There's no time to wait. Companies that want to excel can and must embrace this technology today.

What is a digital oil field? To some it is about instrumentation and field automation - having a system that collects data by adding sensors, meters and monitoring systems. To others, it means making sense of massive amounts of data that have been accumulated and collected over the life cycle of a producing field. Although there are different views of a digital oil field, the objectives are focused on making sure the right piece of information is available to the right people at the right time. It is about improving performance with personnel and technology so they can enable, streamline and optimize important processes.
Daunting task
In the business world, few assets have greater up-front, capital-intensive requirements than oil and gas fields. So once these assets are discovered, developed and put on production, their owners must work diligently to maximize returns and asset value. This means maximizing production and reserves and economically recovering every barrel of oil and cubic foot of gas possible. Activities ranging from routine maintenance to drilling, production and ongoing operations can be affected by a wide range of events. Operators must always have timely access to the right information in order to make sound technical and business decisions.
Companies indisputably believe that optimizing operations requires good data. Unfortunately, data in itself is not enough, as most companies will attest. They have spent billions of dollars generating, collecting, storing and managing data, much of which can't be found or accessed, much less effectively used. Complicating matters are the real-world issues of disparate computer systems, global operations and remote offices, and data stored in personal files and hard drives. As a result, when decisions are pending and specific data is needed, it isn't there. Best-informed, timely, data-driven decisions are virtually impossible.
Ironically, even the vision of "the real-time digital oil field" has hindered efforts to actually create a practical, real-time digital oil field that really adds business value. The vision and emphasis have ended up being technology-centric instead of assessing how data will be used by whom and for what purpose. For example, adding thousands of remote sensors in an oil field definitely provides a flood of data pouring into a central database. But can that data be easily organized, viewed and manipulated? Is the data readily available and useful to the people in the various disciplines that require it to do their work? Too often, it's not.
Revenue-creating reality
The dream of a practical digital oil field isn't that far away. It's not impossible. Creating the digital oil field requires a serious commitment, both financially and operationally. But the potential payoffs are tremendous. Oil companies that can effectively optimize production, reserves, revenue, profit and other key business drivers will ultimately enhance the value of their assets. Enhanced asset value should be a principal success indicator of a digital oil field.
To achieve a successful digital oil field, information from all levels of the company must be integrated. Contrary to popular belief, integrating data does not always mean migrating data to a central repository or creating a master data store. It can be achieved by using the most effective technologies to simply access and organize data from where it is already stored and managed. Rather than move data, companies are realizing the value of solutions that virtually integrate multiple data sources and provide easy access points for end-users. This approach, which is less disruptive, minimizes the time required to implement a successful digital oil field while also minimizing cost outlays.
Right information
Many companies are already implementing prototypes and pilot projects that demonstrate their visions of the digital oil field. Each is greatly tempered by their business operating environments, such as harvesting a brown field and/or operating high-volume, high-value deepwater platforms. Ultimately, though, digital oil fields are about transforming the myriad of different types of data - all the way from sensors in the borehole to lease operating statements in financial systems - into meaningful, useful reports that may be used in the boardroom, in the field office and on the rig. The data may need to be reported to a host of personnel, from the chief executive to managers, engineers and field personnel.
For example, a major oil company working in capital-intensive, deepwater operations wanted to better manage its offshore fields. The company wanted to reduce downtime by developing an information system to improve access to key operational data. Because it already owned massive databases filled with production and field data, the oil company assumed it had access to all of the critical information needed. However, while developing its information-sharing system, the company discovered gaps in data and inaccuracies. Once these were identified, measures and metrics were quickly built into the system. The result is high-quality data that helps employees optimize their maintenance and production decisions for the offshore fields. With just a few clicks, an operator can now quickly access all key operational, safety and mechanical data for a facility or a particular well.
Easy access
Once a company has collected and tracked all the key data and established ownership procedures that preserve data quality, the next step is to examine how to integrate, organize and present the information. This means focusing on how information is used rather than how it is captured or stored. This information-management approach has already been put to good use with excellent results by several major companies.
One company required its personnel to gather and track field-level data. Yet once it was recorded onto worksheets and spreadsheets, the information quickly fell off of the radar screen, making it unusable to other members of the team. The company quickly changed its procedures to require field-level personnel to enter the data into a corporate database. Further, they focused beyond data gathering to sharing the data so the information flow was bi-directional. Now field personnel and operations managers can see the information, enabling them to better understand and respond to maintenance and downtime issues.
Another company had accumulated good data for years. It had the systems, databases and processes in place. The breakthrough result - delivering real business value - came when the company implemented a Web-based information portal that invited all types of corporate stakeholders to access the information in a form they preferred. This digital dashboard was a huge success from upper management down through the organizational ranks. Asset managers now simply open a Web browser to see a range of key performance indicators pulled from databases all over the company's information technology infrastructure. At a glance, managers can find trouble spots. At each trouble spot, the manager can quickly and easily drill down to find relevant data.
Contrast this drill-down approach to methods currently used at many companies. Typically, key performance indicators take days, weeks or even months to catch the eye of an asset manager. Once the problem is spotted, entire teams are mobilized to seek out relevant data to find the underlying issues. Hours upon hours are spent finding and analyzing the data. And all the while, the asset may have been performing below optimum levels, with revenue likely being lost.
The contrast between these approaches makes it clear. While the business driver in each of the examples above is different, success of the digital oil field is determined by the underlying information management framework, practices and procedures. Companies that wish to excel in an increasingly competitive industry must embrace the technology and best practices that efficiently connect people and information. By combining the right technology with people and processes, the digital oil field enables companies to gain timely access to important quality data, enabling them to optimize production, reserves, revenue and profits, resulting in enhanced asset value.

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