Fibre optics are the backbone of the computer technology that makes integrated operations possible. Large quantities of data can be transferred in real time between the platforms of the North Sea and the control centres on land.
A new way of working
Integrated Operations (IO) is changing everything about the way we work together in the oil and gas industry. In the complex world of offshore operations, dozens of suppliers and hundreds of employees are spread between different ships, platforms, and land-based locations. Not only that, but they rely on a vast array of high technology systems to get the job done.
Integrated Operations is about tying all these suppliers, employees and systems together on a common platform – vastly improving the overview and information available to everyone involved, irrespective of their location. Making it all possible is the backbone of the system: the fibre optic networking that was installed in the late 1990s in the North Sea.
It’s the offshore equivalent of your broadband connection at home – and in the same way as broadband, one quickly becomes dependent on the multitude of opportunities that it provides. You might take a high-speed data connection for granted at home or at the office, but it’s an altogether different matter in the hostile environment of the North Sea.
Traditionally, offshore platforms have been largely self-reliant communities far from land, tiny dots of lights on the horizon of the dark North Sea, with experts either permanently stationed offshore, or flown out to be on location for complex operations.
Traditionally, offshore platforms have been separate entities far from land. With integrated operations, they can work closely with the land-based organisation.
Now, Integrated Operations offers a whole new approach to working together and sharing information. It means that the experts can be anywhere – onshore, offshore, on a different platform, or even in another country. This way, specialists are able to provide their expertise to several platforms or office locations without needing to travel offshore.
Obviously, this saves costs but more important, it improves the quality and speed of decision-making, leading to benefits such as more accurate well hole placement when drilling, increased oil recovery and more efficient production. In 2006, this amounted to a not insignificant increase in revenue of NOK 9 billion that could be directly attributed to Integrated Operations – and the long term potential is far larger. OLF has updated the estimated the value from Integrated Operations on the NCS to 300 Mill NOK during the next 10 years.
With integrated operations, specialists can offer their expertise to several platforms or offices at once, without having to travel offshore.
Real time data
The key to making it work is connectivity – meaning that people are connected everywhere in the world and that real time information is transmitted instantaneously by high-speed data connection anywhere in the world, to anyone who needs it.
Now imagine the possibilities: that means that staff in an office onshore can see the same instrument readings from a drilling operation as the operators offshore, they can see the oil and gas throughput on a production platform – or a land-based doctor can follow a heart attack patient’s electrocardiogram (ECG), even though the patient is offshore.
While the IO initiative is in many ways about bringing people, information and processes together, it’s also about bringing them onshore. By exploiting the benefits offered by IO, we’re able to migrate key processes from our platforms to our onshore facilities. In making our processes less location dependent, we’re gaining a whole new level of efficiency and flexibility in the way we deploy our personnel. By stemming the outflow of experienced workers, Integrated Operations is helping preserve our valuable assets — our employees’ knowledge.
