Insight-driven digital engineering solutions can help companies meet profitability, sustainability goals

By Nimi Abili, Shashi Kapoor, Nisar Ahamad * Capgemini Engineering

The offshore oil and gas industry is undergoing fundamental change as it transitions into “industry 4.0” – automating processes with both sensors and actuators and incorporating edge computing. These new technologies are enabling remote intelligent operations, production optimization, predictive maintenance, enhanced energy efficiency and improved cognitive safety.

These improvements have been made possible with embedded data insight, hyper-automation and enhanced agility across production assets. The objectives have been to increase productivity, deliver cost savings, and improve customer experience.

By leveraging digital solution accelerators (AI, ML, IoT, digital twins, edge computing, data analytics) and application programmable interfaces (APIs), these digital native products can give operations teams the ability to manage IT infrastructure using configuration files. Adopting insight-driven digital engineering solutions is crucial for the offshore industry to remain resilient, profitable, and sustainable in meeting net-zero carbon emissions.

Over the years, the offshore industry’s needs for data have grown and evolved. Real-time data must be accessible on any device, be predictive, and organized to facilitate collaboration, instead of being buried in silos. The energy industry is changing rapidly, going through business consolidation, market diversification, and digital transformation.

Designing for speed in an EPC development project without compromising quality relies on digital information from concept to FEED, to inform an efficient digital engineering solution. This type of solution has enabled operators get to a final investment decision up to 45% faster than they would have otherwise. A recent typical case involved an EPC company that was able to reduce their engineering software and technology portfolio from over 175 distinct products down to less than 32. This solution helped the EPC firm execute its services on a greenfield development in the Gulf of Mexico more quickly and efficiently. This was achieved with an expedited evaluation of concepts through process simulation software, automated facility layout, piping designs with digital solution accelerators, and coordinated estimates tied to the engineering information.

With over 180 digital solution accelerator models deployed in the first year of operating this field, the solution correctly identified 49 major early warnings, which brought $16.8 million in savings by avoiding lost or downtime incidents. From the 49 warnings, 11 would have been high-impact incidents. Also, the digital solution accelerators were able to spot an instrumentation fault in a liquid separator with IoT enabled data sensors, which saved $210,000 in potential asset failure. The solution enabled the operator to accurately predict failures ahead of time and resolve potential equipment issues before they occurred.

An additional recent case study in the Gulf of Mexico further bolsters the case for digital solutions accelerators. In this case, the client company, seeking to advance a brownfield project, was able to halve the false positive rate in downhole event detection by calibrating the model for individual wells. This was achieved through an agile software configuration that validated and improved the original algorithm, and investigated the causes of false alarms. This in turn enabled intuitive interactions with a wide range of data-feeds collected from downhole sensors. With the deployment of LoRaWAN (long-range wide-area networks) technology for IoT connectivity, the digital solution accelerators augmented the downhole sensors for data insights.

This ensured a significant reduction of false alarms on standard and deviated wells in a short six-month timeframe, on a job that would have otherwise taken more than nine months to achieve. With this type of solution, when an operator invests in a mature asset management digital strategy, they are much better positioned to ensure that it maximizes the highest ROI on legacy production systems, aging or otherwise.

With support from the design process to production optimization and intelligent operations – now enabled with integrated digital solution accelerators – EPC companies and offshore operators can explore and optimize economic options quickly, and boost efficiency on after-market operations. This would provide operators with the highest value from their production assets.