty and cost
of development projects in the area.
However, as hydraulic fracturing technology advances and oil and gas prices rise,
E&P companies are starting to develop the
more unconventional projects that were not
previously economically feasible.
Aside from the technical well planning
challenges, the Piceance Basin presents another distinct consideration – an incredibly
diverse and abundant wildlife population.
This requires operators to minimize
surface disturbance and environmental impacts by limiting the number of pads placed
in each field and by carefully selecting each
pad’s location.
Operations may also have to be restricted during certain times of the year to accommodate breeding or migration patterns.
Optimising field development
In this environment, prolonged well-planning cycles or well miscalculations can cost
operators millions of dollars. With limited
production intervals, forward-thinking operators are turning to collaborative well
planning to enhance production while reducing drilling, completions and operating
costs.
“In order to optimize production in the
basin, operators may need hundreds, even
thousands, of wells, many of which must be
directionally drilled from existing well pads
to minimize surface land disturbance,” Mr
Schottle explained.
“In our experience in the Piceance and
similar, complex basins, a more comprehensive approach to well planning – one that focuses on collaboration among the geoscience and engineering disciplines – allows
operators to quickly create and assess multiple development options and make proactive decisions during the planning phase,
12
rather than reactive decisions
after issues crop up, enabling
operators to avoid the ‘build
first and sort out the problems
later’ processes of the past.”
New well-planning technologies can go a long way to
improve proactive decisionmaking, but operators are
finding that the lack of qualified personnel is creating a
knowledge gap that considerably lengthens the learning
curve.
For those that do not
have the personnel resources
to plan and drill a large number of wells quickly, Landmark’s consultants can develop comprehensive plans based
on their extensive experience
in complex, unconventional
Landmark's AssetPlanner software, which can be used to
assets and their knowledge of look atmultiple planning scenarios quickly on a new well.
the company’s software.
“Success in the Piceance
Basin is predicated on impleTechnology and expertise
menting the right processes from the beginning. Our experience in similar, unconven- In the Piceance Basin, Mr Schottle has seen
tional assets has allowed us to develop a time and again how understaffed operators
number of proven methodologies to help op- struggle to plan large numbers of wells.
“In this industry, there is such a shorterators optimize field development,” Mr
age of experienced people, which limits our
Schottle said.
“Landmark’s consultants develop com- clients’ capacities to plan properly.
“Considering the volume of wells some
prehensive, technology-independent plans
that provide solutions to the issues operators of these operators are planning to drill, you
face and the problems they encounter work- can see how a poorly planned well can
quickly become a liability rather than an asing in such a complex drilling environment.
For example, we perform detailed sce- set,” he said.
“Many of the operators in the Basin are
nario analyses, identify pay zones, optimize
subsurface and surface facilities, overcome required to drill within a certain period of
challenges and reduce risk. It’s more than time to avoid losing their leases, or alternatejust the software, although our software is ly, they need to keep their rigs busy or risk
losing them to someone else.
state-of-the-art.”
“Landmark’s institutional knowledge,
Schottle has seen collaborative well
planning lead directly to more informed de- along with its deep understanding of the
cision-making because it leverages an entire technology operators are using, enables us
to provide end-to-end service by helping our
asset team’s expertise.
The approach enables team members to clients assimilate all relevant data, then plan
collaborate using integrated workflows to in a collaborative environment to come up
utilize multidisciplinary data and create safer with the optimal systematic approach to
well plans, reduce nonproductive time and solve these resource issues,” Mr Schottle
compress the field-development planning said.
Disparate data and multiple software
process.
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 13
Exploration and drilling
packages that don’t efficiently talk to each
other have long been issues for operators, but
Landmark’s DecisionSpace® infrastructure
enables operators to establish cohesive
workflows using Landmark products, operator-created applications and offerings from
other vendors in an integrated data environment.
The result can lead to improved development plans and, ultimately, increased operational efficiencies.
Insight to execution
Landmark’s well planning applications include AssetPlannerTM software, which looks
at multiple planning scenarios quickly;
TracPlannerTM directional well planning
technology, which fine-tunes processes such
as pad orientation and slot allocations; and
Engineer’s Data ModelTM project database
software which provides a platform for detailed operations and engineering workflows
to plan, drill and service wells.
Collaborative well planning software
provides 3-D visualization of the subsurface
environment in a system that can capture
and integrate numerous types of data, including seismic, logging, surface topography, and offset well data -- including nonproductive time and operations data -- then
quickly generate multiple development scenarios.
“We offer an integrated data model enabling all of the disparate disciplines to see
their information in the same 3-D visualization environment,” Mr Schottle said.
“Having access to that information in
one place is critical to communication, collaboration and the decision-making process.
“By applying a common well-planning
workflow, engineers and geoscientists better understand each other’s constraints and
how they affect well planning.”
With an unconventional and challenging environment like the Piceance Basin,
operators that take advantage of current
technology in conjunction with consulting
and infield services to help plan, manage
and execute their plays can expect operational and financial performances that surpass those who don’t.
“Halliburton Project Management utilizes its technology strengths, expertise and
infrastructure to take the notion of collaborative well planning a step further by providing differentiated infield services to our
clients.
“We can provide everything from wellsite supervision to integrated services to a
full range of oilfield management services
such as project planning, well construction
and execution, and coordination of procurement and logistics,” Mr Schottle said.
“There is an innate fusion between our
Consulting and Project Management groups
that allows them to work collaboratively
with each other and allows the operator to
realize both technical and financial goals.”
Rowing across the Indian Ocean
Michelle de Groot, daughter of dGB Earth Sciences president Paul de Groot, is looking for sponsorship for
a row across the Indian Ocean, to raise money for Aqua for All, which provides safe drinking water and
sanitation for the third world.
In April 2009, Michelle de Groot, daughter
of the president of Dutch geoscientific software company dGB Earth Sciences Paul de
Groot, is planning a charity row across the
Indian Ocean, which will take 70 to 80 days.
Ms de Groot (22 years old) will row
from West Australia to Mauritius, together
with partner Mark de Vries (27).
The money will be donated to Dutch
charity Aqua for All (www.aquaforall.nl),
which sponsors projects to provide safe
drinking water and sanitation for the third
world, using expertise from the Dutch water
industry.
Members of the charity recommending
council include Thony Ruys (ex-Vice President of the Board of Heineken) and Jacques
Schraven (ex-Chairman of the Confederation
of Netherlands Industry and Employers).
If you might be interested in providing
sponsorship, either through your company as
an individual, you can find out more on the
website www.roeienvoorwater.nl,
click on 'contact' and then send an e-mail using the form provided.
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
13
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 14
Exploration and drilling
Lowering the cost of high performance
computing
A new microchip from NVDIA promises to let you have high performance computing in your desktop PC
for under $10,000.
Imagine if high performance computing was
so cheap that you could have your own super powerful computer sitting on your desk,
rather than queue up your high performance
computing jobs in a data centre.
This is getting closer and closer, thanks
to a new microchip being released by Californian company NVIDIA.
For £4,000 / USD 8,000, you can install
four NVIDIA graphics processing units
(GPUs) in your desktop computer, which
gives you about 100 times more processing
power than would have been available in a
1990s mainframe computer, which would
have cost $80,000 to $100,000, according to
NVIDIA’s Andy Keane, general manager of
Tesla computing products.
You can even install them in your laptop (although it is 10 inches by 4 inches in
size, there is probably a limit to how many
you can fit in).
Some users are thinking about switching off their data centres, because people
have enough computing power on their
desks to do what they want now, Mr Keane
says. “The GPU is a room sized computer
in one chip.”
Many people in the oil and gas industry believe that if they had better access to
faster computers, they could probably find
more oil and gas, according to a recent Microsoft survey; but they haven’t been given
access to it, presumably because a decision
was made that the outcome would not justify the expense.
But if the expense reduces, then the decision to provide high performance computing gets much easier.
Steve Purves, technical director of ffA,
a company which provides high performance
seismic analysis software, observes that
there seems to be a psychological bar at
around $10,000 / £5,000 at many oil and gas
companies for a personal high performance
computer. If the price drops beyond that level, the decision to give someone their own
powerful computer seems to get much easier.
“Not everyone is going to get a
$100,000 computer,” says Mr Purves.
By having faster computers, you can
see your results straight away, rather than
create processing jobs, send them to a centre, and have a look at the results a few hours
14
later. You can create views of the subsurface
which you can walk around and look at from
different angles, rather than wait several
hours for the computer to draw a new view.
And besides, everybody knows what is
going to happen to the amount of data people have to deal with in coming years – it
will grow exponentially. That means we will
need faster and faster computers to deal with
it.
“Oil companies are trying to scale up
exploration – and this means processing
more data and generating more prospects,”
says Mr Purves. “That’s where software
tools come in.”
The amount of information continues
to increase, as resolution of surveys increase.
“Interpreters will need to find a way to deal
with it,” he says.
Mr Keane observes that big computing
centres have got bigger and faster over the
past few years, and mobile phone technology is also racing ahead, but technology for
the humble workstation has not moved so far
ahead.
Latest chips
The latest chip to be launched is the Tesla 10
series.
The Tesla T10P processor has 1.4 billion transistors, 1 teraflop of processing
power (double the speed of its previous chip,
the Tesla 8), and 240 processing cores.
It has 4 GB of memory (compared to
1.5 GB on the Tesla 8).
The standard computer package is 1
unit in size and contains 4 GPUs, so you get
4 teraflops altogether 16 GB of memory, and
960 cores. It uses just 700W. A single GPU
will use just 160 W.
The previous chip, the Tesla 8, was
launched in late 2006.
The chip has been widely used in many
different applications, including medical imaging, astrophysics, weather forecasting,
clothing design and finance. The US National Center of Atmospheric Research believes
it can halve the time taken to make a weather forecast using the chips.
It can perform many different tasks in
parallel, something that can’t be done on a
standard central processing unit (CPU) you
might find on your normal desktop.
You have to write code especially for
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
The NVDIA Graphics Processing Unit (GPU):
turns your laptop into a supercomputer
the chip, but it uses standard coding languages, such as C. “We stick to the language
standards everyone knows,” says Mr Keane.
It is possible to have a GPU and CPU
on the same computer, and then use them
separately – the GPU for special tasks, and
CPU for general running of the computer.
Big computing centres
If four GPUs in your desktop is not
enough and you want to build a computing
centre, you will get much more processing
for your dollar, and kilowatt, by using GPUs
than standard CPUs (as found in most PCs
and servers).
US financial consultancy Hanweck estimates that 12 GPUs would have equivalent
processing power to 600 CPUs, but take up
just 6 units of rack space (compared to 54).
The hardware would cost $42,000, instead
of $262,000, and have an annual cost of
$140k instead of $1.2m (calculated on a storage cost of $1,800 per unit per month, for
rack and power charges).
Using its 12 GPUs, Hanweck Associates regularly scans the entire US options
market in under 10 milliseconds, something
which would normally take 60 traditional 1
unit servers, the company believes.
If you want to build a 100 teraflop data
centre, you could do it with 1429 CPU
servers, each providing 0.07 teraflops, with
four teraflop CPUs in each one (at estimated
cost of $3.1m and power consumption of 571
Kw); or you could do it with 25 servers each
with 4 GPUs, providing 4 teraflops per server, with a total cost of $310,000, and total
power consumption of 27kW.
There is also a physical limit to how
fast you can get using CPUs, because the
time taken for all the communications be-
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 15
GET A FIRM GRIP
ON DATA ARCHIVING
You face challenges every
day but when you are
working with vast amounts
of geo-technical data those
challenges can take on a
new dimension.
It is your responsibility to ensure that a reliable,
secure data archiving solution is implemented
to protect your company’s data investment. The
good news is that’s just what Enigma has been
doing for over 15 years.
With global acceptance by the oil majors,
NOCs, independents and geophysical service
companies, Enigma Data Solutions can provide
data management software that is policy based,
allowing automated information retention
and disposal.
The key to our success is ensuring that the
solutions we provide are both project focussed
and aligned to your business processes and data
organisation. This philosophy applies equally to
archiving, backups and tiered storage.
See us at
EAGE Rome
2008
Stand 7043
Enigma Data Solutions Ltd.
2-7 Horsted Square Bellbrook Business Park Uckfield East Sussex TN22 1QG
Enigma Data Systems Inc.
16000 Barkers Point Lane Suite 202 Houston, Texas 77079
Put Enigma Data Solution’s vast E&P expertise
and experience at your disposal by calling
EMEA/AP +44 1825 745100,
Americas +1 281 497 0440 or
visiting www.enigmadata.com
www.enigmadata.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 16
Exploration and drilling
tween the chips weighs things down. With
GPUs you can get much faster.
Computer games
NVIDIA started life as a manufacturer of
chips for computer games – in 1995 it made
the graphics card for Sega Saturn gamepads.
Computer games and subsurface simulation have plenty of things in common.
Both create a simulation of the real
world; both generate images in 3D; and both
have plenty of real time interactivity.
Many geophysicists and geologists
have spotted that their children have more
powerful computers in their games consoles
than they do at work.
A lot of seismic modelling is still done
in 2D slices, to reduce the amount of computer power needed. “It’s that mainframe
mentality,” says Mr Purves.
ffA
ffA, which does 3D seismic analysis software, is working together with NVIDIA to
develop high performance computing capabilities for its seismic volume imaging and
3D visualization software SVI Pro.
Oil and gas customers include Hess,
Total, CGG / Veritas, Headwave, Accelerware, and Seismic City.
ffA believes that the computational performance will help improve its workflows
for seismic volume interpretation.
At ffA, the computer chips are being
used to put together 3D images, working
on data sets as
much as 200gb
at once.
ffA makes
software which
can
extract
faults and complex structures
in the data, so it
needs all the
data processing
it can get. It
works on the
post stack seismic data.
Using the
new chips, it A screenshot from ffA’s advanced seismic volume imaging and 3D
can provide re- visualisation software SVI Pro, which will use NVIDIA CUDA to deliver
al time process- enhanced performance
ing – in other words, the user can see the re- the chip is its scalability – you can start with
sults of what they are doing straight away, one, and then add more and more as your
rather than send the data to a processing cen- needs increase.
tre and wait a few hours. “We can get the reHe also likes the flexibility- software
sults in front of the user in real time,” says which runs on NVIDIA chips can also run
Mr Purves. “We want to hide the comput- on other chips. “We’ve always been cautious
ing.”
about locking ourselves into hardware,” he
Or, as NVIDIA’s Mr Keane says, “It’s says.
like the difference between looking at the
“We will develop for this quite aggresphoto and looking at a movie.”
sively over the next 18 months,” says Mr
ffA has been recommending that its Purves. “This computing capacity is a way
customers install NVIDIA chips for 5 years. to design software differently. It will change
Mr Purves says that what he likes most about the way you do your work,” he says.
Texas Instruments - new projector chip
Texas Instruments has launched a new projector chip, which can create much clearer and brighter
projections than others on the market, the company claims.
Texas Instruments has launched a new high
resolution projector chip – called WUXGA
with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 which is
higher than full HD, with its 'Digital Light
Processing (DLP) technology, which can
provide much clearer images in oil and gas
collaborative working centres, and also head
much less maintenance than other chips on
the market.
It should help companies create much
more appealing large displays, which are
more pleasant to look at, and which can convey more information, more clearly, and
which can combine many different images
and windows on the same screen.
The image is created inside the chip,
and then the hardware around it projects the
image onto a display.
The technology is capable of using up
16
to 6 colours, instead of the standard 3 colours
used on most of projectors - it has yellow,
cyan and magenta in addition to the normal
red green and blue.
"That lets us do more accurate and
more colourful image," says John Reder of
Texas Instruments. "This is an approach
many of the highest photo printers use."
The projector also has the best contrast
ratio, he says.
Another advantage is that projector
cooling system does not have any filter, and
so no filter cleaning is required; standard
projectors recommend that the filter is
cleaned every 100 hours of use, which can
be a hassle.
The projector avoids the need for filters
by sending the cooling air along a different
path. Light comes in at the top of the chip
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
and goes out of the top of the chip, so it can
be cooled from the bottom.
"With other display technologies, the
light passes through the chip, so you have to
blow air through the chip to cool it," he says.
WUXGA projectors based on DLP
technology available now are projection design F10 and projectiondesign F30.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 17
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:04
Page 18
Oil and gas production news
Halliburton acquires remaining shares
in WellDynamics
Test your data management maturity
with Paras
www.halliburton.com
Halliburton has reached an agreement with
Shell Technology Ventures Fund 1 B.V. to
acquire its 49 per cent interest in intelligent
well company WellDynamics.
This means that Halliburton, instead of
owning 51 per cent of WellDynamics, will
own the company outright.
WellDynamics has approximately 510
employees with principal offices in Houston,
Texas, and Aberdeen, U.K. Its SmartWell
technology has been deployed in over 300
wells worldwide.
WellDynamics has already combined
SmartWell with the WellSolver software developed by Halliburton’s software division
Landmark, which can be used for modeling
the reservoir. By using SmartWell and WellSolver together, you can model and optimise
the well continually.
www.paras-consulting.com
Invensys supplies equipment to
University in Kazakhstan
www.invensys.com
Automation company Invensys Process Systems (IPS) has agreed to provide equipment
to the Kazakh-British Technical University
in Kazakhstan, to help engineers learn how
to use automation equipment. It will fully
equip a technical laboratory to use InFusion,
its Enterprise Control System.
It will provide twelve personal computers, fifteen large-screen monitors and three
servers, as well as a bank of micro controllers for automated systems.
IPS has also agreed to fund a permanent Chair of Computing and Software at the
university.
IPS now has offices in both Almaty and
Atyrau, Kazakhstan, and its goal is to ensure
that by 2010, more than 80 percent of its employees in Kazakhstan will be Kazakh nationals.
LIOS Technology 5 Year Shell DTS
contract
www.lios-tech.com
LIOS Technology has secured a 5 year contract from Brunei Shell Petroleum the Far
East to supply its Distributed Temperature
Sensing (DTS) systems for downhole well
monitoring using fibre optics.
The contract was awarded after a 2 year
field evaluation period.
The technology can be used to continuously monitor temperature in the wells, enabling full coverage of complex and multilateral wells with a single optical fibre cable. The data can be sent from the well in
WITSML format, so it can integrate easily
with data collection and archiving systems.
18
UK oil and gas consultancy Paras has
launched a free online data management maturity assessment tool.
Users are presented with a series of
questions about how good their data management is. From the answers, Paras will tell
you how good your data management is
compared to the industry average, and which
areas you are particularly strong or weak at.
The tool is part of Paras’ new website,
which includes a range of case studies, papers and past presentations.
CriticalControl integrates gas
production databases
www.criticalcontrol.com
Canadian gas database company CriticalControl Solutions has announced plans to integrate together its three databases of gas
production information, ScanGas, Netflow
and ProTrend, into one database called
ProStream.
By the end of 2008, the ProStream
database will contain production data associated with more than 100,000 measurement
points making it the largest consolidation of
measurement data in Canada, the company
claims.
ScanGas is a measurement and analysis service used by gas producers to determine their gas production from gas wells
which are monitored using gas chart
recorders;
NetFlow is a web based measurement
and control application is used to track gas
production and manage electronic devices at
gas wells which are monitored using electronic flow measurement devices.
ProTrend is validation and analysis
service, is used to manage gas composition
data associated with gas wells and other
measurement points.
Merrick releases new eVIN version
www.merricksystems.com
Houston oil and gas technology company
Merrick Systems has launched a new version
of its field data capture system, eVIN 2008,
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
which is used for capturing daily well information on approximately 25% of the producing wells in the United States and 15%
worldwide.
Pocket PCs are used to capture field data with error checking, data validation and
graphing built in.
Using can link with any external database in the office in addition to the core tables associated with production accounting
systems.
eVIN allows field operators to compare
on a daily basis actual versus forecasted performance of a particular tank battery or gas
meter, validating the forecasting process and
allowing for adjustments in order to reach
production targets.
The new application, eVIN 2008, is
currently being deployed at Exco Resources
(XCO), a Dallas based independent oil and
gas production company with approximately
15,000 active wells in the United States.
Exco is using a combination of hand
held and Tough Book PCs running eVIN for
over 300 pumpers on a daily basis.
Absoft sets up oil and gas practice
www.absoft.co.uk
Aberdeen
SAP consultancy Absoft has established a
new business practice dedicated to the
North Sea
oil and gas Don Valentine, head of
Absoft’s new oil and gas
industry.
business practice
The
company
has always done a lot of work with the North
Sea oil and gas industry, but now it will serve
the industry with a dedicated team.
The head of oil and gas is Don Valentine, who has spent the last 10 years implementing SAP in the oil and gas industry.
As part of the move, the company has
set up a dedicated training facility at its
premises in Bridge of Don, Aberdeen.
StatoilHydro uses OSISoft in
‘Operation North’
www.amitec.no
StatoilHydro has agreed to use OSIsoft’s PI
information management system on its ‘Operation North’ area, which includes a number of fields in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea, 20 per cent of its total Norwegian
production.
PI will be installed and implemented in
conjunction with the production stop at
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:05
Page 19
If only it were this easy.
Optimizing North America’s energy future through new technologies,
innovative strategies and access to resources.
27th & 28th October, 2008 | Key Knowledge Workshops – Oct. 29
Hilton Americas, Houston, Texas
• Meet with solution providers to latest and most cutting edge technology
• obtain invaluable industry knowledge and gain competitor intelligence
• network with 130 Senior Executives
Sponsors Include:
Hon. Richard Neufeld
Minister of Energy,
Mines and
Petroleum Resources
Government of
British Columbia
Stephen R. Brand
SVP, Technology
ConocoPhillips
Randall Luthi
Director - Minerals
Management Service
U.S. Department
of the Interior
Steven B. Hinchman
EVP, Technology & Services
Marathon Oil
In Association with:
RESERVE YOUR SPOT, Call 416 214 1144 or book online at www.exproevent.com • Quote booking code E&P-3
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:05
Page 20
Oil and gas production news
Kristin/Tyrihans in September/ October this
year, followed by implementations at Åsgård
A, Åsgård B, Norne and Heidrun fields. The
contract has an option for two more fields,
and the frame agreement is valid for four
years with an option for a six year extension.
The data from all of the oilfields will
be handled by one large server, instead of
one server per asset, as in previous similar
implementations, in order to reduce the administrative burden.
The software was supplied by Amitec
of Norway.
The software can be used to gather,
store, structure, distribute and present the real-time information to the various applications and disciplines.
StatoilHydro will use the software to
increase collaboration between different disciplines offshore and onshore, through better use of real-time data and integrated operations.
Expro acquires CiDRA Corporation
www.exprogroup.com
Expro International Group has agreed to acquire the oil and gas metering business of
CiDRA Corporation, based in Connecticut,
for USD $60.5 million.
The new business will be called Expro
Meters, and will develop, manufacture and
sell a range of flow meters for the oil and gas
market, in addition to providing production
testing services on a rental basis.
The non-intrusive, clamp-on design of
the flow meters enables them to be deployed
on new or existing installations, and helps to
lower both the technical risks and operating
costs associated with flow measurement,
says the company.
Broadpoint appoints CapRock president as CEO
www.broadpointinc.com
Oil and gas communications company
Broadpoint has appointed Errol Olivier as its
new President and CEO, following his retirement from a 17-year career at satellite and
telecommunications provider, CapRock
Communications, where he served as president and COO.
At CapRock, Mr Olivier led the company’s return to private ownership, leading a
buyout from owner McLeodUSA. He went
on to grow the company’s revenues by more
than 400 percent in recent years, leading
business units operating in North America,
South America, Asia, Africa, and the United
Kingdom.
He also previously served as the vice
president of CapRock’s enterprise business
group, managing sales and marketing for all
of the company’s strategic markets. During
20
his tenure he pioneered the first successful
multi-tenant maritime satellite telecommunications business strategy in the Gulf of
Mexico and expanded it globally.
variety of expert interpretation software
packages, and to avoid being tied into software products from a single manufacturer,
says Moblize CEO Amit Mehta.
Schlumberger acquires exclusive
rights to BabelFish
Tundra licenses DO2 Technologies for einvoices
www.slb.com
Schlumberger has acquired exclusive distribution rights in the upstream oil and gas industry for the BabelFish production integration software from ISS Group, Australia.
BabelFish is a framework that enables
integration of diverse data from many different systems, such as production operation
systems, field equipment and management
applications.
The software displays the data in a useful way, to mirror the organisation’s operational environment. This means that production engineers and managers can monitor
and adjust operations systems.
The BabelFish tool works well together with Schlumberger’s Avocet production
data management, surveillance, analysis and
modeling solutions, the company says.
Tundra Oil & Gas Partnership (Tundra) has
signed a multi-year agreement to license solutions to automate and streamline its invoicing and accounts payable processes from
DO2 Technologies (DO2), a provider of electronic invoicing technology.
Tundra Oil & Gas Limited is a privately owned company based in Winnipeg, Canada, with oil production in Manitoba and
Saskatchewan.
Tundra selected DO2's electronic invoicing applications to automate its invoicing process and provide additional value in
the areas of automated price reconciliation
and early payment discounts, the company
said.
Tundra and DO2 will begin implementation of a broad suite of DO2's products that
provide functionality for not only electronic
invoicing, but also the management of paper
invoices (scanned invoices) within the electronic invoicing workflow, the management
of early payment discounts, and the reconciliation of invoices against contracted prices.
DO2's platform, OpenInvoice, automates the process of invoice generation, receipt, adjudication and approval, and streamlines traditional labor-intensive paper-based
workflow processes.
Tundra also licensed OpenInvoice EarlyPay, which integrates with OpenInvoice to
allow users to identify and manage invoices
that are subject to earlypayment terms.
Additionally, Tundra also licensed
OpenInvoice Pricebook, which automatically
compares contract terms to every line item
on incoming invoices to ensure proper pricing, and OpenInvoice Image, which manages
scanned paper invoices and fully electronic
invoices through the same workflow, providing a completely paper-free environment.
Moblize launches WITSML data server
www.moblize.com
Moblize, a Houston company specialising in
real time collaboration services for oil and
gas, has launched a new software solution for
collecting and managing data from oil and
gas wells, in standadrd formats such as
WITSML.
The software, called DARP (decision
and results with Peer), collects and stores real time and historic data in variety of formats
(like WITSML, WITS, LAS,Modbus, csv,
text, OPC) from multiple vendors.
The software runs on a special computer in a box unit, which can be located at a rig,
on producing wells or in the office. The software has an analysis tool to assess the quality of the data.
The data can be accessed using any
WITSML compliant data viewer or interpretation system whether at rig site or office location.
WITSML, which stands for Well Information Transfer Standard Mark-up Language, is an emerging standard format for
communicating real time well information
back to company offices and now being
adopted by BP, Statoil, Shell, Total and others.
Information which can be communicated by WITSML includes SCADA (automation) data; logging while drilling; measuring
while drilling; mud logging, and data from
field devices and maintenance systems.
By using this software, it should be easier to enhance interoperability between the
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Roxar completes four-year software
deal with StatoilHydro
Roxar has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for
a four-year global software contract for the
full suite of its reservoir modelling solution,
IRAP RMS, with StatoilHydro.
The contract, valued at approximately
US$5.9 million (NOK 30 million) per annum
is one of the largest ever contracts for Roxar's software division.
Roxar has previously held software
agreements both with Statoil and Hydro, and
the new contract represents an annual revenue increase for Roxar of about 10%.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:05
Page 21
Oil and gas production
Caesar Systems – helps you make
decisions
Houston software company Caesar Systems has software to help oil and gas exploration and production
companies solve their toughest challenge – good decision making
Houston company Caesar Systems has recently launched a new version of its Petroleum Ventures and Risk business simulation software (PetroVR), which helps staff
at oil and gas companies prepare analysis
for decision-making, integrating a wide
range of different input data, and involving all of the expertise in the company.
The Caesar Systems software is, the
company believes, different to other decision assistance software in the market, because of the integration of a wide range of
data inputs it can do.
For example, the Caesar Systems
software can crunch data about the subsurface, with data about the surface, such as
about facilities, drilling, tax, contracts,
deal terms, and also different possible
causes of downtime, catastrophic events.
Many Digital Energy Journal readers
will have seen software which helps make
relatively simple decisions using probabilistic analysis, or ‘what-ifs’ (ie – how
your yearly profits will change if the oil
price drops to $80).
Many companies restrict themselves
by modelling their businesses too narrowly, the company believes.
“A lot of the companies approach decision making from the perspective of having a lot of different parts and summing
them up,” says CEO Victor Koosh. “The
problem with that approach is you don’t
see the interdependencies between the
parts.”
“What we’re helping to do with the
software is structure that complexity – and
giving ways to visualise and inspect, so
people can find out and understand the options,” he says.
“We could have a reservoir engineer
talking to a facilities engineer, saying if we
use this different design, maybe our production can be lower, but our metrics are
going to be better,” he says. “So can we
spend the money in this particular way. By
doing this type of analysis – you are able
to increase your confidence.”
It can be used to plan specific fields,
or work out strategies for particular countries, or how to enter new businesses.
Users can plug in data from a range
of different areas, including the subsurface, surface infrastructure, and capital, or,
as the company puts it, the ‘entire opportunity lifecycle’. Using all of this different data, users can put together different
scenarios and compare them.
The system integrates with some other software packages including reservoir
simulators.
The first step of using the tool is to
decide which questions you want to answer.
The software will then help you put
together different scenarios, of possible
answers to the question, depending on
what happens to different variables. You
can get answers, such as the maximum capacity you can get, and what impact different constraints (e.g. a shortage of staff)
could lead to.
This will help you plan the system so
you maximize your flexibility.
The software does not necessarily
aim to come up with a single perfect answer; instead it aims to help provide information which people can use to understand
the situation better, and have more confidence in their understanding, which they
can then use in their decision -making.
The software is perhaps not the best
tool to use for a purely technical decision,
but most major decisions in the industry
come to taking a comprehensive view on
future financial / political / chance factors
(e.g. tax, costs, prices, weather, accidents,
political problems), as well as estimations
of likely production made on a fairly rudimental level.
Managing capital better
Many people believe that the oil and gas
industry could manage its capital much
more effectively; it just hasn’t had the
right tools and methods to do it.
“There’s been a huge pent up demand
for an integrated approach to understanding our business,” Mr. Koosh believes.
“The industry hasn’t been a centre of
excellence around capital management,”
he says. “We’ve been beaten up on return
Making software to help with decision
making - Victor H. Koosh, Chief Executive
Officer of Caesar Systems
on capital employed and other metrics associated with our investment profile.”
“As we are gearing up because of the
high energy demand – the pressures on understanding and creating the effectiveness
and efficiency are going to continue to increase.”
“The total capital spend is significantly increasingly.”
Company
Caesar Systems has grown from having ten
employees just 2 years ago to having 30
now. The company was also a finalist in
the Platts risk management award last
year. “We’re taking our business to a new
level,” says Mr. Koosh.
The software company was founded
in 1996 by a petroleum engineer named
Jerry Blinten, who was familiar with many
of the difficult decisions that people at oil
and gas companies have to make.
Mr Blinten had been involved in project evaluations around the world, including the Permian Basin, Gulf Coast, North
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
21
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:05
Page 22
Oil and gas production
Sea, West Africa, Gulf of Suez, Arabian
Gulf, and the former Soviet Union, working with Schlumberger and Amoco.
Mr. Blinten had become quite familiar with the risks associated with major
projects, and started developing a software
tool which could be used to automatically
analyse the risks, considering the most important exploration, engineering and financial uncertainties, to enable the evaluations to be made faster, better and more accurately.
After creating the first software tool,
called Petroleum Ventures and Risk
(PetroVR), the company went on to create
a range of different tools for petroleum
managers, geoscientists, engineers and
economists.
What he created is, in effect, not one
tool, but a range of different tools which
can be used to perform a wide range of different analysis.
Now, most of the world’s oil majors
are using the software, including
Anadarko, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron,
ConocoPhillips, Murphy Oil, Occidental
Oil & Gas, PDO, PFCEnergy, Pioneer Natural Resources, Shell, Sonatrach, Total and
TransMeridian.
It is currently helping two companies
allocate around $100bn of investment.
Consulting support
Caesar Systems does not pretend, as many
other software companies do, that its software is so simple you can take it out of the
box and it will immediately give you a big
range of useful data.
“There’s no question that we have to
educate our customers as to how to use the
tool set – it’s only as good as the use you
make of it,” he says.
The company has been recruiting a
number of specialist consultants, who can
work with customers and help them to get
the most out of the software – and this is
one of the fastest growing parts of the
business.
These consultants “are all top notch
E&P professionals who understand the
challenges of the industry- people who
have worked in O&G solving these problems and trying to come up with solutions.”
The consultants help train the customers “in how to use the tool set most effectively,” he says. “They work with them
to understand their problems and challenges – to help them come up with creative solutions.”
“It gives us the ability to then transform our client companies and implement
22
The "Monte Carlo on Scenarios" feature, new in PetroVR version 6.1, illustrates comparison of
probabilistic results from multiple scenarios, ensuring compatibility among the scenarios.
Graphical displays show probabilistic differences between scenarios that reveal the statistical
density.
the best practises that we’ve all been developing.
Version 6.1
The company launched version 6.1 of its
Petroleum Ventures and Risk business simulation software in February 2008, with a
number of new features.
The new version has functionality for
users to do Monte Carlo simulations on its
scenarios, so it can work out the probability of different outcomes.
There is a new ‘simple rig mode’ that
can do a quick ‘first pass’ assessment of a
rig scenario without complete definitions.
There is a way to display decision
trees, which show the path the decision
should make.
Improved communication
Many customers find that by using the
software they can improve internal communications.
There are often very complex decisions which need to be made in a project,
involving competing interests (such as increasing potential upside, decreasing risk,
decreasing spend).
The Caesar Systems software can display these complex choices as graphs
which people in the company can look at
together; this can be a much better way of
resolving conflicting interests than having
a meeting with the different parties, when
the person with the best personal commu-
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
nication skills often wins.
“We often have hundreds of users
with a given company,” he says. “You
have different people working on the different tools and they all come together. Or
you can have people from different places
using the same tool.”
Decisions often tend to come down to
complex trade-offs (for example over risk
and potential return), but using the software tools can make this much easier to
see clearly.
“You can choose to do many things –
whatever you choose to do has consequences – understanding how your choices impact the consequences is the key to
success.”
“You’re then able to put management
in place – to attempt to get the optimal, or
get as close as possible to your desired
outcome.”
“When you come up with the scenario
jointly – that’s a much more powerful
methodology – than individuals coming up
with the pieces,” he says.
Some companies build workflows
around the software, so a range of different people involved in a decision making
process are given specific tasks to complete, questions to answer, or information
to look at, and ‘gates’ which need to be got
past for the project to progress.
The Caesar Systems software can be
adapted to accommodate these workflows.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:05
Page 23
Digital
E&P
Digital Energy Journal
readers receive 15% off when
they register with code
13630.001XZ711PA
Gain a full perspective
from key major players:
November 17-19, 2008
Omni Houston Hotel, TX
Supermajors
www.digitaleandp.com
NOCs
Drive E&P performance by harnessing the power of
effective data, information & knowledge management
•
•
•
•
•
Adopt a holistic solution to data integration and systems interoperability
Enhance project visualization through a ‘single version of truth’
Generate value from your information management systems through standardized
work processes
Power your decision making ability through high performance computing
Narrow critical skill gap through knowledge capture and preservation
Integrated & Independents
Steve Fortune
CIO
BP
Jerome Beaudoin
VP & CIO
Devon Energy
Rajesh Kaul
VP IT
ONGC
Agustin Diz
Director of Information
Management
Repsol YPF
Luigi Salvador
VP Development &
Innovation in E&P
Eni S.p.A
Tore Hoff
Global Data Management
Advisor, StatoilHydro
Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil
Data Integration Focus Day:
November 17
Discover latest insights on how you can
achieve seamless data integration across silos
within your organization. This special Focus
Day will allow you to find the pieces that fit
for plug and play interoperability and a clear
battle strategy to overcome increasing data
overload. See page website for more
information on Data Integration Focus
Day.
CIO/CTO Think Tank: : Building E&P
Organizations Around Data Flow To Drive
Value From Digital Technologies
Are you a CIO, CTO or the head of E&P data and information? Then
get your high level questions answered here! Utilize this think-tank
session to help you make the most important decisions on E&P
digital technology for your organization. Register today and receive a
special invitation to the session facilitated by:
Don Paul
Invitation ONLY!
Former VP
Chevron. See pg. website for more details
Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only •
Sponsored by:
Companies Only • Oil Companies Only •
Oil Companies Only • Oil Companies Only •
Industry thought leaders giving you strategic insight into digital
strategies include:
“Without a doubt, this is one of the
most complete E&P information technology
events in the US in which you can learn
how to ride the digital technology wave for
long-term profits.”
– Albino Castro, Information Manager –
Production, BP GoM
Industry Associations
Parallel Case Studies
Organized by:
Register Today!
Call: 888-482-6012 or 646-200-7530 Fax: 646-200-7535
Email: digitalep@wbresearch.com Web: www.digitaleandp.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 24
Oil and gas production
Splitting up the allocations
Working out who should get what out of the returns on an oilfield can get very complex, when you have
lots of wells, lots of investors, and complexities such as gas being used for lift as well as being produced.
EnergySys has developed software which should make it easy to manage.
When you have one well and two owners
with a 50 per cent stake, it is relatively easy
to work out how much each one gets – you
just divide the profits by two.
But if there are more wells, more owners, stoppages to production, and lots more
complexity, for example gas being used to
provide lift to the oil production, as well as
being produced, then it rapidly gets too
complicated to work it all out manually. Further, there’s a need to keep all of the historical information and audit trails.
UK company EnergySys has launched
a new version of its software tool, ENERGYSYS 4, which aims to make it easy to
keep track of and report product ownership.
The software understands who owns
what percentage of each well, and also
knows how much each well is producing
every minute of the day, so it can calculate
how much money needs to be paid to investors.
You can get different views on the data, for example see how much production
there has been from one field incorporating
a number of different wells, or seeing how
much production should be allocated to individual investors on different days.
The software also has functionality to
work out how performance will change in
the future for different partners, based on
anticipated decline rates.
Put it on the web
The software is also available on the internet, so you can give your partners a login
and they can see at a glance how much product they’ve been allocated, and how the
amount has been calculated, to save you
having to explain it to them with long telephone calls.
You can give your partners rights to see
(and edit) whatever parts of the system you
want them to see.
The cost for this service is £500 per
user per month, including support and upgrades, with all of the software hosted online and full data backup.
Alternatively users can host the system
themselves; in which case, EnergySys will
provide an appliance with all software and
hardware ready set up, all they have to do is
switch it on and plug it into their network.
EnergySys offers to upgrade to all the
24
hardware every three years, and can also upgrade the software remotely if the customer
gives EnergySys permission.
Using it yourself
The software also has sophisticated reporting functions, which should be useful for the
company operating the field.
There are tools to put together a range
of different graphs. You can also set up regular reports to be sent to you by e-mail.
The software will also put together
standard documents for regulators, in exactly the right format.
The software can be used for other applications where oil flow needs to be divided between different partners.
It can also be used to play with ideas –
see how much money different partners
would get from a project, according to a certain proposal, with the production declining
at a certain rate.
It can be used for pipelines and tank
storage.
Customers
Companies that use EnergySys software include BG, Total, ExxonMobil, Atlantic LNG,
BTC and SCPC.
The biggest target market is people
who are trying to manage their allocations
and reporting using Excel, but it is getting
increasingly complicated to do. These people need good tools that support auditing
and versioning, but have previously not
been able to afford the cost of enterprise
systems. ENERGYSYS is designed to deliver all of the functionality they need at a
PC price.
Doing it faster
EnergySys recently built software for oil
company Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline,
which links Baku in Azerbaijan on the Black
Sea coast, with Ceyhan in Turkey.
The software application was used to
forecast and allocate how much product
each of the partners would get, who owned
the product in which parts of the pipeline,
and included tank farm management.
However if the latest version of the
software had been available, the job could
have been done much faster, says EnergySys
managing director Peter Black.
“Using ENERGYSYS 4, we reckon we
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Use Energysys 4 to keep track of the
production from different fields, and who the
revenue should be allocated to
could have done it in a tenth of the time, and
20-25 per cent of the cost,” he said.
Easy to set up
EnergySys has taken pains to ensure that the
software is as easy to set up as possible, with
a common complaint about rival software
packages being the complexity of setting
them up.
“People say the biggest challenge with
hydrocarbon accounting and production reporting is the cost, configurability, and time
to deploy,” said Peter Black, managing director of EnergySys.
“We've done a lot of work around configurability, so it’s faster, simpler and cheaper. We want to make it as easy as possible
to configure.
Companies can type in their business
rules in a spreadsheet and then upload them.
The software has a ‘personality’ layer,
with all the special customisations; this
means that the software can be updated
without affecting people’s settings.
The software has a sophisticated audit
tracking function on it; if anyone makes a
change, they have to fill in a form saying
why they made the change, and the software
records who made the change and when.
You can lock down data files from the
past, so people can’t change anything.
Daily production data can be input into the software from your company historian system, or you can upload the data as a
text file.
EnergySys does not offer services to
configure the software, but it does have partners it works with who can set it up for you.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 25
Book & Pay before 5th September and save up to £100
Oil & Gas Exchange
London 2008
18 – 19 November 2008 Thistle Marble Arch · London, UK
Leverage the full
potential of technology
for enhanced production in
the digital oilfield
•
•
•
•
•
For more f
ormatio
download tin
he conferennc,
e
brochure at:
www
.oilandgasuk
2008.com
PLUS, visit our
FREE dow
nlo
information re
lating to E&P ad centre for
(white papers
case studies, e
,
tc),
invitation, ple To request an
ase email
e
ExxonMobil
BP
nquire@iqpc
.co.uk
Eni
QUOTE: DEJL
ON
Google
CIO Council
Align people, process and technology to increase
Devon Energy
recovery across intelligent assets
OMV
Harness right-time decisions from real-time data to
Marathon
optimise production assets
Energistics
Improve operational efficiency within current
technologies and IS networks
StatoilHydro
Mitigate risk and maximise opportunities for E&P in
Barcelona
the unknown
Supercomputing
Forge industry collaboration to drive future value
Centre
creation
OpenSpirit
DONG
PIDX Europe
BG Group
Norwegian Petroleum
Directorate
IBS
www.oilandgasuk2008.com
CALL: +44 (0)20 7368 9300
or 0800 652 2363
FAX: +44 (0)207 368 9301
EMAIL: enquire@iqpc.co.uk
Presented
by:
Sponsors:
BOOK YOUR PLACE TODAY Visit: www.oilandgasuk2008.com
Call: +44 (0)207 368 9300 Quote: DEJLON
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 26
Oil and gas production
Jindal Drilling to use SpecTec’s
maintenance and purchasing software
Jindal Drilling of India has signed a contract with SpecTec Asia Pacific to install its AMOS maintenance
and purchasing software on two new jack-up drilling rigs being built at Keppel Yard in Singapore.
The rigs, currently being built at Keppel
FELS Singapore, will complete construction in early September, and will be chartered out to India’s Oil and Natural Gas
Company (ONGC), and operated offshore
Mumbai. $350m is being invested in
them.
Jindal has been running rigs since
1988, as part of an exclusive operating alliance with Noble Drilling Corporation of
the USA, but this is the first time it has
owned rigs itself.
SpecTec will supply its AMOS maintenance and purchasing software, and also
database construction, training and implementation. The software will also run on
Jindal’s office in Mumbai.
The software, originally designed for
use in the maritime industry, is designed
to work on low bandwidth data communications between the vessel and the office.
The maritime industry generally has
to make do with very low bandwidth data
communications (64 kbps is normal), and
the connections are not always on, they
connect for a few minutes every day.
This means that any software running
on both ship and shore has to be able to
manage without both sites being able to
continually access the same database.
Instead, parallel databases need to be
maintained on both ship and shore, with
updates sent as required between the two,
as highly compressed e-mail attachments.
Most customers on oil platforms
have become accustomed to always using
VSAT satellite communications, but even
so, as bandwidth gets tight and more people fight over it, the ability to run software
which does not need high bandwidth is
something oil companies are starting to
appreciate.
This is not the first project SpecTec
has done for the oil and gas industry; it also builds databases for a number of US
drilling rigs, and provides software for
Italian oil and gas contractor Saipem, as
well as providing software for FPSOs in
Asia and Europe.
Aniruddha Patnaik, senior drilling
26
AMOS project kick-off meeting. From right to left: Narayan Ramaswamy (deputy project
manager-operations with Jindal Drilling); P. Bhat (chief engineer, Jindal Drilling), P.V.George
(chief engineer, Jindal Drilling), V.K.Nagpaul (director and projects head jack-up rigs, Jindal
Drilling), Chinta Srinivasan (Project Manager, SpecTec), and P.B. Kumar (deputy project
manager-operations, Jindal Drilling).
engineer at Jindal Drilling, and project
manager for evaluation of the SpecTec
software, says that one of the main reasons he chose SpecTec was because of the
company´s reputation and because it knew
the software was proven.
“AMOS and SpecTec are well known
in the industry and I’m sure that we could
not be wrong in selecting AMOS,” he
says.
“We have high hopes that AMOS will
help to take Jindal to the next level in the
operation and management of our rigs”.
Implementation
The project kick-off took place on March
2008, with discussions between Jindal and
SpecTec about the maintenance and purchasing procedures and processes to be incorporated into the AMOS database.
The two companies also discussed
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
workflows, design and development of
customized purchase forms and templates,
building databases for the two rigs, delivery and commissioning of the software including AMOS Replication, and providing
training to both rigs and base office personnel.
SpecTec runs database building centres in Manila and Shanghai, where staff
create databases from the technical information supplied by the shipyard and
equipment suppliers (nearly always on paper).
A common mistake when implementing software is that people forget that the
quality of the database is often a lot more
important than the quality of the software.
The database is a much more critical factor in whether or not the customer gets the
value from the software that they are looking for.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 27
Oil and gas production
“The database is a total key for the
whole project,” says SpecTec’s project
manager Chinta Srinivasan.
SpecTec is putting effort into understanding Jindal’s workflows, “We need to
understand their current flow of work and
how their hierarchies are there, so we can
incorporate a similar flow in the system,”
he says.
The systems and databases should be
delivered to Jindal by August / September
2008.
Once the database has been made,
SpecTec will commission and install the
software. “There are a lot of intricacies –
making all the connections work,” he says.
Discussions are underway about connecting the software to Jindal’s financial
system, a Microsoft Navision ERP system.
The main reason Jindal chose
SpecTec, Mr Srinivasan says, is that it is
proven and very stable, with many customers using it, particularly in the maritime
industry.
Purchasing software
For purchasing, Jindal will be able to raise
requisitions on the rigs, and send data back
to the AMOS system in the office. The purchasing department will be able to examine them, approve them, and send requisitions out to the right vendors.
The expected delivery dates can be
automatically put in the system, so the rig
personnel know when to expect delivery.
Once the quotes come back from the
supplier, office staff can do a quick comparision of pricing and delivery terms, and
then an approval can be issued to the supplier.
The suppliers deliver the goods to a
transit warehouse in Mumbai, and from
there they can be put on the next boat going out to the rig. However they are not
counted as ‘received’ in the software until
they arrive on the rig.
Once the goods arrive onboard, the
staff on the rig let the computer system
know what has arrived, so staff on shore
can check it. There is no paper transferred
between the rig and the office.
Invoices can be sent by the supplier to
the shore office, and then issued for payment.
CSIRO uses microseismics to track
drilling
Researchers at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have
successfully tracked the location of a drill bit at 300m depth (984 ft) and 1200m (3900 ft) horizontal
distance from the drill site using microseismics.
www.csiro.au
The drilling was into a coal seam in
Queensland, to produce coal seam gas.
Coal seam drilling needs to be very precise, and it is not unusual for the drill bit
to miss the target, CSIRO says.
But by using geophones on the
earth's surface to pick up the sound waves
(seismic) created by the drill bit, calculations could be made of the drill bit's exact
location, enabling it to be steered more
precisely into the gas.
CSIRO believes that the technology
could be used in other exploration and
mining operations.
Minerals Down Under Microseismic
Team leader, Dr Xun Luo, said the drill
string and bit were navigated sub-horizontally towards the target gas production
well situated approximately 1200m from
the test drilling site.
Getting a usable signal to noise ratio
was a challenge, even with a number of
geophones being used.
"The seismic data was still rather
Tracking the location of a drillbit using microseismics
noisy and contaminated by periodic electrical noise signals," said Minerals Down
Under Microseismic Team leader, Dr Xun
Luo. “However, we applied a sophisticated filtering and cancelling algorithm wtih
the result that we could successfully iden-
tify the drill bit location and were able to
intercept the target borehole at the first attempt.”
The initial trial and future research is
being supported by one of the leading producers of coal seam gas in Australia.
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
27
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 28
Oil and gas production
Invensys - virtual reality simulators for plant
design and safety
Invensys is pioneering the use of simulators, combining human factors and virtual reality, for improved
safety, integrated operator training and as an aid in the design of oil and gas facilities.
Invensys has developed an integrated approach
to simulating a virtual plant which combines an
interactive 3D virtual environment with process
and control system simulators that mimic how
a real plant operates.
Wearing stereoscopic headgear, and using
a control device similar to the ‘Wii’ handheld
wand, an operator can move around the virtual
plant and interact with equipment.
This means that the plant can be tested out
before it is built, and scenarios for safety and
operator training purposes can be performed in
a safe environment in order to learn the best
way of dealing with events, expected or unexpected.
Integration with the DCS
Virtual simulators can be linked so that a team
of operators in the control and in the field can
work together to perform a task exactly as they
would in the real world.
Crucially, as the virtual simulation is
linked to Invensys Process Systems' DYNSIM
dynamic simulation tool, changes made in the
virtual environment will affect the running of
the plant in a realistic way.
Simulators for all major DCS (distributed
control system) and PLC (programmable logic
controller) systems are supported, including
Emerson DeltaV, Honeywell TDC and Yokogawa Centum.
For example, if an operator in the field
simulation closes a valve somewhere in the
plant, the control room simulator will show the
reduction in flow rate, pressure increase etc.
The control room staff can then interact
with the process control simulator to take some
action, or they can contact the operator to open
the valve again.
In a more complex scenario, teams can
train to respond to normal or abnormal events,
some of which would not be possible to simulate in real life, and the different plant behaviours and operator interactions can be better understood.
Situations can also be pushed further until
a disaster happens, and the sequence of events
that led up to it can be factored into the risk assessment.
“In practice, this means that all those abnormal situations that an operator feared and
never dared to test in reality can be tested and
that different plant behaviours and operator in28
Simulating plant design and operation - an operator can walk around the virtual plant and
interact with equipment such as control valves; the changes will be reflected in the control
room simulator.
teractions can be understood,” explained Maurizio Rovaglio from Invensys Process Systems.
be embedded within it, improving the entire
lifecycle of production plants and storage
sites,” said Mr Rovaglio.
Facilities design
The virtual environment is also a useful tool for
design; being able to experience the layout and
operation of a facility such as an oil platform
before it is built can lead to improvements in
efficiency.
It is a relatively simple process to create a
realistic virtual representation from the 3D design, with much of the procedure automated.
In just a few weeks, the virtual model can
be created with realistic textures and sounds as
the virtual operator moves about.
As operators perform common tasks in a
training scenario, it then becomes much easier
to spot where efficiency gains can be made.
For example, two valves that are often
used in conjunction may be sited a large distance away from each other; having to move
backwards and forwards in the virtual environment makes it clear that this would slow down
a procedure.
This experience can be fed back to the design team who can make changes if possible,
moving the two valves next to each other.
“As VE technology grows and develops, more and more process expertise will
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Design for safety
Recent studies have shown that more than 90%
of major accidents in high-risk sectors such as
chemical and petrochemical production can be
attributed to human error and poor training.
Invensys believes that it is necessary to
improve the way in which such plants are operated throughout the entire lifecycle.
“The strength of VE is that all aspects of
plant safety can now be tested and experimented with, not just for the sake of training, but to
help risk assessors better identify hazardous
scenarios and, above all, to ensure that decisionmakers make the right decisions at the right
time,” said Mr Rovaglio.
Vithualis
Invensys is the lead simulation technology
provider for an EU project called
VIRTHUALIS, which is focussed on combining human factors and virtual reality to improve
safety and operator training.
The VIRTHUALIS project is due to complete in May 2009.
www.virthualis.org
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 29
Oil and gas production
Offshore simulation - special feature
The Offshore Simulator Center in Ålesund, Norway has developed a non-proprietary simulator that
integrates bridge, deck and rig simulations to improve safety in offshore operations such as anchor
handling.
The Offshore Simulator Center (OSC) is
part of the Møre cluster, a group of offshore
companies including shipowners, ship designers, shipyards, equipment suppliers and
Ålesund University College that turned over
NOK 31 billion in 2006.
The cluster forms a tightknit community, taking a co-operative approach which it
believes will make it the world’s leading and
most innovative cluster, with a choice of the
best suppliers around.
The Norwegian government gave the
area the status of Norwegian Centre of Expertise Maritime, and it has ambitious plans
to expand, aiming to increase its turnover to
more than NOK 100 billion by 2016.
The OSC was founded by Rolls-Royce
Marine, Farstad Shipping, the Norwegian
Marine Technology Research Institute (Marintek) and Ålesund University College in
2004 and each organisation takes a 25%
stake.
The center was born out of problems
with safety and efficiency of operations that
several members of the Møre cluster were
having to deal with.
“Farstad was having accidents during
anchor handling operations where seamen
were injured,” said Øyvind Andersen, managing director of the OSC.
“Rolls Royce was concerned about its
winches breaking down, possibly because of
lack of training. It was having complaints
from customers.”
Simulator training was seen as an effective way to improve safety and test equipment in ‘real’ situations.
The OSC simulator was developed as a
non-proprietary system, with the core functionality available to anyone who wants to
buy it, although specific functionality is de-
The bridge operator station at the Offshore Simulator Center (OSC) in Ålesund, Norway. A
simulation of the deck of an offshore support vessel and a rig in light seas can be seen.
veloped on request and available only to the
customer.
The simulator is able to integrate the
various aspects of anchor handling operations, so that the bridge crew, deck crew, rig
winch and rig crane operators and ROV operators can work together in an unified training scenario.
“This means entire crews may thereby
be trained in a wide variety of incidents and
emergency situations and their performance
and commitment to safety improved,“ said
Mr Andersen.
The simulator realistically models ship
behaviour, from propulsion systems to stability and deck layout.
“One of the major challenges we had
was to get the physics right for equipment
on the deck so that the seamen felt like they
were really on a vessel and had good training possibilities,” said Mr Andersen.
Some of the features available are an
advanced weather system modelling different sea conditions, PSV (Platform Supply
Vessel) and subsea ROV (Remote Operated
Vehicle) under water operation capabilities
and a heavy lift crane simualtor.
Simulating manual or automatic hose
connection on a platform supply vessel.
Anchor handling simulation on the deck of
an offshore support vessel.
Simulating the deck stations with a realistic
joystick controller.
Farstad
Farstad recently announced a new NOK 30
million simulator centre in Perth, Australia,
which it will use to recruit and train crew for
its global operations.
Farstad was concerned about its safety
record, and wanted to reduce the number of
major incidents that caused loss of time and
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
29
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 30
Exploration and drilling
injuries in operations.
Human resources is one of Farstad’s
biggest challenges, and the simulator has
improved training, resulting in one of the
best safety records in the industry. This helps
to attract crew to the company.
Bourbon
Bourbon Offshore has an ambitious plan to
expand its fleet and double its workforce by
2010.
It needed a solution to standardise
training across its fleet and has two anchor
handling simulator training centres with the
OSC.
The first, in Marseille, France opened
in 2004 with a DP (dynamic positioning)
simulator accessible to all seafarers and shipbuilders.
This was then extended with the Bourbon-Hydro Offshore Oil Training Center
with a simulator for anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessels and helicopter landing
officer training.
Another identical centre will open later
this year in Manila in the Philippines.
Attracting quality officers is a problem
for all vessel operators with the current crew
shortages, and Bourbon sees the simulator as
a way to enhance its training and operational
safety therefore making it a more attractive
Anchor handling operations are some of the most dangerous at sea
employer.
Rolls Royce portable simulator
The OSC has also developed a PC-based
portable simulator for Rolls Royce which
can be used to train on its Safer Deck Operations (SDO) system.
The SDO uses rail mounted cranes that
can assist with heavy lifting during anchor
handling operations anywhere on deck,
while the operator stands safely out of the
way.
The simulator uses the same joystick
control unit as the real thing and realistically
simulates the movement of the cranes and
equipment on deck.
Since it is on the vessel, it is much easier for crew to find the time to train, and it is
often used as a video game, with crew competing to perform a task safely in the fastest
time.
The system was first installed on the
Olympic Octopus and has now been delivered to more than 20 vessels.
Kongsberg Offshore Simulators
Kongsberg has announced a new focus on offshore simulation and launched new anchor handling and
dynamic positioning simulators at Offshore Northern Seas 2008.
Kongsberg is a major supplier of dynamic
positioning systems, automation and surveillance systems, process automation, satellite
navigation and hydroacoustics.
“This gives us a valuable advantage for
development of maritime simulators,” says
Kongsberg.
The company believes its experience in
maritime electronics allows it to build more
accurate and realistic simulators, and to understand the needs of maritime training.
“The need for personnel training in the
offshore sector today is significant. Simulation for training, procedure and mission
planning and desicion support represent the
needs of the industry and are therefore integrated parts of the training.”
“Due to the escalating costs, many possible risks and difficult access to offshore
marine assets for “live” training with real
equipment in real environments, simulation
30
under realistic circumstances is a safer and
more cost-efficient training solution.”
Kongsberg’s simulator software is fully
scalable; it can be supplied as full mission
or part task trainers as well as desktop applications and web-enabled solutions.
“The flexibility of the system enables
self-study on or off training facilities, increases the quality and reduces the cost of
training.”
A comprehensive software library of
vessel models, propulsion plants, cargo systems, navigation instruments and application
specific functionality allows solutions to
meet a broad variety of teaching objectives.
Offshore simulation focus
Kongsberg has brought all its simulator experience together in a new Offshore Simulation Department.
The offshore simulation portfolio will
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Anchor handling operations at night in rough
seas - the Kongsberg simulator features more
realistic wave patterns and more detailed
graphics
offer a coherent simulation package to customers, with increased collaboration.
“We place real value on collaborating
with our customers. The implementation of
our Maritime Offshore Simulation strategy
will enable us to concentrate solely on the
often specialised training requirements of the
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:06
Page 31
Meeting the Energy Needs of a Growing World Economy
3-5 December 2008
Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Register Now
Host Organisation:
Sponsored by four leading industry societies
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 32
Oil and gas production
offshore industry,” says Lars Erik Hilsen,
Vice President, Simulation and Training,
Kongsberg Maritime.
New anchor handling simulator
Kongsberg has developed a new anchor handling simulator (AHS) which meets the
training needs of both the navigator and the
winch operator.
Kongsberg says it has achieved new
levels of realism with detailed object models
of vessels and equipment, more accurate
physical interaction equations and high resolution graphics.
The AHS uses a new ‘line’ model to
represent wires, ropes and chains more realistically and a new hydrodynamic model for
more accurate vessel stability calculations.
The graphical engine now includes reflections from objects and more realistic
wave patterns.
“For the anchor handling simulation we
have had a close cooperation with Maersk,
one of the biggest Anchor Handling companies in the world,” says Kongsberg Maritime’s Product Advisor, Geir Lilje.
“They have described possible scenarios with respect to big and small accidents,
which has helped us ensure that the simulator caters for every possible scenario and
eventuality.”
Kongsberg’s anchor handling simulator
features:
• Ship manoeuvring
The simulator instrumentation looks, functions and feels like the real equipment used in the
offshore industry. All relevant controls and functions are included making the simulation of
anchor handling operations highly realistic.
• Operation of different types of AH
equipment
• AH operations with offshore drilling
units and other anchored floaters
• Retrieve and run anchors using all
common types of equipment
• Find the optimal positions/designs of
handles and instruments
• Towing and accurate positioning of
semisubmeribles and jackups
• Deck operations and procedures
New Dynamic Positioning simulator
basic and advanced DP simulators.
“There is a clear and growing need for
high quality DP Operator training as errors
during DP operations often lead to expensive
downtime, or incidents resulting in damage,
pollution, injury or even fatalities,” comments Soren Einar Veierland, Business Manager, Offshore Simulation and Training,
Kongsberg Maritime.
The simulators provide training for
most types of DP vessels and configurations
including supply vessels, shuttle tankers,
drillship and semi-submersible platforms.
Kongsberg has also launched a new range of
Subscribe to Digital Energy
Journal - just £195 per year
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 33
;d[h]o?Gfh[i[dji
mmm$_gfY$Yec%ka%?9J
>c[dgbVi^dc8dbbjc^XVi^dch
IZX]cdad\n[dg:E
7YY[b[hWj[oekhZ[Y_i_edcWa_d]fheY[iiWdZ[d^WdY[Xki_d[iif[h\ehcWdY[
m_j^_cfhel[ZYecckd_YWj_edh[b_WX_b_joWdZi[Ykh_jo
Ild"YVnXdc[ZgZcXZ/'&hiÄ''cYDXidWZg'%%-™EdhiXdc[ZgZcXZldg`h]deh/'(gYDXidWZg'%%- =ZVg[gdbdjgeVcZa
d[hnhiZbhZmeZgih
KZcjZ/8V[‚GdnVa!AdcYdc!J@
M_h[b[ii
9ecckd_YWj_edi
9
ecckd_YW
YWj_edi CWdW][h
CWdW][
][h
IjWje_b>oZhe
Ij
I
Wje_b>
>oZhhe
>
_b>
?d\ehcWj_edI[hl_Y[i
?d\
ehcWj_edI[hl_Y[i
CWdW][h
CWdW][
][h
F[jhe#9WdWZW
F
[jhe#9
9WdWZW
9
7Yj_d]:_l_i_ed>[WZ
e\9ecckd_YWj_ed
7bA^W\`_@e_dj
;d^WdY[oekheh]Wd_iWj_edÊiYecckd_YWj_ediYWfWY_jo
Ef[hWj_edi
H[i[WhY^IY_[dj_ij#
m_j^Ykjj_d]#[Z][j[Y^debe]_YWbWffheWY^[i
9ecckd_YWj_ed
O?cfhel[oekhbeYWbWdZ]beXWbYedd[Yj_l_job_daiWnVcVanh^c\XjggZciigZcYhVcY Ioij[ci
i]Z^gediZci^VaWjh^cZhh^beVXidc_cfb[c[dj_d]<_Xh[WdZM?C7Nj[Y^debe]o I?DJ;<
9^_[\8ki_d[ii
O;d^WdY[YecfWdo#m_Z[Z[Y_i_edcWa_d]WnkZii^c\[jijgZ>Ihdaji^dch[dg
:[l[befc[djE\ÓY[h
>kWm[_J[Y^debe]_[i
hj^iVW^a^inVcYheZZYd[^ciZ\gVi^dc^cidZm^hi^c\^c[gVhigjXijgZ
IkffehjI[hl_Y[i
O?dj[]hWj[Yecckd_YWj_edij[Y^debe]oWnXdckZg\^c\ndjgkd^XZVcYYViV
CWdW][h
hnhiZbhi]gdj\]Le?F
IWkZ_7hWX_Wd9^[lhed
O9h[Wj[WheXkij?9Jd[jmehal^i]iZX]cdad\n]nWg^YhVcYZ[[ZXi^kZhnhiZbh
>[WZe\;F?JH_ia
^ciZ\gVi^dcidhjeedgibjai^eaZjhZghVcYiZX]cdad\^Zh
CWdW][c[dj
ECL
O;dikh[Yecckd_YWj_edYed\_Z[dj_Wb_joWdZZWjWi[Ykh_jol^i]egVXi^XVa
Ioij[ci;d]_d[[h_d]
higViZ\^Zh[dghnhiZbhgZh^a^ZcXZ
CWdW][hC;7
7f[hjeD[jmehai
hZ
Fbki"ZedÊjc_iij^[feij#Yed\[h[dY[mehai^efied() EYjeX[h
Fhe`[YjCWdW][h
;:IDehmWo
Mehai^ef70M_h[b[ii"()hZEYjeX[h0?cfhel[oekhmehafheY[ii[i
CWdW][h#7kjecWj_ed
Xo_djheZkY_d]m_h[b[iij[Y^debe]o^cidd[[h]dgZVcYdch]dgZ
:h_l[i:_l_i_ed
I_[c[di7I
d^a\VhegdXZhheaVcih
?d\ehcWj_ed
Mehai^ef80M?C7N"()hZEYjeX[h0D[jmehaX[jm[[dÔeWj_d]l[ii[bi
9ecckd_YWj_edi
WdZÓn[Z_dijWbbWj_edi_dj^[Dehj^I[WWh[WXoki_d]
CWdW][h
9DH?dj[hdWj_edWb
M?C7N?;;;.&($',
?d\ehcWj_ed
Hedchdgh/
BZY^VeVgicZgh/
9ecckd_YWj_edi
;D?If7
J[Y^d_YWbCWdW][h
] D[hWD[jmehai
D[h
WD
D[jmehai
a
=beXWb9edd[Yj_l_jo
=
beXWb9edd[Yj_l_joo
I[hl_Y[iCWha[j_d]
I[hl_Y
[ CWha[j_d]
[i
J^h[[[WiomWoijeXeeaoekhfbWY[0
J^h
h[
[[[WiomWoijeXeeaoekhfbWY[0
CWdW][
][h
CWdW][h
9Wbb0!**&(&-),./)&&
9Wbb0
!**&(&-)
),./)&&
I ^b cX[h
IY^bkcX[h][h
IY^bkc
X h]
][h
L_i_j0 mmm$_gfY$YYec%ka%?9J
L_i_j0mmm$_gfY$Yec%ka%?9J
;cW_b0[dgk_h[6_gfY$Ye$ka
;cW_b0
[dgk_hh[
[6__gfY$Ye$ka
EaZVhZfjdiZgZ[ZgZcXZcd#9:?%-l]ZcXdciVXi^c\jh#
Ea
ZVhZfjdiZ gZ[ZgZcXZ cd#9:
:?%- l]Zc XdciVXi^c\jh#
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 34
Oil and gas production
Making digital energy work
How should you set about making sure you new digital technology implementation works and gets
used? Houston change management consultants Dr Dutch Holland and Bob Bobst give their advice.
By Dr Dutch Holland and Bob Bobst from Holland & Davis of Houston.
Not only is digital energy’s potential huge, it is
coming of age and maturing.
However many management processes
needed for realising digital energy’s potential
are not as mature as the technologies.
Companies should re-focus on maturing
their key digital energy-related processes.
As digital energy gets increasingly “hotter,” and IT and R&D shops virtually overflow
with new project possibilities, saying “no” or
“not now” to the business user becomes more
difficult.
The solution is Portfolio Management as
a mature business concept.
Stages to make it work
While Project Management is a critical business discipline, other success factors must be
present internally before digital energy projects can be completed with the expected business results: value delivered on-time and onbudget.
Let’s examine each of the phases and factors.
First, an oil company needs a vision and
a supporting business strategy that acknowledges and commits to the importance of digital
energy innovation and provides a context for
digital energy innovation planning.
Without such a vision, innovation advocates will not have the credibility they need to
get good digital energy technology into play.
Second, tying in with No. 1, is that the
company needs a technology strategy which
supports the business strategy and vision and
provides a framework for prioritizing and selecting digital energy innovation projects. Although it’s common for companies to have an
IT strategy, they frequently do not have an
over-arching vision for what the technology
can do for the business.
Third, the company needs a methodology for collecting and screening digital energy
innovation ideas to harvest the best prospects
for future development. That includes having a
specific methodology for viewing the data,
looking both at new ideas and the potential
users.
Not only should there be a methodology
for identifying the technology for development, but the alternatives as well. Then, in the
context of the business vision, the company
must delineate operational advantages for each
new technology.
34
Fourth, the company must have a
methodology for ranking/prioritizing digital
energy innovation projects. The purpose is (a)
to provide a balance across the cost, risks and
rewards spectrum and (b) to incorporate consideration of resource availability (e.g., budget, personnel, facilities) for development and
implementation.
In this context, business users are the
“customers” and they need support to help
them understand what it is reasonable to want
or expect from new technology or what it is
possible to get.
Fifth, the company needs project selection criteria for innovation that ensure one of
two situations. One, business/asset customers
(i.e., users) are committed and ready to implement each successful digital energy innovation
project. Two, the potential for rapid acceptance of a new technology by asset managers is
substantial.
Regardless of a technology’s potential, it
cannot succeed without a user willing to put
forth a clear implementation plan. In terms of
time, people and money, what will be required?
And that “commitment to implement” must be
a critical determinant of whether or not the
project commences.
Sixth, for each digital energy innovation
project, the company must have formally identified and charged a Sponsor – or business Executive in Charge (EIC) -- who sets comprehensive objectives for the project, explaining
the project rationale and clearly establishing
both measures of success, and sensible constraints and boundary conditions.
The EIC should be on the asset side, representing the one who owns the incentive to
implement the digital energy innovation.
Meanwhile, the asset management concept has changed globally, from central ownership of all producing assets to today’s decentralization and motivation of regional asset
management.
However, instead of organized deployment of very expensive digital energy systems,
local asset managers are being given tacit permission to “adopt the digital energy innovation” or to “opt out” if they wish, resulting in
an uncertain value proposition as well as a
lengthy adoption cycle that extends over years.
Development phase
For openers, the company should vest account-
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
“Technology cannot succeed without a clear
implementation plan” - Dr Dutch Holland,
Holland & Davis
ability for each digital energy innovation project in a project manager.
This manager will lead the multi-functional team, establish plans, track progress,
costs and schedule and keep management in
each business unit informed of project status
through successful implementation.
That means all the way through technical
implementation and continuing until the new
technology is in day -to-day operation in the
asset - not “stopping early.”
Two, the company should utilize multifunctional teams (project management, asset
operations, IT development, IT maintenance,
et al) for managing and tracking digital energy innovation projects to ensure that all stakeholders provide input, participate in reviews
and understand/accept decisions made.
In particular, users and developers must
jointly understand such factors as: basic functionality and benefits, user interface requirements, hardware and operating system compatibility, and interfaces with other programs.
But, since there are likely to be multiple
user locations and because having numerous
Commitment Required
Business user “commitment to implement”
a digital energy application, as evidenced by
a written implementation plan, is an absolute threshold requirement for commencing a project.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 35
3rd Annual
Annual
Standards
Reception
Stan
ndardss Summit & R
eception
JJoin g
global
loba
bal upstr
upstream
eam oil and g
gas
as industr
industry
y leaders ffor
or a one
one-day
-day op
open
en forum.
for
o um.
D
ate:
Date:
TThursday,
hu
hursda
y, 23 O
ctoberr 2008
October
L
ocation: Intercontinental
Intercon
ntinental Hot
e , Houst
el
on, TTexas
exas USA
Location:
Hotel,
Houston,
Strategic
S
trategic S
Standa
Standardization
ardization M
Management
anagem
ment
Theme:
T
heme
e:
O
Optimizing
ptimizing Production,
p
Production,
t
Optimizing
Optimizing Competitiveness
Compettitiveness
Agenda:
A
gend
da:
„
„G
Global
lo l Perspective
lobal
Perspectiv
t ve of
o the State
State of the IIndustry
ndu
ustry
„Luncheon
hosted
by
Energistics
Board
Directors
„
Lun
ncheo
on host
ed b
ed
y Ener
En
gistics B
oard of D
irectors
„
„G
General
enera
al S
Session
ession
n mo
m
moderated
oderated b
by
yM
Mr.
r. Bill P
Pike
ik
ke of Har
Hart’s
t’s Energy
Energy Publishing
Publisshing
y Keynot
K
Keynote
e address
add
dressss by
by Stephen
Step
phen Munden,
Munden, Managing
Managing Director
Director of Businesss Keys
Keys Ltd.
Ltd.
„
„Net
Networking
working
gR
Reception
eception
e
Also
A
lso see Ener
Energistics
gistics a
at:
t:
GEO India
India – New
New Delhi
SPE - Denver
Denver
SPE Russia – M
oscow
Moscow
SEG - Las V
Vegas
egas
e
Petroleum
Petroleum Exhibition & Conference
Conffer
e ence
of M
Mexico
exico - Villahermosa
Villahermosa
a
IPTC
IPT
C - Kuala
Kuala Lumpur
Lumpur
Sponsors:
Spo
onsors:
FFor
or more
more details about Energistics
Enerrgistics and online registration,
registration
n, visit w
www.energistics.org
ww.energistics.org or
email Energistics
Energistics at
at membership@ener
m
membership@energistics.org
gistics.org or
o call +1.713.784.1880
© 2008,
20
008, Energistics.
Energistics. All
All rrights
ights rreserved.
ese
erved.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 36
Oil and gas production
users on the team is impractical, one person
with a good interpersonal network and high
credibility in the user community should represent user interests in general, not just his/her
own personal perspective.
Three, the company should utilize a
“stage and gate” process for managing and
tracking innovation projects. From a project
management point of view, is the project on
budget and on schedule and is the progress to
date sufficient to warrant moving on to the next
stage of development? From the business perspective, is the original innovation still pertinent or have the users’ needs and priorities
shifted and the intended value vanished? Thus,
does the digital energy project still make sense
and is everyone ready to move on?
This process on the one hand reduces revisions and recycles and ensures appropriate
progress. On the other hand, it expeditiously
kills projects that no longer deserve business
support.
Effective Gatekeepers are integral to the
success of stage and gate processes. There
should be at least two types of Gatekeepers:
technical and commercial.
They must establish clear expectations
for issues to be judged during the Gate Reviews (e.g., budget, schedule, technical viability, commercial viability, commitment to implement, user readiness, forward plan). And the
Gatekeepers must be held accountable for
making good decisions.
Implementation Stage
The Implementation Stage includes five aspects.
One is that the company’s top management should take two specific actions. They
should set clear usage expectations and state
“out loud” several times during project implementation that all affected managers and em-
ployees are expected to support and utilize the
digital energy innovation.
It is not necessary that all potential users
adopt the new digital energy innovation; however, it is necessary that sufficient users “sign
up” to be consistent with the original project
justification.
Two, an ongoing problem with digital innovations is that development people are working in a back room, not really visible. They
could be making progress but successes would
not be known to others as progress in building
a new platform or a plant that everyone sees.
The company needs to keep personnel informed about digital energy innovation projects that may affect their business/functional
units, their roles/duties and their interactions
with other units.
Three, the company needs to keep affected personnel informed about, and mobilized
around, a new innovation’s implementation
schedule including milestones, required training, support systems and deadlines.
Four, the company should insist that all
affected personnel participate in awareness,
system use, and work process training as relevant to their various roles, learning how to use
the new application and how to make money
with it
Five, the company should hold
business/functional unit managers accountable
for effective implementation and deployment
of new digital energy innovations and for delivering the benefits expected. Unfortunately
accountability for harvesting business results
from IT innovation projects is too frequently
not assigned to these managers the way it is for
a refinery technology innovation.
And, six, the company needs to measure
outcomes of digital energy innovation projects
in terms of both results and the effectiveness
of the portfolio/project management system it-
Sign up to our free e-mail newsletter at
www.digitalenergyjournal.com
Receive the latest
news and feature
articles in your inbox
every Monday
36
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
self. Again, the real test is whether or not the
innovation makes money -- a technical success
but a business failure?
Special considerations
There are three special considerations for digital energy.
One, when a new and exciting technology emerges, usually a flurry of project requests
and people appears. So, there must be an effective way to sort through these.
Two, there must be a clear implementation and deployment strategy that identifies
users and gets their commitment. It is particularly important in the Digital Oilfield (DOF)
that, as part of user project requests, the user
submits an implementation plan.
That plan should show management’s
commitment and allow gatekeepers to understand the resource impact. If not, that project
should receive a lower score than projects that
can.
Three, decide whether process or politics
will rule and proceed accordingly.
Call to action
Digital energy is exploding with promise, but
mature business processes like portfolio management are needed to leverage the huge opportunities. Otherwise, companies are left with
mushy projects that actually decrease business
results and limit careers.
Therefore, companies must invest now in
work processes for getting good business results with minimum employee exposure.
About the authors
Dutch Holland, PhD, & Bob Bobst are
with Houston-based Holland & Davis
www.hdinc.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 37
Energy IQ proudly brings back its 4th annual in Asia:
Data Management
& Governance 2008
Creating
ating a centralised information management platform for seamless data delivery, integration and access to knowledge
2-Day Conference: 26 – 27 August 2008 • Pre-Conference Day: 25 August 2008
Prince Hotel & Residence, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Oil & Gas operators are losing millions of dollars daily because of slow and
inaccurate information delivery, dealing with more than 80% unstructured
data and lack of internal knowledge transfer.
At Energy IQ’s 4th annual in Asia, gain expert insights on:
• Governance of information management while ensuring high levels of
data quality for accurate decision-making
•
Increasing end-user efficiency and accessibility to data through optimum
GIS and automatisation techniques
•
KM implementation techniques that enable smooth workflow, seamless
integration of information and knowledge retention
•
The future of data and knowledge management: Strategic focus on
creating operational centres, clear-cut strategies on data to oil & gas
applications and smart field management
Discussions led by our Chairperson:
Sahari A Aziz
Technical Support Team
Leader - Subsurface
CARIGALI HESS
Expert Speaker Faculty featuring:
• Chief Knowledge Officer E&P
ENI ITALY
• Technical Knowledge & Data
Management Head
MEDCO ENERGI
• Head of Data Management Services
TOTAL E&P INDONESIE
• Chief Geologist
TRANSWORLD EXPLORATION
• Director (Gas & Production)
DW GAS
• Data Management Analyst
CONOCOPHILLIPS
It was a good conference – some excellent presentations and the format/
balance was good. Well done and see you another time!
Subsurface Manager, CS MUTIARA
Data Management & Governance 2008 was developed in association
with an industry Advisory Board led by:
Radian Hartama, Chief Geologist, TRANSWORLD EXPLORATION
• Data Analyst
CHEVRON
• Operations Leader – Real Time
TALISMAN ENERGY
• Supervisor – AFK Unit
SAUDI ARAMCO
• Data Manager
SHELL AUSTRALIA
• General Manager- Reservoir Engineering
RASHID PETROLEUM
Tati Magdalena Sahea, Head of Data Management Services
TOTAL E&P INDONESIE
Chulatep, Senior Officer- Knowledge Management, PTTEP
• Editor
ASIA UNPLUGGED
Rosetti Olga, Data Analyst, CHEVRON
• Practice Director & Management Consultant
AVANADE
Adam Claxton, Group Data Administrator, ORIGIN ENERGY
Code: 12072.002
Researched & Developed by
To register or enquire for the conference
please fill in your details and fax it to +65 6720 3804
Name:
Job Title:
Company:
Media Partner
Address:
Telephone:
Fax:
Email:
T: +65 6722 9388 F: +65 6720 3804 E: enquiry@iqpc.com.sg W: www.dataknowledgemanagement.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:07
Page 38
Oil and gas production
PIDX – first Aberdeen
meeting
PIDX, the e-commerce committee of the American Petroleum
Institute, held its first meeting in Aberdeen on July 9th, with 50
participants including representatives of Chevron, ENI and Shell.
Is network
performance
and reliability
slowing your
productivity?
If your critical business operations
are bogged down or compatibility
issues have your information and
control systems at a crawl, we can
help you pick up the pace.
YR20 has been helping companies
quickly troubleshoot and diagnose
network and applications issues
since 2001. Our revolutionary
products and services are designed
to get to the root cause of your
network and application perform-
PIDX, which
stands for Petroleum Industry Data Exchange, was
formed to develop and promote the implementation
of electronic
standards for
the oil and
natural gas industry.
The
meeting
in- At the PIDX launch in Aberdeen: From left to right, Jean-Pierre Foehn,
cluded presen- Amalto Technologies; Kreg Anderson, Smith International; and Robert Cody,
tations
and Chevron Corporation
discussion
about electronic invoicing, implementa- number of invoices with very little human
tions of a ‘procurement to pay’ end to end intervention.
e-commerce system, internal change manA panel discussion with representaagement improving visibility of spending tives from Chevron, sparesFinder, ENI,
(ie knowing what you are spending), re- Shell and Hubwoo talked about how to get
ducing transaction costs, gaining greater the most benefit from e-commerce implepurchasing efficiency, expanding the use mentations.
of e-commerce, and using standard PIDX
“We invite all to attend our meetings
transactional documents.
or contact us,” said Chris Welsh, ChairChevron presented a case study about man of PIDX Europe and managing direchow it managed to handle an increased tor of Eirô Consulting. “
ance and reliability issues quickly
and expertly.
To learn more about our services,
visit our website at www.yr20.com
or call +1 (832) 225-1293 (U.S.),
+ 44 (0) 1224 355290 (U.K.).
1718 Fry Road
Suite 440
Houston, Texas 77084
Unit 16, James Gregory Centre
Aberdeen Science & Technology Park
Balgownie Drive
Aberdeen AB22 8GU
From left to right: Robert Cody, Chevron Corporation; Paul Mayer, sparesFinder Ltd; Terry
Thomas, Schlumberger; Cristina Lastaria, ENI; Ekaterina Mazanova, Shell International and
John Boardman, Hubwoo
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:08
Page 39
LIIILF
$VL
3
3D
$VLD3DFLILF
$V
$VLD3
$
VLD
VVL
LLD
D3D
3
3DF
DF
DF
FLLLIL
ILLF
LF
2EGIONALS0REMIER!NNUAL%VENTFOR$EEPWATER%0
$!0
OPENINGDOORSANDCLOSINGDEALS
FORYOUROFFSHOREBUSINESS
IN!SIA0ACIFICREGION
$EEPWATER!SIA0ACIFIC$!0BUILDINGON
&'0&¶VSURIRXQGHQHUJ\LQGXVWU\H[SHULHQFHVLQ&KLQDZRUOGZLGH
6WURQJLQWHUHVWLQGHHSZDWHUGHYHORSPHQWIURPRIIVKRUHSOD\HUV
0ERFORMONTHE.EW3TAGEWITH4ECHNICAL)NNOVATIONAND#OOPERATION
0
ER FOR
O MONTHE.EW3TAGEWITH4ECHNIC
E
AL)NNOVATIO
ONAND#OOPERATION
N
%FFQXBUFS
%
FFQXB
XB
BU
BU
UFS
FS
"TJB1BDJGJD
"
TJB
B 1BDJGJD
B1
D THTH3EPTEMBER7ESTIN'UANGZHOU#HINA
THTH3
EPTEMBER
ER 7ESTIN'UANGZHOU #HINA
H
+EEN
EENINSIGH
NSIGHT
T WILL
ILLBE
B E FO
OCUSED
CUSED ON
#OOPERATION AND #OMPETITIO
#OOPERATIONAND#OMPETITIONBETWEEN./#S
ON BETWEEN ./#S
)/#S
)/#S
2
EGIONALOPTIMALPATH FORDE
O EEPWATER DEVEL
2EGIONALOPTIMALPATHFORDEEPWATERDEVEL
OPMEN
OPMENTT
2
OLEOFSERVICESCOMPANIES
2OLEOFSERVICESCOMPANIES
0
ROSPECTOFMARINEANDSHIP
PPINGINDUSTRY
0ROSPECTOFMARINEANDSHIPPINGINDUSTRY
2
ISKMANAGEMENTANDHEDG
GINGSTRATEGY
2ISKMANAGEMENTANDHEDGINGSTRATEGY
2UJDQL]HGE\
2UJDQL]
HGE\
(QGRUVH
(QGRUVHGE\
HGE\
0HGLD3DUWQHUV
0HGLD3
DUWQHUV
"OOKING(OTLINE
"
OOKING(
(OTLINE
)RUIXUWKHULQIRUPD
)RUIXUWKHULQIRUPDWLRQ
DWLRQ
SOHDVHYLVLW
HYHQW ZHEVLWH
Z
SOHDVHYLVLWHYHQWZHEVLWH
ZZZ
GHHSZDWHUDSFRP
ZZZGHHSZDWHUDSFRP
RU
&'0&¶VKRPHSDJHDW
RU&'0&¶VKRPHSDJHDW
ZZZ
FKLQDGHFLVLRQPDNHUVFRP
ZZZFKLQDGHFLVLRQPDNHUVFRP
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:09
Page 40
Oil and gas production
Tuning E&P companies like a process
manufacturing plant
Can you imagine your oil and gas company being as finely tuned as a process plant (e.g. refinery, chemical
etc.), with all inputs finely optimized, all operations continuously monitored, and an output which is
predictable, stable, safe and profitable?
Many readers might think that their oil and
gas company is fairly well optimised.
But many other readers will have had
experience of morale shattering inefficiency
at their oil and gas company.
You know the kind of thing – headquarters taking months to make simple decisions,
good opportunities not being taken up because of the difficulty in making decisions,
and unexpected edicts being issued from
head office saying that the company must
change its operations to meet a new target.
But if oil and gas companies used a
software simulation approach to model their
business similar to the way process simulators are used to model chemical plants, software company 3esi believes, they could tune
and optimise their operations in a similar
way.
Management would always have really
good information about what is going on, so
they can make fast decisions, and carry them
out smoothly, and never miss any opportunity due to poor decision making processes.
And what if some of the people who developed simulators for process manufacturing plants also developed business simulators for oil and gas?
With 3esi, this is exactly what has happened.
The CEO of 3esi, Wayne Sim, cofounded the company which made the most
widely used software for simulating and tuning process manufacturing plants, called
Hyprotech, in 1979.
Hyprotech grew to become the 10th
largest software company in Canada in terms
of revenue, and the biggest in terms of profit. Its Hysys software is “used by just about
every chemical engineer in the world, and is
on the curriculums of 7,000 universities,”
Mr. Sim says. Hyprotech was sold to Aspen
Technology in 2002.
Chemical plants and refineries use sophisticated software to build a simulation of
the plant and the business, which can than
be used to optimize everything, and inform
operators and managers if something is
straying from the optimum parameters, so it
can be adjusted.
The input variables for a process plant
are capital (capital costs / operating costs);
40
execution capacity (the plant you already
have, the people you have); resources
(equipment, feedstock, energy, water, catalyst, spare parts, maintenance); constraints
(land, feedstock, plant capacity, inventory
costs, product and feedstock prices, regulation), and output (product, safety, predictability).
Similarly, the input variables for exploration and production are capital (capital
costs and operating costs); reserves (the oil
and gas you have access to), your execution
capacity, resources (staff, equipment, energy); constraints (limited helicopters, bed
space on platforms, gas lift capacity, regulatory, politics etc.) and output (production,
safety, predictability).
The primary goal in either business is
to maximize capital efficiency (return on
capital employed) given fixed execution capacity, fixed resources and time within an
environment of constantly changing constraints.
Fine-tuning an exploration and production company can be a lot more complex
than fine-tuning a chemical plant. “It’s a lot
easier to convince a plant to do something
than convince a person,” Mr Sim jokes.
But oil and gas companies should probably be thinking more about ways to be better organised and co-coordinated.
In past, having a successful oil and gas
company might have depended more than
anything on picking the right spot to drill,
and having the right relationships with local
politicians.
But in today’s more complex business
environment, success is more likely to come
from optimising your allocation of capital
and resources, to get output which is stable
and predictable, staff which are happy, and
an operation which keeps clear of constraints.
Getting a clear picture
Some of the biggest problems oil and gas
companies experience is getting the right information so they can make decisions, and
then carrying those decisions out.
To quote an unnamed oil executive
from Western Canada, “A forecast update in
our industry is like counting children in a
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Can you use software to 'tune' an oil and gas
company, the same way as you 'tune' a
petrochemicals plant? 3esi CEO Wayne Sim
thinks you can
playground – they move so quickly that it
makes the task almost impossible.”
Typically, says 3esi’s CEO Wayne Sim,
companies do their planning using spreadsheets exported out of the main software
packages used by different departments (for
example, the accounting software, reservoir
engineering software, and production management software).
They then link these spreadsheets together in a complex way, to get an overall
view of the business.
The whole system is “high maintenance, unscaleable and unwieldy – a brittle
inconsistent solution,” he says.
It gets more complex when the head office is setting targets and trying to get its assets to meet them, as the focus goes from
(say) reducing costs to improving production.
Individual asset managers are expected
to manage their portfolio against these continually changing targets set by head office,
and people at head office are expected to report to senior management about how on
track the company is.
Meanwhile, reserves decline at different rates than expected, there are rig scheduling problems, staff shortages, political
problems, terrorist attacks, and price
changes; and decisions need to be made
quickly. How can a company possibly keep
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:09
Page 41
VISIT OUR WEBSITE:
www.jacobfleming.com
Emergency Planning and Business
Continuity Management
Understanding and acknowledging the risks, and ensuring exceptional
continuity management and preparedness in the Oil and Gas industry.
2nd – 3rd October 2008, Barcelona
There are always schemes to prevent an accident or disaster
but not all can be avoided; such as terrorism, natural disasters
and pandemics. Whilst the challenges to the industry
are evolving, the basic strategies in place remain robust:
Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Management
(BCM).Emergency planning allows for the industry to consider
worst-case scenarios whilst effective BCM can pinpoint the
key products and services and the potential threats to these.
In this strategic business meeting and through its expert
speaker panel, the best strategies and most current issues will
be addressed and much more.
NETWORK WITH
THE INDUSTRY’S EXPERTS:
Rompetrol, Shell Nigeria, Saudi Aramco Mobil
Refinery (SAMREF), Agip KCO Kazakhstan,
Chevron Nigeria, OMV, Marathon, Oil, Agip
KCO UK, Total Nigeria, Conocophillips and
others…
KEY TOPICS:
BCM and Security
Oil Spill Response
Worst-Case Scenarios
The future of BCM
Identifying Risks
Ensuring Preparedness and Employee Awareness
Surviving a Pandemic Outbreak
For more information contact: orla.mcdonagh@jacobfleming.com, Tel: + 34 934 53 63 45
or visit our website www.jacobfleming.com
Co-Sponsor:
Media Partners:
the
energy
info.com
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:10
Page 42
Oil and gas production
an accurate real time picture of where it is,
just using spreadsheets?
The problem is not getting access to the
data, but finding ways to rationalise and understand the data and converting it into information to support the decision making
process. “That’s where I think they need
help,” says Mr Sim.
If the company has a computer model
with a clear and accurate understanding of
where the company is, it is easier to find the
answer to questions.
For example, should companies reserve
(and commit to) a rig 12 months before they
need it, and get a better rate when they are
not 100 per cent sure they are going to need
it? Or should they try to find a rig 3 months
before they need it, when they are sure they
will need it, but there might not be one available, and if there is one available, will they
have to pay through the nose for it?
Or, if a rig is delayed, what impact will
that have on the rest of the business, and how
well is the company using its available resources?
ny, how that would impact their reserves,
capex / opex, production, and if there would
be constraints from availability of other resources (e.g. rigs, helicopters or staff).
Then they can manage and prioritise
their different projects, seeing them ranked
in terms of various key performance indicators, such as f&d, capital efficiency, cash
flow, capital costs, operating costs, and risk.
The software can handle all of the revisions and changes which need to be made to
the models, showing how they affect the
overall required capital expenditure and operating cost profiles, as well as its reserves
and production rate.
The planning tools use probabilities –
you can estimate a probability of a certain
event occurring, and the software will calculate the probability of different output events
occurring.
.The complexity is in making the integrations between different software packages, and putting together workflow tools
which take people through the different steps
they need to make; and of course, persuading people to buy the software and to use it.
esi.manage
3esi’s flagship software tool is called
esi.manage, which builds a computer model
of everything which is going on in the company, capital, operating costs, production, reserves and resources, which people can use
to make business decisions.
esi.manage integrates with the software
tools which people in different departments
/ disciplines use in their daily jobs (e.g. SAP
for accounting, AFE systems, production accounting systems, field data capture systems,
procurement software and so on).
But instead of outputting the data in
spreadsheets, all of these software packages
integrate with 3esi’s software, which puts together the business simulation model.
esi.manage has different tools which
work with the same model to enable people
from various departments to work with the
data including modules for inventory management, planning, budgeting, program
management, forecasting and reserves management.
So, for example, users can see their
budget for 1 month, 1 quarter, 1year plan, 2
years, and 5 years. They can see how much
capital expenditure they have made, and
what their regular operating expenditures
are.
They can see immediately what impact
different changes will have on their future
production profile as well as operating and
capital costs.
They can also see what impact different options would have on their targets, for
example, if they acquired a certain compa42
Benefits
The benefits of all of this is that the company can plan better – this leads to improvements in all areas of the business – job satisfaction, safety, environmental performance
and of course profitability.
You can easily see how changes, or potential changes, will impact on your most important key performance indicators: production, reserves, capex and opex. You can also
get a much better understanding of your risk
position.
Users can find the data they need to
make crucial decisions much faster, and their
time (as a company resource) can be much
better managed.
And of course, the more information
that is captured in standard formats in the
software, the less headache it is when people leave the company, because more of their
knowledge stays behind.
of different assets around the world; with
production of between 60,000 and 230,000
barrels per day and presently 3esi is in conversations with them to deploy it within
many more of their asset teams.
3esi has close to 40 employees at this
moment with offices in North America, Europe and Latin America. Mr. Sim expects the
company to be cash flow positive this year,
just three years after it was founded.
So far, Mr. Sim says that the company
has never lost a sale, on the basis that it has
been competing against another software
company, and the other company has won
the business.
In fact, the biggest competitor the company has is Excel – companies who are addicted to their spreadsheets and don’t realise
how much easier things could be.
Sales process
3esi’s sales process is to try to find the person in the company who has the headache of
gathering together all the different spreadsheets.
“Typically if you sell to the right person, the person with the pain, it’s a one meeting sale,” says Mr Sim. “They say I want
this. We have very few problems when we
talk to the right person.”
Sometimes, people understand the value proposition of the software so readily;
they don’t feel the need to calculate the return on investment.
“I went to one company and talked to a
CFO and VP of Operations, I said how will
you know the value you got out of it,” he
said. “They replied, they can see the value
clearly, they don’t need to quantify it.”
The software does not need to be implemented for the whole company all in one
go; it can be implemented asset by asset.
3esi conducts workshops with staff, to
explain what the software does, and the benefits of it, and how to use it, so they will start
using it more readily – this is the change
management process.
Who uses the software?
Success to date
3esi serves customers around the world, and
its software is used to manage numerous different assets. Customers include ENI (Italy),
Enerplus (Canada), Addax Petroleum (Nigeria), RWE (Germany), Wintershall (Germany), Continental Resources (USA) and
Repsol (Spain) and another super-major.
As an example, Calgary oil and gas
company Delphi Energy Corp uses it to select which projects it wants to pursue, with
an aim of selecting around 50 projects from
a choice of 150.
ENI is using the software at a number
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
3esi envisages that the software will be used
continually for people who have to plan and
run the business, making decisions and allocating resources, from asset managers upwards.
It could also be used by engineers, who
spend a lot of their time working out how to
allocate different resources to get the desired
results.
Accountants and geologists would still
spend most of their time in their discipline
software (accounting or subsurface) but they
could use the 3esi software if they wanted to
see the bigger picture.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 43
Financial Modelling
in the Oil & Gas Industry
Wednesday 12th & Thursday 13th November 2008,
Copthorne Tara Hotel, London
A unique opportunity to learn from industry experts including:
s Peter Saling, Risk Management Specialist, Mol Group
s Professor Derek Bunn, Decision Science, London Business School
s Mats Kjaer, Manager, Quantitative Analytics, Barclays Capital
s Simon Wardell, Research Manager, Energy Practice, Global Insight
s Metin Epozdemir, Manager, Moody’s Analytics
s John Richter, Director, Financial Mechanics
s Celine Jerusalem, Project Manager, Statistics and Artificial Intelligence Section, Gaz de France
s Michael Cragg, Founding Partners, Cambridge Finance Partners
s Etienne Gabel, Director, IFC International
s Dr Robert Manicke, Corp. Director of Quantitative Analyses, StatoilHydro
Why you should attend:
s Understand the key areas for financial modelling in the oil and gas industry
s Learn best practice techniques and how to avoid worst practice
s Strengthen your modelling skills
s Equip yourself with a toolkit to enable sound and confident decisions
s Identify industry specific risk and discuss how to model it effectively
PLUS A HALF DAY PRE CONFERENCE WORKSHOP:
Optimisation & Predictive Analytics in the Oil & Gas Industry
Applications in Upstream & Financial Asset Management
Tuesday 11th November 2008, Copthorne Tara Hotel - London
In association with:
Supported by
Visit our website to download a brochure at
www.smi-online/oilgasmodelling18.asp
Or call +44 (0)20 7827 6180
QUOTE DIGITAL ENERGY JOURNAL WHEN REGISTERING TO RECEIVE £100 DISCOUNT
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 44
Oil and gas production
Leading Software Company
3esi’s goal is to be the leading company to use
for managing upstream processes.
Mr. Sim believes that there is a gap in the
market for a dominant player. There are other
software companies being used for different
aspects of engineering and geology, but no
other company internationally leads the upstream management software market.
There are many niche companies, serving the needs of different discipline groups, in
different geographical sectors of the market
with companies of different sizes, Mr. Sim observes; for example, there are companies
which have carved out a market providing accounting software to mid sized companies in
Houston. But the international top spot is still
available.
“There are a lot of niche companies focused on a domain problem,” he says.
“There’s very little standardisation.”
“We’ve got clients on 4 continents and
we’re going to grow that,” he says.
Cultural issues
The reason why oil and gas is not as well coordinated as it can be is relatively easy to guess
at. Oil and gas people, predominantly, are individuals, used to developing their own skills,
building their own reputation and working
quietly but confidently at their own desk on
their own project.
It has been relatively easy to sell these
people tools to do their own jobs better, such
as accounting software for accountants, geophysics software for geophysicists, and reser-
voir engineering software for reservoir engineers. But co-ordinating projects is something
else entirely.
Hyprotech was one of the first companies to introduce interactive computing in the
1980s – the idea that you could ask your computer something and get the answer immediately, rather than send your computing jobs off
to batch computing centres, as people did back
then was unheard of.
Now, you don’t think twice to work out
what interactive computing is as many of us
have never worked with any other type of
computing.
In a similar way, in 10 years time, people will be so used to using computer planning
tools to help run and manage their companies
that they won’t think twice about it, he says.
Chesapeake and Oracle PeopleSoft
US oil and gas company Chesapeake Energy recently started using Oracle's PeopleSoft software to help
manage people aspects of the business, including human resources, payroll, benefits administration and
enterprise learning.
The company started using the Oracle system in late 2006, to replace five HR systems,
being used across different business units.
The software is used both by all company employees to manage their own HR related services (employee self service), as
well as by HR personnel. Employees can
change their addresses, set up direct deposits, view pay stubs and sign up for benefits, which all means less work for the HR
staff.
Chesapeake is the 3rd largest natural
gas producer in the US, with annual revenue
of USD 7.8bn. The company added 1,300
employees in 2007, bringing the total workforce to 6,300.
It takes pride in how well it treats its
employees, being named by Fortune Magazine on its list of “100 Best Companies to
Work For” this year.
“First and foremost, Chesapeake is a
people company,” says Aubrey McClendon,
the company’s cofounder and chief executive officer. “Talent creates value and our
company has an abundance of talented people.”
Chesapeake uses PeopleSoft to consolidate and streamline its payroll and benefits.
It can automate the core HR processes, reducing paperwork and manual data entry.
It also uses it to track how well it is doing, and assess its resources.
Analysts can easily mine the system for
business intelligence, such as turnover rates,
employee performance metrics and resource
assessments.
44
“PeopleSoft has been a catalyst for
breaking down functional silos and exposing new ways that we can work more closely across business units,” says Jeff Gardner,
director of IT with Chesapeake's Business
Systems Group.
In future, Chesapeake plans to use the
software to help its expand its enterprise
learning program, where employees to enroll in training courses and track their
progress online.
It also plans to use the software more
in future to enhance and str eamline its recruiting process.
Mr Gardner says the move to PeopleSoft “eliminated a lot of paper and handoffs,
and numerous Excel spreadsheets we had to
track, manage and report.”
“Information technology will play a big
role in Chesapeake’s evolving workplace,”
Mr Gardner says. Beyond streamlining and
automating business processes, Mr Gardner
believes technology can be a stimulus for rethinking the way people work together.
“PeopleSoft has been a catalyst for
breaking down functional silos and exposing new ways that we can work more closely across business units,” Mr Gardner says.
“It supports our wonderfully talented people
who we believe are the source of our competitive advantage.”
Calculating pay
An important use for the software is working out how much to pay people, including
additional benefits.
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Chesapeake
needs many
complex
things from
its functionality, for example the
ability to
automatically
increase the
pay scales
of rig workers according to how
long they
have been Chesapeake Energy - using
there, ac- Oracle's PeopleSoft software
cording to to help manage people
an agreed aspects of the business
scale.
It has helped the company reduce processing time for stock awards from three
days to 2 hours.
“Our goal is to stay on the cutting edge
in benefits and compensation,” says Lorrie
Jacobs, Chesapeake’s vice president of compensation and benefits.
“We are constantly analyzing and
benchmarking data against other companies
in our industry in order to offer the best compensation package to attract top recruits.”
As a result of using the software,
"we’re much more comfortable with the integrity of the data,” she says.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 45
Oil and gas production
BP and Crystal Ball
BP is using Oracle’s Crystal Ball software on nearly 90 per cent of its new wells, to help keep its costs and
schedules on track.
Over 500 BP engineers in over 20 countries
are using the software, to forecast time and
costs for most of its big oil projects - approx
90 per cent of all new wells.
The software is used in the early and
middle phases of an oil field’s development,
helping with financial planning, project
scheduling and risk management.
The software aims to look at all the different variables which oil projects face, including bad weather, equipment malfunctions, geological surprises, and the number
of wells the company finds that it needs.
The software has a ‘sensitivity’ function to identify the major risk areas, to help
identify which factors could lead to cost and
time overruns, so staff can focus more attention on them.
“Crystal Ball is involved in every major investment decision that we make for
wells,” says Hugh Williamson, risk and cost
advisor, Drilling and Completions, BP.
“It identifies which risks add the most
uncertainty in outcome,” says Mr
Williamson. “These are the ones we should
pay the most attention to.”
“It increases our ability to deliver projects on time and on budget – a big plus when
partnering with governments of oil-producing countries or with other operators.”
The software stimulates productive dialogues among engineers and other experts,
by requiring estimators to gauge the likelihood and range of outcomes.
“We want those conversations to happen,” says Mr Williamson. “The results of
those conversations can be input directly into the front end of Crystal Ball.”
Spreadsheets
The software runs behind spreadsheets,
something which increases the appeal of the
software to engineers who are building the
forecasts, Mr Williamson says.
“Engineers love spreadsheets. Crystal
ball is intuitive and engineers can pick it up
quickly. I can teach people the fundamentals in less than 20 minutes.”
However, “one of the challenges is to
not let the spreadsheet template get too complicated, making it unusable by most engineers,” he says.
It is also important not to automate the
forecasting process too much. “Outputs are
worthless if the inputs haven’t been proper-
ly thought through,” says Mr Williamson.
Probability
The software uses Monte Carlo probabilistic techniques to make predictions of how
long something will take, or how much it
will cost.
Users input data about what they think
is going to happen with certain input variables (eg, how likely they think the oil price
will drop to $50 a barrel).
The software runs the calculation many
times, each with different input variables
along the probability distribution specified;
then from the range of different outputs, you
can work out how likely certain outputs will
be.
“If we think there’s a 20% chance of a
drilling operation being hit by a hurricane –
which might cost us between 10 and 50 days
per well – we can put this information directly into the estimate," says Mr
Williamson.
Business process
BP has a standard forecasting spreadsheet,
which all engineers can use when managing
a project.
BP engineers often perform several estimates in the course of an oil field development project: an early forecast that necessarily contains higher degrees of uncertainty; and several follow-ups that are more accurate as engineers eliminate many of the
unknowns, such as daily rates for rigs and
boats.
It may be possible to use data from
similar projects in the past, if there have
been any.
When the time-and-cost estimates have
been finalized, they are typically incorporated into a management report known as a
“decision support package” which is scrutinized by key decision-makers in the company.
On the basis of the report, the company may order more studies on the field, or
green light further drilling and development.
“Senior management want to know
how much projects are going to cost and
how soon they’re going to get their money
back,” he says.
Complex business environment
As oil and gas companies chase smaller and
Use Crystal Ball to get an understanding of
the variabilities involved - this graph shows
the different net present values (NPV) a
project might end up with and the probability
of each
smaller reserves, the complexity of the business increases, and the necessity to keep a
strong check on cost and time overruns increases.
"There’s not much easy oil left, and to
get at it, we need to develop some pretty
complex, pretty risky projects, and our goal
is to execute them better than the competition,” says Mr Williamson.
Risks can emerge from places that are
hard to predict. “It’ll be hurricanes in one
place, steel prices in another place, and a
change of scope in a third place.”
With oil and gas only getting tougher
to find, Williamson sees continued robust
demand for sophisticated estimation solutions like Crystal Ball.
“Projects are going to continue getting
more complex and more expensive and
more challenging,” he says, “and we have
to be up for that challenge and find ways of
understanding and communicating that risk
and complexity up front.”
This chart shows an estimation of how
reliable different materialswill be - and how
likely the reliability will be a certain amount
September/October 2008 - digital energy journal
45
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 46
Oil and gas production
Shipdex - a new standard for technical
data for vessels and platforms
Digital Energy Journal’s sister magazine, Digital Ship, held a conference in Hamburg, Germany, on a
standard has been developed for technical data for ships, drilling rigs and offshore platforms, which
should enable technical information to be supplied electronically, rather than on paper.
A new data exchange protocol has been developed for ship, drilling rig and offshore platform
equipment information, which aims to lead to
the end of paper manuals and drawings, and all
other tehnical information normally supplied
on paper, including maintenance procedures,
and lists of spare parts.
Shipdex arose out of the frustration which
two large dry bulk shipping companies, Grimaldi Naples and Intership Navigation, were having with paper manuals, and their decision to
do something about it.
"We get 1.5 tons of paper with a new vessel, including technical manuals, drawings and
specifications," said Grimaldi’s purchasing director Giancarlo Coletta. "It is very hard to accept that, when EDI and communication is state
of art, the shipping industry should have this
huge amount of paper.”
Grimaldi Naples and Intership contracted
their software company, SpecTec, to develop a
standard for electronic technical information,
which is a simplified version of the S1000D
standard, used almost universally in the aviation and defence industry.
By having all of the data for a new vessel
provided electronically, Mr Coletta estimates
that he might be able to save as much as 8 per
cent on the total costs of maintenance, because
it will be much easier to manage efficiently.
“Having the right data at the right time can
lead to savings in cost,” he said. “All the information you need, you can pick up from your
database exactly. We can have access immediately to the information and supply faster answers.”
“With so much paper onboard, "it’s very
hard to have rapid and quick access to information when it’s needed," he said. “Sometimes
technical manuals are a photocopy of an old
manual they got somewhere, and not really consistent with the equipment they are delivering.”
"One vessel has 80 to 100 different equipment manufacturers, with 700 to 900 components, up to 1000 parts per component, and
33,000 different general stores", he said.
With data provided in Shipdex format,
seafarers will be able to get much faster answers
to critical questions. “People ask – we have 25
tonnes of cargo. Can we load this on the vessel? Instead of searching through your manuals, you can answer immediately. It will be great
46
advantage in my opinion.”
As well as its planned maintenance systems, Grimaldi anticipates using Shipdex data
in its quality management systems, technical library and computer based training systems, he
said.
There are plenty more benefits.
By receiving all the electronic data in
Shipdex format, you can also reduce the enormous amount of cost associated with manually
building an electronic maintenance system for
a new vessel – currently as much as $20,000
per ship, if you want a database that works.
You can manage your spare parts much
better – so you are more likely to have the spare
parts onboard which you need, and not have
spare parts onboard you don’t need – and small
percentage improvements in spare parts management lead to big financial savings.
You can also keep your technical data up
to date easier – if a supplier sends out an update to a manual, it can be automatically incorporated in the shipboard electronic manual – no
posting out pieces of paper and wondering if
they made it to the right ship.
And if a shipping company has better data, it is much easier to manage the whole company – compare how different vessels are performing, manage costs, and make sure that the
fleet is in good condition.
In future, Shipdex do many wonderful
things – for example, to pass on information to
shipyards about what equipment is onboard the
ship, and store this data in a standard format, as
will be required under IMO’s forthcoming ship
recycling legislation.
It could be used to communicate data with
regulators, surveyors and suppliers, about exactly what is on the ship, and any problems
which are happening with the equipment.
All of these things, of course, lead to big
potential to improve safety – if it is easier to
manage maintenance on the vessel, and ship
staff can find the right answers to their questions much faster they can with paper.
Will people use it?
So will Shipdex be embraced by the maritime
and oil and gas industry?
Till Braun, head of department - sales
projects, Germanischer Lloyd, and chair of the
conference on ShipDex organised by Digital
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
Ship magazine
in Hamburg in
April,
noted
that there were
representatives
of major shipping / oil and
gas companies,
including BP
Shipping and
Maersk, present
at the confer- “Expecting to save 8 per
ence,
“with cent of total maintenance
their eyes wide costs from having better
open,” he said. data” - Grimaldi’s
MacGRE- purchasing director
Giancarlo Coletta
GOR, one of
the world's largest suppliers of hatch covers,
cranes, equipment for RoRo ships and ports,
has already decided to wholeheartedly commit
to providing technical information in Shipdex
format. It will also use Shipdex to manage the
data about its manuals internally, so it can easily make updates and make sure new equipment
is provided with the right manual, even if it is
in paper format.
Alfa Laval, a major supplier of separators
for ships, is also embracing Shipdex, starting
by making its manuals for separators available
in Shipdex format, and then its manuals for
freshwater systems. MAN Diesel is also part of
the working group.
Grimaldi Naples and Intership Navigation
are currently making orders for 90 new vessels
between them, and will use their purchasing
leverage as far as possible, to try to cajole their
suppliers and shipyards to provide the manuals
electronically.
One delegate from BP Shipping said that
he would consider trying to get OCIMF (the Oil
Companies International Marine Forum) involved in Shipdex, using the purchasing clout
of oil companies to encourage tanker companies to encourage shipyards and equipment suppliers to provide equipment manuals in
Shipdex, because it can potentially lead to improved safety.
S1000D – following aviation
It helps that Shipdex is based on a standard
called S1000D™, which is used internationally
in aviation and defence (including naval ves-
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 47
Oil and gas production
sels). All documentation in the
aviation and defence industry
must (it is suggested but it is not
mandatory. It depends on contracts) be written
in the same standardised way, so You just need two lines in
it can be easily your contract with the
imported into dif- shipyards to force them to
provide the technical
ferent software information in Shipdex
systems.
format, said Marco
S1000D is Vatteroni, SpecTec ILS
sponsored by the manager and Shipdex
Air Transport As- technical manager
sociation of America (ATA), the Aerospace and
Defence Association of Europe (ASD), and the
Aerospace Industries Association of America
(AIA). The document describing the standard
is more than 2600 pages long.
By using a standard developed for aviation, it means the maritime industry can take
advantage of all of the software and services already developed for S1000D. It also means that
many maritime equipment suppliers are already
providing manuals in S1000D format, if they
also supply to the defence industry. Shipdex
will also ultimately be an official part of the
S1000D organisation.
It won’t be the first time the maritime industry has followed aviation; vessel traffic systems, voyage data recorders, automatic identification systems, and using English as a standard
language, were all first done in the aviation industry and subsequently adopted by shipping.
Safety benefits
When you realise what enormous safety benefits there could be from having manuals supplied electronically, you might expect the International Maritime Organisation and oil and gas
regulators to make it mandatory.
The primary safety benefit will be from
ships and rigs being better maintained – because they have better maintenance management systems, with data directly input from the
manufacturer’s procedures. A better maintained
ship is probably a safer ship.
A secondary safety benefit is that if there
is ever any problem, seafarers can find out what
to do about it much faster from an electronic
manual, than having to look for the right page
in 1.5 tons of paper.
“By having the information very well
structured and searchable, you can quickly find
the correct information for the specific equipment,” says Eva-Lisa Martinsson, manager,
Technical Documentations Services, Competence Centre Cranes, MacGREGOR, “You can
have the correct safety instructions for particu-
lar equipment. If something happens, it’s easy
to find the right page in our manuals.”
“If you have a question, how do I fix the
pump, it takes 1 minute instead of 10 mins to
find the answer,” said Kay-Michael Goertz,
head of logistic procedures and IT at HDW ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.
Managing spares
If equipment information is supplied in Shipdex
format, shipowners can also load the data about
their spare parts automatically into their purchasing systems – and with better data in their
purchasing system, they can make sure they
have the right spare parts onboard and always
order the right spare parts.
Even if only a small percentage of your
spare parts are wrong, it is very expensive and
potentially dangerous.
There are many stories in the industry
about vessels carrying completely the wrong
parts for years, and nobody knew they were
there – tying up large amounts of capital uselessly.
There are also many stories in the industry of shipowners forced to airlift critical parts,
or charts, to a vessel by helicopter, because they
will get detained if they don’t have them.
By having a better database of your spare
parts, it is possible to do many new things. For
example, you might determine that a supplier is
trying to get you to buy a spare part, which is
only needed for one procedure, and that procedure can only be done by a dry dock – so there’s
no point in buying it.
Is network
performance
and reliability
slowing your
productivity?
If your critical business operations
are bogged down or compatibility
issues have your information and
control systems at a crawl, we can
help you pick up the pace.
YR20 has been helping companies
quickly troubleshoot and diagnose
Benchmarking and dashboards
network and applications issues
"We have one
customer with 23
vessels, each database is built by different
people,"
said SpecTec’s Mr
Soncini. "So they
are completely different databases.
It’s impossible to
compare one ship Everyone wants
management
with another."
Bob Kessler ‘dashboards’ but they
of ABS Nautical are only any use if the
underlying data is of
Systems recalled a good quality, pointed
Dilbert cartoon, out Bob Kessler, head of
which showed a Europe, Middle East and
manager asking Africa with ABS Nautical
for executive sum- Systems
mary information, or 'dashboards', but not caring whether the underlying data is any good or
not, a scenario many in the maritime industry
will be familiar with.
“Everybody wants ‘dashboards’,” he said.
“But if you have bad data, you won’t get any
useful dashboards.”
since 2001. Our revolutionary
products and services are designed
to get to the root cause of your
network and application performance and reliability issues quickly
and expertly.
To learn more about our services,
visit our website at www.yr20.com
or call +1 (832) 225-1293 (U.S.),
+ 44 (0) 1224 355290 (U.K.).
1718 Fry Road
Suite 440
Houston, Texas 77084
Unit 16, James Gregory Centre
Aberdeen Science & Technology Park
Balgownie Drive
Aberdeen AB22 8GU
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 48
Oil and gas production
Communicating oil and gas asset value
UK software company Palantir Solutions has developed a standard way for oil and gas companies and
their lenders to put a value on their assets, even if they disagree on what the oil price will do.
UK oil and gas company Palantir Solutions
is developing software which provides a
standard way of communicating the value of
an oil and gas asset between oil companies
and their investment banks, even if the parties disagree on their predictions of different
costs and indexes, such as future inflation.
The software can be used to make a
quick estimation of the value of an asset, or
the range of the value of the asset, using the
limited information available (eg estimated
size of the reserves, the estimated cost of the
infrastructure, production rate decline).
The output of the software is provided
in Microsoft Excel, so it is easy to use.
But if two parties discussing sales of
the asset both have the Palantir software,
then the parties can get an estimation of the
value of the asset based on their own predictions of future costs and prices, and then use
the software as a basis for their discussions.
‘gold standard’ way of enabling people to
see how much different assets are worth.
“We want to provide a bridge between
borrower and lender,” says CEO Jason Ambrose. “We want to be the currency that they
trade economic data in. It should help create
more transparency.”
The is proposing to the DTI and the
London Alternative Investment Market
(AIM) with a view to formally incorporating
the software in oil and gas company evaluations, before floats.
The software could also be used by
governments conducting a leasing round.
They could use the Palantir method to present their calculation of what the field is
worth. Other people can then test the calculation, putting in their own data (for example, if they think the estimate of infrastructure costs has been too low).
Fast evaluation
The software also enables the assets to be
valued very quickly, to give a snapshot of the
company in its current condition.
“There is a strong competitive advantage available to people who can get a fast
analysis of the value of a company,” says Mr
Ambrose.
For example, when evaluating assets
which have been put on the market, it is possible to get an estimate within a few hours
of what the range that the value of the asset
might lie between, using your own estimates
of future key indices.
This should enable users to make a decision quickly about whether or not they
want to bid for the asset, and at which price.
A range
“Promoting Palantir's solutions for working
outoil and gas company value in the financial
sector” - Amy Williams-Allden, Palantir’s sales
and marketing executive for the financial
sector
In May this year, Palantir appointed
Amy Williams-Allden, as sales and marketing executive for the financial sector (and
previously a consultant with IBM), to build
the business with investment banks and brokers.
Palantir’s vision is that it could offer a
48
The calculation method does not try to provide a precise answer, but give a range which
the right answer might be in.
“Say you have one company which
could be worth anything between 0 and
$15bn,” he says. “And you have another
company worth between $3bn and $7bn. You
might prefer the second one because there is
substantially less risk.”
“People have different appetites for
risk. But if you can measure the risk you can
do calculated risk taking.”
“If you have two portfolios with equal
risk, but one is more valuable, you would go
for that one.”
digital energy journal - September/October 2008
“People have different appetites for risk. But if
you can measure the risk you can do
calculated risk taking.” - Palantir CEO Jason
Ambrose.
The company
Companies working with Palantir include
BG Group, Chevron Upstream Europe (Aberdeen), Talisman, Dana Petroleum, VITOL,
Premier Oil, ITHACA, Jeffries Investment
Bank and Anardarko Texas.
It was set up in London in 2002, originally as an asset evaluation consultancy.
Jason Ambrose, the founder, has a
background as a wireline engineer with
Schlumberger. He later moved to Merak, a
Canadian financial modelling company,
which was itself bought by Schlumberger in
1999.
After the acquisition, Mr Ambrose left,
because he relished the challenge of running
his own company.
Palantir has 44 employees, two thirds
of which are in London. It also has offices
in Aberdeen, Houston, Singapore and Calgary.
It has 20 full time consultants. It has its
own software development centre in Bangalore, India, with 8 full time staff; altogether
the company has 12 programmers.
Mr Ambrose is very proud of the geographical diversity of his staff; only a small
percentage are from the UK.
“Having a diversity of staff means we
can be much better at solving people’s problems,” he says.
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 49
Communications
Warning - possible satcom shortage
Increased demand for satellite capacity, particularly for cellular backhaul, means that oil and gas
companies can no longer take its availability for granted in West Africa, South America and the Middle
East, warns James Trevelyan, head of enterprise sales at Arqiva's Satellite Media Solutions division.
“In many parts of the world, particularly
West Africa, the Middle East and South
America, there is a shortage of available
satellite capacity, which means oil and gas
companies can no longer take it for granted
that they will have the satcom bandwidth
they need”, says James Trevelyan, head of
enterprise sales at Arqiva's Satellite Media
Solutions division.
Arqiva is one of the world’s largest
purchasers of satellite bandwidth, negotiating between the satellite owners, and the
users of satellite capacity to provide connectivity services. It leases around $240m a
year of space segment and works directly
with companies in the oil and gas industry
as well as indirectly through oilfield services companies and telecoms companies.
Part of the increase in demand for the
satellite bandwidth is due to massive expansion in cellular phone use in recent years;
“if there are no fibre optic cables to carry
the calls internationally, they are routed
through satellites”, he says.
“In some parts of the world, countries
have only just brought in mobile phone networks,” he says. “They bypassed telecom
infrastructure and went straight to cellular.
It has led to huge sucking up of capacity for
backhauling voice around.” Across Africa
the number of mobile phone users has
grown to 65m in the last 6 years. Growth
shows no sign of abating.
There have also been at least two major satellite failures in the last 18 months,
which have led to a panic buying of available capacity.
“One satellite that was going to cover
Africa and Asia, one of the largest satellites
of its kind, failed at launch 12 months ago –
that’s caused a bit of a panic buy across all
the vertical markets,” he says.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry is
engaged in a great deal of new projects in
the same parts of the world, and its satellite
communication requirements are going up.
“Oil and gas companies have been historically very stable users – and they are being penalised because of a shortage of capacity,” he says.
“What that means for oil and gas companies is, if they want to bring on a new rig
and they want their 256k duplex connection,
there isn’t always capacity at hand.”
One solution is of course is for the
satellite operators to launch more satellites,
but it is not easy to launch more of them
straight away.
“It takes 3 years to plan and build a
satellite,” he says. “It’s not a decision that
can be made lightly. While we can see
launches ahead of us, there may not be sufficient capacity ahead of us to support current output.”
“Operators are looking at repositioning
some underused satellites to different orbital
slots in an attempt to bolster supply in areas
where demand is greatest.”
Careful planning
Mr Trevelyan advises oil and gas companies
to plan carefully to make sure they have the
bandwidth they need; they also need to
make sure they are using the bandwidth
which they have already acquired as effectively as possible.
Arqiva typically purchases satellite
bandwidths in ‘transponders’ – which basically means that they purchase a chunk of
the entire satellite. This is carved up into
smaller chunks and sold to service providers
and companies. A satellite typically lasts 15
years which means that users pay for the
bandwidth whether or not they are using it.
An alternative is to share a pool of
bandwidth between users. Bandwidth can
be shared privately by one company across
its network. Alternatively bandwidth can be
shared publically between a number of companies. If both companies want it at once
then they get half the speed, but otherwise
they get the same speed, but pay half the
price. With today’s technology the pool of
bandwidth can be shared securely which is
important given the value of the data.
“Take a long term view and talk to
your service provider about what you expect
your activities to require,” he suggests.
“Have a look at the applications that support
your activities on the oilfield – start to prioritise the types of data which really are critical.”
“A lot of the time – often we hear people say – we have so many different data
streams – and we’re not entirely sure if the
parts of the business that request them still
use them.”
“Talk to your service provider – about
how you might have some traffic on dedicated streams and some on shared streams,”
With increasing demand for satellite
resources, oil and gas companies might not
be so sure of getting the satcom power they
need, says Arqiva
he suggests.
“We’re trying to find out which applications are mission critical and which ones
aren’t. When the data is not mission critical,
we can offer privately shared or publically
shared bandwidth which can reduce bandwidth and costs without compromising
speed.”
There are sophisticated technologies
available which can help companies share
and reduce bandwidth, such as iDirect and
Comtech.
The skill is in designing the network
and profiling its traffic patterns carefully
taking into account bandwidth hungry applications and users. “If you size those networks correctly it works very well,” he says.
On the other side, there are several applications where communications are mission critical or real time, such as monitoring
drilling and subsea equipment from shore.
“For that, we recommend a nailed up pipe,”
he says.
An alternative solution is to find ways
to reconfigure the satellites themselves so
they can offer more capacity in the areas
with the shortage.
“Recently we reconfigured some
transponders over Africa used for video to
enable them to carry 2 way traffic,” he says.
“We were able to feed 260 to 280 mbps of
capacity into the market.
“But that’s been sucked up almost instantly by wholesale users concerned about
September /October 2008 - digital energy journal
49
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 50
Communications
the future – and oil companies who have
their road map set out and know they have
to commit now.”
Another option is to consider Inmarsat’s range of portable satellite solutions. These are popular in the maritime
sector for narrowband applications but
struggle to achieve broadband speeds due to
the terminal size and are often better back
up solutions due to their prohibitive running
costs.
“Inmarsat is part of the communications mix in the E+P market,” he says. “But
its more of a backup and insurance policy
for the main satellite communications link –
it is also useful for engineers who are going
to go and set up these satellite links so they
have some way of communicating.”
“It’s generally not as cost effective for
a dedicated connection that’s on full time.”
“One of Arqiva’s great strengths is that
it has scale – it can access over 100 satellites from its global teleport infrastructure
across all the satellite operators fleets. If a
satellite is repositioned – we immediately
have the earth stations to access the satellites – for smaller operators in the industry
– they may not have the finance to make the
capital investment required to access multiple satellites.”
Price increase
If there is increasing competition for satellite capacity, one expected impact would be
an increase in prices, something which oil
and gas companies might be better prepared
for than other industries given their understanding of commodity markets.
However Mr Trevelyan warns against
getting into a bidding war. “We’ve got to be
responsible when it comes to maintaining
long term relationships with our customers,”
he says. “Our base costs have increased dramatically but we have tried to reflect this
with moderate stable price increases. If we
suddenly hiked the price up, it’s clearly not
good for long term business.”
“There are other players in the market
who have some bandwidth and took a short
term view and doubled, or in some cases
tripled, the price.”
Satcom – as customer needs change,
technologies and services must evolve
In order to provide effective satellite communications services to oil and gas companies, you need to have
an in-depth understanding of their increasingly complex and comprehensive needs, says Broadpoint’s
new President and CEO, Errol Olivier.
There was a time when all an offshore communications company had to do to meet its
customers’ needs was install a satellite dish
to connect remote employees to the corporate office. However, in today’s increasingly competitive and complex oil and gas environment, companies are asking for much
more
from
their
communications
providers.
“As major oil and gas companies continue to expand their operations to very remote areas around the world, they want
complete end-to-end solutions,” says Errol
Olivier, president and CEO of Houston
telecommunications and network solutions
company Broadpoint.
“Our customers are now looking to us
to provide more value added solutions than
the basic installation, commissioning,
maintenance and operations. They now rely on us to provide support further down
the value chain like protecting these networks with firewall protection and content
screening.”
These new customer demands mean
that providers must gain a deeper understanding of what customers are actually doing with their communications infrastructure, and they can no longer focus on simply selling the latest gadgets. Customized
50
network solutions reign supreme in today’s
offshore communications age.
“As communications providers, we
need to truly understand how the customer
will use their applications, which will enable us to provide the technology platform
that best suits their individual needs,” Mr
Olivier says.
“There’s no use selling customers
dedicated bandwidth when they don’t need
it.”
Reliable Crew Communications Leads
to Enhanced Productivity
One area where Mr Olivier believes Broadpoint can support oil and gas companies is
in increasing the productivity and efficiency of offshore operations.
“Our focus is identifying how we can
help our customers be more effective in doing their work,” he says.
That means providing them with a
customized communication system that
streamlines their operations. Broadpoint,
formed last year from a private equity buyout of PetroCom, SOLA Communications
and Coastel Communications, has united
and improved upon the offerings of its
predecessor companies to offer a variety of
platform and technology options including
digital energy journal - September /October 2008
"Satcom providers must gain a deeper
understanding of what customers are
actually doing with the communications
infrastructure" - Errol Olivier, president and
CEO, Broadpoint
satellite and cellular offerings.
WiFi is becoming increasingly desirable offshore, Mr Olivier says, because it
provides the mobile and flexible data connectivity that is required by the many consultants and engineers who service the off-
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:11
Page 51
CONNECTING
THE OFFSHORE OIL & GAS AND
MARITIME INDUSTRIES
WITH THE LATEST
COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES
2 Day Expo
Showcasing
the Leading
Communications
Companies
and Service
Providers
Last Call for
Abstracts!
REGISTER TODAY!
Register to exhibit, sponsor, attend at
Connecting offshore operations is hard. Integrating the diverse
communications portfolio required to optimize offshore operations
is much harder. Offshore Communications 2008 gives you essential
insights into how oil & gas executives today are applying state-ofthe-art Digital Tools to address complex operational requirements
for the Digital Oilfield.
For more information contact:
Inger Peterson • 772-219-3035
info@offshorecoms.com
Tuesday, Nov. 4, Offshore
Communications 2008 annual
golf tournament will be held
at the Wildcat Golf Club just
10 minutes from the venue of the conference.
Wildcat rivals the country's finest private clubs. Its
unique window on the Houston skyline makes it
the perfect venue. Only in Texas could a railroadjunction-turned-oilfield emerge as a verdant island
that thrills the senses and soothes the soul.
Premier Event Sponsor:
Gold Technology:
Silver Technology:
Why Attend?
• Master real-time monitoring and surveillance so that
communication is optimized
• See the future of communication for maritime operations.
• Learn how accessing offshore platforms and maintenance records can be assured.
• Ensure your personnel and assets are optimized.
In Short, attending Offshore Communications 2008 will give you
insight and understanding of how you can effectively apply networks that work!
Premier Industry:
Golf Tournament:
Premier Corporate &
Exhibit Hall Reception:
Corporate:
Supporting Sponsors:
Media Sponsors:
Organized by
In association
with
Oil Offshore Marine
Worldwide Oil & Gas Jobs
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:12
Page 52
Communications
shore industry. Also, as the industry faces
a shortage of professionals that is often referred to as the “knowledge gap” the ability to easily transfer data or view remote
conditions via video in real time over any
kind of network is becoming increasingly
important. With these capabilities, operators can maximize the use of their experts
by allowing them to consult on projects
worldwide while never leaving the home
office.
Beyond these benefits to a company’s
productivity, Olivier notes that implementing the right communications network can
also have a significant impact on employee
morale.
“What’s really important to our customers right now is maintaining positive
morale of their staff,” Mr Olivier says. “The
oil and gas industry must be competitive
with the rest of the world in providing good
quality of life offshore if they want to attract and retain talented employees.
“It is extremely important that these
employees have a way of checking in with
family and friends and the ability to handle
personal business through on-line access
during their off-time offshore. Imagine being offshore for six weeks or longer and not
being able to access your mortgage, utility
or banking accounts.”
Many companies are choosing dual
communication systems—one for corporate access and the other for employee
communication. For example, Broadpoint
has seen a rise in popularity in oil companies asking for a network specifically dedicated to employee use that will not interfere with the corporate network.
“Separate communication systems
give companies the best of both worlds—
the ability to have a fast-running corporate
communication line, as well as a way to
provide employees access to personal communication methods and a bit of redundancy, is a great value to those working in
harsh environments,” says Mr Olivier.
Limited space segment
In many parts of the world, namely regions
like the Middle East and Africa, space segment is running thin. With the recent failures of satellite spacecraft over the past
few years, service providers are finding it
more difficult to buy and hold space segment, due to market uncertainty.
“The shortage of bandwidth in many
remote locations leads us to ask the question, ‘How can you best provide the right
solution with a very limited amount of
bandwidth?” says Mr Olivier.
Some satellite service providers are
setting up shared bandwidth systems—
where companies share the same bandwidth in order to cut costs. While this may
be a good option for some, the decrease in
effective throughput could lead to decreased productivity.
“On the surface, shared bandwidth
systems appear to offer customers the same
level of service as private bandwidth, but
they often result in much lower throughput
than customers expect,” he says. “When
the amount of data you need to transmit is
high and the time you have to transmit is
low, a shared system may not allocate the
bandwidth you need to support the application, especially when it requires realtime functionality.”
When working with Broadpoint, customers are ensured a committed information rate (CIR)—meaning that they know
exactly the amount of minimum bandwidth
available to them at all times. Even though
there is no industry standard on providing
a committed versus a burstable information
rate, Broadpoint holds itself to the highest
regard of availability and throughput.
“When Broadpoint says you’re going
to receive 512 kbps CIR, it means you will
get 512 kbps all the time—not just in a
‘best case’ scenario,” says Olivier. “We
don’t provide solutions that only get the
job done sometimes—we provide a network that allows our customers to do their
work efficiently at all times, that’s the value we bring to their operations.”
But sometimes shared bandwidth is
exactly what a company needs. For companies that don’t require massive amounts
of data transfer, real time information, critical and timely monitoring and control or
live video feeds, shared bandwidth is a
great option for communications at a reduced cost.
“The key is to assess each client’s individual needs,” he says. “While some may
say that utilizing a very dynamic bandwidth sharing system to lower the customer’s cost is an upgrade, I consider it a
significant downgrade when productivity
is compromised for price.”
And there’s no end in sight—Olivier
predicts that the demand for bandwidth will
only increase as companies’ needs expand
and diversify.
“In the office, we are spoiled and never satisfied with the speed of the internet
that supports all of the new applications released every year. When employees travel
to these remote sites, they expect no less
than what they get in the office, and the applications deployed to improve the efficiency of their operations are rapidly increasing the need for even more bandwidth.”
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:12
Page 53
DEJaugsept08:Layout 1
21/08/2008
15:12
Page 54
Stay in touch
Connecting you and your business
Satlynx is a leading global provider of satellite
communications services with over 12,000 VSATs
in more than 130 countries and offers pioneering
satellite solutions to the oil & gas industry.
We serve both upstream and downstream
business from dispersed and hard to reach
offshore rigs or maritime fleets through large
networks of gasoline stations, pipelines and
production plants.
info@satlynx.com
www.satlynx.com
Types of applications
Real time data
Monitoring systems
Broadband internet
VoIP telephony