At a time when great importance is being placed on optimising recovery and improving safety, oil and gas companies worldwide have begun to adopt myriads of technologies to improve operations and keep personnel out of harm’s way.
From floating data centres and wireless communication systems to fibre optic cables and 3D modelling, offshore rig technology is fast evolving and increasing in complexity.
Over the past few years, great strides have been made in developing technology for real-time communication, making the distance between the field and rig shorter than ever.
Per Helge Svensson, managing director of Tampnet, one of the companies involved in providing the world’s largest offshore high capacity communication network, said: “In the North Sea, we have 2,500km of subsea fibre connected from the shore to different platforms in the UK and Norway. We have a large infrastructure combining subsea fibre, radio link systems and 4G systems.
“Some of the main advantages of all this technology is that it allows you to take the right decisions at the right time without having to fly people in helicopters to the platforms.”
Data shows that investment in offshore technology has been siginificant, with as much as $341.2mn being spent last year on distributed fibre optic sensing alone. But such progress has not been apparent in the Middle East, with some in the region playing catch-up.
“We know that Saudi Aramco has deployed a subsea fibre infrastructure connecting platforms (but not as a commercialised system) to the shore so the i-field is part of the Middle East. The National Oil Companies (NOCs) have deployed some of it and they operate it themselves,” said Svensson.
With the exception of Saudi Aramco and a few other Gulf NOCs, the majority of oil and gas companies in the region, particularly those operating in brownfields, mainly use what have now started to be considered as outdated satellite communication systems.
“If you want to remotely operate, you have to have real time operation and when you have a latency of 600 milliseconds, it is quite difficult to make a decision in a real time perspective. If you want to have something in real time, it has to be below 40 milliseconds,” said Svensson.
“There are many applications that companies cannot install if they only have satellites, [which] have limited capacity and it is also quite expensive to have a 10MB and above.”
Another bespoke ITC system, commonly marketed as 4G LTE, has become an absolute must in the digital offshore field, says Asfar Zaidi, principal consultant for Huawei, Enterprise, Middle East.
“We maintain that the backbone of all of our offshore and digital oilfield technology solutions is a strong LTE (Long-Term Evolution) communications network. Before addressing any project within the oil and gas sector, we recommend that operators invest in their communications network infrastructure, as this will provide the agility to add more complex technology layers,” he adds.
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Once implemented, this so-called ‘seamless system’ can provide LTE wireless coverage for oil drilling platforms, floating production storage and offloading units, oil tankers and onshore communication stations offering voice communications, data transmission and video services.
“Traditional communications use satellite for remote voice communications and helicopters to transport data on hard disks, which is both inefficient and costly. In an effort to maximise efficiencies, oil companies are increasingly building integrated operational practices which are based on more offshore personnel completing their work onshore,” said Zaidi.
As a result, more intelligent devices on the seabed and downhole have been coming into use, says Mark Claxton, director of Tessella’s energy division.
“Instead of spending a lot of time and money doing multiple workovers, by using more intelligent valves, for example, with multiple capabilities, [operators] can effectively get things done quicker and cheaper.
As the era of easy-to-access and low-cost oil and gas production is coming to an end, the strategic importance of the offshore industry is only becoming more pronounced, Zaidi adds.
“Producers seek to maximise production from existing fields and tackle heavier oil in more unconventional situations. To do that, digital oilfield technologies are essential to capturing and organising the incredible amount of data being collected from offshore operations.
“Improved technology is also making oil exploration and refinement more profitable and eLTE is playing an increasingly important role in oil and gas recovery.”
The acquisition of real-time or on-time data from oil wells and field operations, Zaidi says, can also help to optimise oil production. This is where big data analytics comes in, offering more accurate predictive functionalities to drive efficiencies in oil drilling, he adds.
Another major trend making waves in the oil and gas field is the so called ‘on-board processing’, where real-time data is analysed by people on the rig itself. Chris Hawkins, operations manager at Tessella, explains.
“There is a real move from the experts working in the office post-processing data to understand continual improvements and lessons. This supports real-time decisions and makes information available right where it is needed, in the user-interfaces that the drillers are using on the rigs by pushing that analytics capability on to the on-board rig applications.”
Hawkins is of the opinion that thanks to all the latest tools available to offshore drillers, operations are moving from a reactive to a more proactive and preventive mode.
“There is an awful lot of data coming to the rig that is being visualised and then replicated to shore and in offices. Post-processing of that data was the norm but looking at trends, I think more and more decision making and advice is coming in real time now and lot of that has been pushed out to rig-based applications,” he said.
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“Monitoring stations are no longer producing plots of various variables; they are now looking for correlations between data sources or comparing data to previous runs to give you early warnings that you should expect a problem in the next 200m of data.”
This enhanced connectivity between the rig and the shore will likely change the way operators work. The industry is going to move from using standalone installations solving problems on their own, to a more collective, joined up and standardised approach, Claxton explains.
“You have got a rig stuck in the middle of nowhere that might be very hot, cold or wet and the connection to the head office might be a satellite link or fibre. But you are basically at the end of a long piece of wire, the bandwidth is very slow so you have to decide what could be done from a remote location and what could be done back at base.
“You also need to have this concept of shared situational awareness so that people on the rig and people back in the headquarters and in control need to be able to see the same things. If there is a problem that people on the rig find challenging, they can call one of their colleagues back at mission control and share with them what is going on. That I believe is where the industry is going in the next 20 years or so. It is an era that does not seem to have started yet in this sector. To be able to have somebody on a rig looking at a large piece of plant, lots of pipes, insulation on the pipes, but there is a corrosion problem that actually needs to get located and inspected visually.
“Somebody back at headquarters has run the models, they know there is a potential problem on that particular curve of the pipe.
“There is no reason why you cannot use an augmented reality, where they hold up a tablet with the cameras recording the pipework and it is flashing red in particular areas they have got to look at. The advantages for the industry are massive. They could save them an awful lot of time and money hunting around for things.”
“However, the challenge is to get that information to the engineer standing on the rig.”
Brandy Wong, business representative for Shandong Kerui Petroleum Equipment in the UAE, says that integrating wireless and digital technology holds a number of benefits for the industry, one of which is ease of control. Some of the most sought after product lines on the market are around wireless and digital solutions, satellite communications and remote control, according to Wong. “By eliminating the risk of wire breakage, they make operations safer, more efficient and accurate,” he adds.
“In addition, health, safety and environmental standards require drilling operations to be safer and environmentally sound. Rig operations are energy intensive with significant amount of electric power being consumed by the various processes required to drill the wells into the reservoirs. Automation has made rigs and platforms safer and more efficient,” he concluded.
Bernard Sanseau, drilling manager at Total Abu Al Bukhoosh, is also of the opinion that digital technologies are an absolute asset to maintaining safety both offshore and onshore. “
“Automation can bring additional layers of safety for the crew and the people on the rig floor. Years ago, drilling personnel would stand for up to 12 hours on the rig floor. Now it is possible to work remotely from a ‘cyber chair’, so it’s a completely different way of looking at things,” Last month, new fibre-optic communication cable was commissioned for delivery to the Umm Shaif platform in the Nasr field near Abu Dhabi operated by ADMA-OPCO.
The deal is part of a recent modernisation project estimated to add 65,000 barrels per day to exisiting production. However, despite all its benefits, automation can bring in a number of challenges.
“It is like with modern cars, there are a lot of devices that make things easier, but you still have the human element and you have to be focused. In our business that demands a high level of training and professionalism at all times,” said Sanseau.
The dream of automated rigs involves software-controlled electromechanical systems with system integrated from a large number of disparate vendors. But all too often, the best technologies cannot make it to the field due to compatability issues.
Sanseau said: “Automation can also involve a variety of equipment working in one place at the same time, so you need to carry out additional verification procedures to ensure the different units can work together without interference. Therefore, it demands greater efficiency and time management discipline on the part of the drilling units to optimise productivity.
“It is meant to make things faster, but in fact sometimes you find they take longer than before. Using tripping times as an example, 30 years ago, we might do 1,000m per hour in a casing. Today, even the best rigs, using specific drill pipes, achieve a maximum of 700m per hour, and the average is around 500m.”
