With the help of technological advances, oil and gas companies are now capable of mapping the real world into a digital realm mirrored by digital twins. The technology creates a virtual model of assets that are identical to the subject and can be updated in real time. Digital twin technology has helped companies around the world make better decisions. The ability to simulate operating parameters has had a profound impact on decision-making procedures. The rise of the nternet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cloud computing fuelled the adoption of the digital twin model by industry-leading companies.
The inaugural Future Digital Twin 2021 conference, organised by Cavendish Group International, gathered more than 1,000 oil, gas and energy professionals from over 600 organisations in 75 countries around the globe on 26–27 May 2021.
The latest Future offering from Cavendish, Future Digital Twin, was launched as a direct response to the high level of delegate interest generated during the digital twin technology streams at Future Oil and Gas in December 2020 and Future Downstream in March 2021.
During the two-day conference, an incredible line-up of operators – including Shell, Equinor, Petrobras, Aramco Overseas, bp, Chevron, Eni, and Repsol – suppliers, technology companies, and digital experts offered insight and guidance on incorporating a digital twin and ensuring best practice throughout the product life cycle. From panel sessions to informative presentations and workshop breakout sessions, Future Digital Twin examined how a company creates a digital twin identity, the behaviours required in exploring innovation, and implementing a collaborative and productive working culture. Stories were also shared on how adopting a digital twin can drive decarbonisation and help combat cyber-attacks, extracting value, and most importantly, how to get started.
In his welcome address, Adam Soroka, Managing Director of Cavendish Group, said: “The aim of Future Digital Twin is to break down the communication silos and offer transparency on the challenges, opportunities and value that digital twin technology brings to an oil company. Developing the digital twin concept is complex, but the facts suggest that the financial rewards make it a worthwhile investment.
Shell, one of the keynote speakers at Future Digital Twins, was one of several oil companies to embrace the new technology. In the opening keynote speech, Shell’s Vice President of Upstream Digital Transformation, Lee Hodder, emphasised the importance of the new technology in the upstream process and how it can effectively enable everything from early-stage concept selection through simulation to production optimisation and predictive maintenance.
“We’re monitoring more than 6,000 pieces of equipment in real-time across our upstream-downstream integrator gas businesses, and we’ve enabled over 5,000 workers on the front line with iPads with our connected worker programme. We’ve ingested about three trillion rows of data in our data lakes,” added Hodder.
Advisory Committee member and Senior Vice President for Digital Energy at Kongsberg Digital, Shane McArdle, said: “The Advisory Committee aimed to intrigue and inspire those people wanting to deepen their understanding of a digital twin and also to positively challenge those people in organisations already familiar with the concept to continue to innovate around what a digital twin means.
“Digital twin is no longer a tool for incremental improvement but a transformative technology with powerful potential. But it’s no magic silver bullet that will solve all our problems – it is the cumulative effect of lots of use cases that will provide real value today and tomorrow.”
Other keynote presentations punctuating the event were delivered by Equinor’s Vice President of Low Carbon Solutions, Steinar Eikaas, who talked about the role of blue and green hydrogen together with carbon, capture, and storage (CCS) in enabling a net-zero carbon energy system. Equinor’s impressive CCS and hydrogen portfolio for hard-to-abate sectors includes Net Zero Teesside, Northern Lights, Northern Endurance Partnership, Zero Carbon Humber and NortH2. According to Eikaas, Equinor aims to fully decarbonise the Humber region by 2040, which is a huge step as it is the UK’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide.
During the two-day conference, key industry players from both the oil and gas and tech fields, have shared insights about how digital twins play a prominent role in decision making processes and how it will rapidly become standard for every new asset and a growing number of existing facilities. One day, the industry will exist in both the physical and virtual worlds, with the feedback between the two boosting production, asset life, efficiency and, crucially, safety.
