American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2018 - 100

SpecialReport: Automation & Digital Fields

Digitization Drives Asset Performance
By Stig Settemsdal
and Mirko Wutkewicz
HOUSTON-Far off Norway's coastline, the oil and gas industry's future is
on display in the form of a state-ofthe-art "smart" production platform stationed in more than 325 feet of water
in the North Sea. Aker BP's Ivar Aasen
platform, which is producing 60,000
barrels of oil a day, employs advanced
digitalization, Internet of Things and
automation technologies stretching from
the pumps on the field's seven subsea
wells to the platform's massive topsides
towering above the frigid and often ferocious seas.
In fact, Ivar Aasen's digital data threads
extend much farther than the automated
process control systems on the platform.
Equipment conditions are remotely monitored in real time by technicians located
some 600 miles away in an onshore
control room in Trondheim, and additional
phases of digitalization are under way.
Aker BP's digital approach to asset
performance management has made its
low-manned Ivar Aasen platform possible
and practical while showcasing how the
company will achieve a publicly stated
goal of cutting production costs to less
than $7 per barrel of oil equivalent in the

years to come. This ambition reflects
how, whether on- or offshore, operators
are determined to lower production costs
by intelligent applications of technology.
As oil prices continue to recover, lower
costs mean higher profits. But when future
downturns happen, as they inevitably will
in the cyclical oil and gas industry, lower
costs will help soften their financial impacts.
Digitalization is driving a generational transformation across the entire
oil and gas industry value chain, from
upstream operations to midstream transmission and downstream refining and
distribution. Clipboards and manual
data collection quickly are becoming
relics of the past, giving way to a future
of real-time data collection and analytics
propelled by artificial intelligence and
machine learning. Human technicians
can get alerts on their smartphones or
tablets anywhere they have a connection
and use wireless devices as their human/machine interfaces and data dashboards to remotely diagnose operational
issues, and in many cases, remediate
them.
The same digitally driven transformations are occurring in just about every
industry around the globe. Moreover, applications developed in one industry quick-

The Ivar Aasen platform in the North Sea employs advanced digitalization, Internet of
Things and automation technologies extending from the pumps on the ﬁeld's subsea
wells to an onshore control room 600 miles away that remotely monitors in real time
equipment conditions and automated process control systems on the platform.

100 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

ly are being adapted for use in others.
While this article is focused on production,
a good example of cross-industry adoption
of digital solutions is a breakthrough in
offshore digital oil and gas seafloor mapping enabled by employing ultrasound
image analytical techniques initially developed for the healthcare industry.
In the past, analyzing marine ultrasound
or multibeam echo-sounding (MBES)
data was expensive and time-consuming,
with accuracies of less than 80 percent.
But digitalization is changing that. In
ocean testing, next-generation MBES
processing software is boosting accuracy
to 95 percent using advanced ultrasound
image analytics. Given the financial risk
inherent in offshore drilling and development projects, the enhanced resolution
is a huge benefit.
The analytical capabilities of the new
software also make it up to four times
faster than previous-generation MBES
solutions, which means decisions can
be taken on follow-up steps with a high
degree of certainty while still on board
the surveying vessel. Considering that
survey vessels can cost tens of thousands
of dollars a day to operate, using this
new tool not only makes offshore oil
and gas MBES surveying operations
more efficient, but results in substantial
savings. This is only one of an almost
countless number of examples of how
digital technologies are revolutionizing
upstream workflows and processes, regardless of whether those technologies
originate within the oil and gas sector
or external industries.
Strategic Imperative
For its part, Aker BP considers digitalization to be a strategic imperative for
many reasons for Ivar Aasen and its other
producing assets. Among them are the
ability to:
* Execute operational plans for exploration, drilling and production efficiently and effectively;
* Keep operations and personnel safe
and well within regulatory compliance;
and
* Build a flexible business model
ready for profitable growth and cyclical
volatility.
The company has expanded the digitalization of its asset performance management on the Ivar Aasen platform since
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