Digital oilfield design and execution, like any other major project, requires planning and specific goals.

The improved operational performance promised by a seamless digital oil field is alluring, and the tasks required to arrive at a realistic implementation are more specialized than might be expected. It is prudent to proceed carefully when designing and delivering digital oilfield capability, selecting project partners that are savvy in three worlds: project and services delivery management, digital technology, and oil and gas.

The concept of a digital oil field has progressed significantly since it hit the headlines in 2002, with most major exploration and production (E&P) companies now including this as an aspect of their core process visions. Currently, typical implementations are occurring within specific domains - such as seismic, drilling, or production operations, among others - and then these discrete solutions are being integrated into a corporate-wide knowledge management schema.

The integration of domain-specific technologies remains a challenge unique to E&P that can be easily underestimated. Until products and services able to capture cross-disciplinary, end-to-end workflows have matured, securing integration expertise will be critical to unlocking digital oilfield value. Efficient integration requires combined attention to project methodology, domain requirements/issues, and an extensive understanding of the technologies completely specific to the sector. Unfortunately this third requirement is often overlooked, although it holds the potential for extensive project budget and time overruns.

Examples of various digital oilfield initiatives reveal how this approach is being used to enhance different elements of the E&P value chain. These examples also reveal facets of the digital oilfield challenge - facets that are common to E&P core processes yet absolutely unique to the oil and gas industry vis-à-vis other industries.

Enhancing seismic workflow

Digital oilfield techniques are being used to reduce the seismic cycle time and improve time to cash flow. Up to a 30% reduction has been achieved in the time from seismic acquisition to decision for a prospect, whether in the exploratory or development phases of a field.

To achieve this gain, the seismic data life cycle was re-engineered, including defining a new seismic standard based on a rationalization of the numerous existing models within oil and gas companies. A key component has been the just-in-time validation and capture of all relevant data and metadata across the complete seismic value chain. This was achieved by consolidating the various serial quality control activities of each seismic step into a single parallel quality control process that covers each requirement - acquisition, processing and interpretation (Figure 1).

This solution has enabled the distribution of seismic data to be "democratized." That is, more people have easy access to the seismic data (within a secure digital network, of course) and the data they access are validated and of high quality.

PdVSA and Pemex, for example, have each deployed just-in-time validation and capture of all relevant data and metadata through the complete business value chain of various operating assets and achieved more than 20% business cycle time reduction.

Real-time drilling

Real-time drilling data add significant value when complemented by processes and tools that allow for sound and rapid actions to be taken from them, and more thorough analyses to be conducted for continuous learning and process improvement. Benefits include improved well quality, reduced nonproductive time and risk, better budget management, more precise tracking/analysis of key performance indicators, and more effective long-term planning.

Digital oilfield solutions are enabling the remote collaboration of petroprofessionals through virtual reality centers for well planning, drilling performance management and real-time monitoring, including automated alarm capabilities for critical situations. Designing these centers has involved breaking down the drilling process and re-engineering it to suit specific operator needs to allow for more collaborative and automated processes.

An operator in Norway has conducted a collaboration pilot involving employees at a remote site and its head office. The chosen solution includes using a virtual reality center at headquarters that features an operations dashboard for monitoring drilling activities at the remote site and an automated system of alarms that alert center staff members to any "out of tolerance" situations requiring attention (Figure 2). Timely access to the data being generated at the remote site and drill-down functionality, among other built-in data viewing and analysis tools, allows headquarters experts to accelerate their reaction times. Overall, with this digital oilfield solution, the operator quickly reduced its nonproductive time on this project by 20%.

Production operations excellence

Optimizing production from all the wells in an operator's portfolio is an ongoing process. Achieving continuous, efficient production rates with minimum workover and equipment costs is every operator's dream. The effective use of capital when well maintenance and rework is required also plays into operational excellence.

Once again, a digital oilfield design that supports these goals requires closely examining the current production process and engineering a workflow to incorporate new capabilities, such as continuous, digital data acquisition from surface facilities and downhole, enhanced data conditioning and distribution, fit-for-purpose data reporting, real-time performance monitoring, digital well operations centers with automated alarm support and remote well control, faster trend detection and analysis, and improved collaboration among decision-makers, among others.

Some digital oilfield applications have resulted in reduction of completion failures of up to 20% thanks to the early detection and avoidance of sand production, and, in some instances, production increases have occurred thanks to more effective field monitoring (Figure 3). An operator in Southeast Asia, for example, has achieved a 3% production increase by deploying a fieldwide surveillance system that enables more rapid and thorough trend analysis of all well systems and thus earlier responses to potential equipment failures and operational inefficiencies.

Integrating reservoir management

The comprehensive development and management of a hydrocarbon reservoir over its lifetime is more feasible given today's advanced digital capabilities. The simulation and modeling processes alone can take full advantage of the most advanced digital capabilities on the market. Vastly complex data integration, analysis, decision-making and feedback loops are involved. Unraveling and reconstructing these workflows to take advantage of advanced digital support is as complicated as it can get in the business world.

To reduce hydrocarbon development cycle time and optimize hydrocarbon recovery, operators strive to improve the quality of decisions that lead to concept selection and well plans. This involves promoting collaboration within and among domains and weaving together a myriad of high-level best practices, workflows (technical and business practices), data management and decision-support schemes, software applications, and knowledge management processes.

Through carefully designed and executed digital oilfield solutions, operators have reported up to 30% reductions in business cycle time, meaning shorter times to first oil, with improved overall reservoir recovery and production levels, as well as greater leverage of shared knowledge and intellectual property.

Lessons learned

Early digital oilfield successes, such as those described, stimulated many operators to launch similar initiatives and attracted a wide variety of information technology (IT) solutions providers to enter the E&P market, most of whom had limited or no prior oilfield experience. However, numerous notable project failures shortly occurred. Digital oilfield transformation programs contain unique characteristics when compared to traditional IT projects in other industries that merit close attention. Failure to do so can lead to project under-delivery and failure.

In each of the case studies given, bringing together a wide range of domains and technologies generated value. Both domain-specific and generic technologies are harnessed, adapted and integrated to deliver a practical digital oilfield solution that supports streamlined processes. Further, digital oilfield frameworks must address high-volume data streams accumulating at fast rates (high-frequency) and countless domain-specific E&P software applications not used by any other industry.

Generic technologies have been standardized and when implemented by any of the many knowledgeable IT players pose little risk, even for digital oilfield implementations. The extent to which generic technologies have been standardized when combined with the significant numbers of knowledgeable IT players on the market render the generic part of a digital oilfield integration project fairly simple. Consequently, the areas of highest risk for such projects are the domain-specific particularities and process challenges

When evaluating a digital oilfield solution be certain that:

• The solution really will deliver operational improvements. Experts with specific, expert knowledge in each domain's processes should be involved on the project design/execution team.

• The particularities of E&P technologies will be considered from the early phases of the project to reduce the risk of designing an unrealistic solution. This risk is especially high in the oil industry and often underestimated by generic IT solutions providers.

• Strong, leading-edge project management methodologies will drive the project. Adapting generic project or program management techniques to the E&P world can be challenging.

To date, significant progress has been made in delivering digital oilfield solutions for a variety of E&P processes. The next steps will require heavy cross-consolidation among the industry's many domains. Pay close attention to the particularities of digital transformation in the E&P industry to avoid costly mistakes.

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