document preview

Abstract

Digital Oil Field, Computer Assisted Operations, Smart Fields and iFields are some of the names coined by different E&P Companies for processes that promise to use real time Information Technology to radically change the way the Oil and Gas business is run and is so doing enable significant business benefit.

The Digital Oil Field(DOF) has been the subject of much publicity and further development over recent years. However, there was also much DOF-related activity over prior decades, in which oil companies made their operations’ progressively smarter using a combination of IT, instrument engineering, telecommunications and change management.

The intent of this document is to chronicle some of the learning’s from DOF’s history, initially from a Shell E&P perspective, as this is the author’s bias. However, it is hoped that this will spark similar historic learning’s from other Shell individuals and other E&P companies and that these thoughts and lessons be used to “grow” towards a more comprehensive view.

Winston Churchill said “Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets.” Looking at DOF through the lens of one person’s experience is hardly history, but may give some clues regarding how to do “it” and how not to do “it.”

This paper will trace DOF historic developments from the author’s personal perspective and tease-out the issues then and now, providing an insight into where we have been, where we are now and what can be practically achieved.

Definition of DOF for Oil/Gas Fields from Reservoir to Point-of-Sale

To provide context for this analysis it is appropriate to define what DOF is aspiring to achieve. DOF is the deployment of people, processes and technology, in pursuit of production, safety and technical integrity improvement, by timely, effective and sustained use of, sufficient, good, production information.

DOF is inherently multi-disciplinary e.g. Production, Instrument, Reservoir Engineer, Petroleum Technologist, Process Engineer, Telecoms, Information Technology

Chronology and Associated Learning’s

In the following, the term “Digital Oil Field” is used throughout for consistency, even though the term did not come into use until the millennium. DOF has evolved over the last 40 years as follows:

-          Electronic instrumentation on the wells and RTU/SCADA (“devices” to digitize, serialize and modulate telecommunications signals to a remote computer)

-          Electronic instrumentation on the surface process (separators, compressors, pumps) acquired by SCADA

-          Distributed Control Systems starting to replace/complement SCADA in the mid-eighties

-          Subsea Control Systems from the mid-nineties

-          Downhole instrumentation from the mid-nineties

-          Growing emphasis on management of change issues progressively over the last 30 years  

A brief overview of DOF experiences over the last four decades follows, summarizing key learning’s for each era.