Digital oilfield technology, competence, and related products are the focus of Sense Intellifield. Since the Kristiansand-based company took its first order for BP’s Valhall drilling operations center in 2002, it has gone on to deliver over 85 such systems.
In the Norwegian sector, where e-field development has reached an advanced stage, the company has supplied all the systems used by ConocoPhillips and Norsk Hydro, and many of those used by Statoil. Its e-field market share in the North Sea may be over 90%, according to senior vice president Erik Zachariasen.
“Every day, over 1,000 personnel in the North Sea use the company’s systems and facilities for real-time operations,” he says. “Projects for Brunei Shell Petroleum and CNOOC in China are also indications of the growing interest being shown in other oil-producing areas.”
The company’s expertise lies in integrating data and media from all kinds of sources and making them available in user-friendly forms, in real-time, to the onshore support teams. These teams can then provide efficient and rapid support, responding to events as they happen on the drill floor or in production. Increasingly, they include the sub-suppliers and service companies involved in the operations.
Significant cost savings are possible, Zachariasen says, through making operational decisions better, more efficient, and faster, and reducing the need for personnel to travel offshore. For example, ConocoPhillips in Norway says it is saving $20 million a year through its onshore drilling center, and it recently inaugurated an onshore production center.
Sense Intellifield provides a full range of services for establishing onshore support and collaboration centers. Real-time data management is performed via the SiteCom proprietary suite of software tools. This includes the SiteCom Sensor Converter that acquires data with different protocols and formats and translates them in real time to the WITSML industry standard format.
Real-time visualization is achieved through the Sense Discovery visualization package, which reads data from any WITSML compatible provider, giving the viewer easy access to all data in seconds. It can integrate data from various sources, bringing real-time drilling, geological, geophysical, and other relevant data to the desks of all those involved in the drilling operation.•
Sense Intellifield has supplied core technology to most onshore operations rooms in Norway, including ConocoPhillips’ onshore drilling center, as shown here.
