What’s being said at ADIPEC 2022?

By Ariana Hurtado, Editor and Director of Special Reports

The annual ADIPEC conference and exhibition, taking place from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3 in Abu Dhabi, brings together 150,000 energy professionals, leaders and policymakers.

Offshore caught up with some of the industry experts visiting ADIPEC 2022 this week. These thought leaders, each of which is with a company speaking at the conference this year, provided their perspectives on where the offshore energy sector stands and the areas that need to be addressed heading into 2023.

MONDAY

Treating methane emissions

“Unabated methane emissions are one of the most urgent issues facing offshore operators today. Eliminating these emissions is one of the best short-term opportunities for contributing to climate change mitigation, and viable technologies exist today to solve the problem. I would encourage operators to join the Aiming For Zero Methane Emissions Initiative, an industry-led project that calls for an all-in approach that treats methane emissions as seriously as the oil and gas industry already treats safety. We are aiming for zero and striving to do what is needed to get there.”

—Bjorn Otto Sverdrup, Chair of Executive Committee, Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI)

Expanding offshore production

“Offshore energy production is essential for the energy and national security of our nation and that of our allies. Global energy demand is increasing and is expected to do so for decades to come. All energy resources are needed to meet growing worldwide demand. Every day, the energy services sector is innovating, developing and implementing new technologies that lead to cleaner, more efficient energy production. To expand offshore production, we need a level regulatory playing field, a full resumption of offshore lease sales, increased investment opportunities in infrastructure and workforce development, and a stop to the negative rhetoric about the industry. I’m optimistic about the future of offshore energy development and know our workforce will be in the forefront of its success.”

—Leslie Beyer, CEO, Energy Workforce and Technology Council

Addressing offshore wind challenges

“Oceans are an abundant source of energy for countries with coastal areas, which deployed at scale reduces the dependency on generation linked to the volatility of fossil fuel prices as observed in the current energy crisis in Europe. Moreover, offshore wind is a necessity if we are to realize an energy transition scenario aligned with the Paris Agreement Accord. To reach this goal, cumulative installed capacity for offshore wind will need to be 380 GW by 2030 and more than 2,000 GW by 2050, which is a far cry from the 55.7 GW installed capacity in 2021, according to IRENA analysis. More needs to be done with some key challenges being cost volatilities across GVCs, long permitting processes and low utilization of national marine spatial planning. To address these challenges, IRENA is leveraging its Collaborative Framework on Offshore Renewables to foster the dialogue amongst member countries on these topics. Furthermore, together with Denmark and the Global Wind Energy Council, IRENA has launched the Global Offshore Wind Alliance to remove existing offshore wind project obstacles in member countries. IRENA remains committed to leverage its cross-cutting capacities to ensure that we can reach the 2 TW of installed capacity by 2050.”

—Roland Roesch, Acting Director, IRENA’s Innovation and Technology Center

TUESDAY

Investment in offshore developments

“As industry aims to strike an equitable and pragmatic balance of efficient, responsible and sustainable energy, the key challenge facing offshore developers today is ensuring maximum production while reducing carbon intensity. Over the medium term, significant investment will be made in offshore developments in the Middle East to meet the increasing demand for supply and, at Wood, we remain focused on engineering solutions to optimize production while reducing carbon impact across the region.”

—Mike Collins, Executive President, Projects, Wood Plc

Lower-carbon offshore solutions

“Many offshore operators face a daily challenge: how can they increase production and minimize their carbon footprint? The solution requires a combination of sensor data, data analytics, electrical controls, and highly reliable subsea and subsurface equipment. Today, Halliburton and TechnipFMC collaborate to provide this combined solution in an all-electro-optic system architecture for wells. This enables a step change in operational efficiency with less production deferment and improved reservoir management. In 2023 this alliance will continue to support all electric well completion architecture as well as riser-less light well intervention and CCUS efforts.”

—Michael Segura, Senior Vice President, Completions and Production division, Halliburton

WEDNESDAY

Maintaining safety and enabling sustainability

“The key issue today is meeting production objectives, while also minimizing emissions. This will take embracing new monitoring and control technology solutions, so that we can find and fix problems faster. Offshore leaders need to understand that it is time to embrace new opportunities that maintain safety and enable sustainability. By taking action in the upcoming year or two, we will be able to achieve net-zero goals for 2030 and beyond.”

—Peter Harding, Founder and CEO, Kelvin

Criticality of digital transformation

“One of the energy industry’s main targets is to contribute positively towards the energy transition. The industry has recognized that it can drive the transition forward in two ways: by broadening its own investments in energy production, while making its existing energy operations more efficient and lessening their impact on the environment. Digital transformation will be critical for enabling these efficiencies and environmental improvements, as greater access to data will help operators more quickly identify opportunities to improve and deliver on these goals. What’s needed are powerful AI-driven software capabilities to get more value out of data and the power of hybrid cloud to enable insights to be shared cross borders. The need to meet ever-growing energy demands in a safer yet more efficient way whilst also navigating increasing regulatory and environmental requirements will continue to drive the industry to increased digitalization across all component parts of production. The key focus areas will continue a path to autonomous operations, edge devices, security, wearables with a focus on safety and increased use of robotics, which require increased connectivity via private 5G deployment for near-shore and offshore operations.”

—Zahid Habib, Vice President, Global Industry Leader, Energy & Resources IBM Consulting

Adapting to new offshore wind regions

"While the offshore wind market is growing globally, our customers are facing increased levels of competition, which places obvious pressure on price and profitability of their wind portfolios. At Amazon Web Services [AWS], we work with the largest offshore wind developers and show them how they can leverage their data and their experience to optimize the performance of their projects to maximize their opportunities. Our customers are looking to export their offshore wind experience in Europe to the East Coast of the United States, and then beyond in the coming years. It is important to adapt their knowledge to the new regions they are entering and tighten their business models. Simulation and forecasting increase the level of confidence our customers have in entering new markets and helps them reaffirm their confidence in the outcome. We are focused on building the foundation to support the data collection through our IoT platforms for offshore wind developers, and leverage our toolset to build digital twins of their operating assets that can easily be ported to new regions globally, and investing in robotics and autonomous navigation to reduce the costs of operations for the life of their assets."

—Scott Sanderson, Director Global Business Development, Energy & Utilities, AWS

Data-led dividend pays off

"Decarbonization and climate change have emerged as the major issue facing the offshore sector, where asset managers must comply with more stringent emissions regulations, in addition to promoting better health and safety, dealing with remote working and retiring staff, and improving value from existing assets in a constrained operating environment. Offshore industry leaders now understand how robust digital transformation can help achieve these goals. Advanced industrial applications and analytics tools, such as digital twins, machine learning and predictive maintenance systems go a long way to tackling these challenges. When this data is made available across the entire enterprise and visualized in a single interface, it unlocks actionable intelligence and supports real-time decision-making, besides improving asset efficiency and life cycles, reducing engineering time, enhancing collaboration anytime and anywhere. One way of understanding how this data-led dividend pays off is by looking at the digital twin, which brings the operational work to the worker. For Norway-based Lundin, for example, a 3D visualization enables operators in distributed locations to view the different parts of a plant and collaborate around a single source of truth to view, plan and schedule tasks that can then be executed on site. With targeted information, it takes a smaller team less time to execute jobs onsite—saving manhours and resources. Digital technology is already delivering the next leap in productivity for offshore industries."

—Peter Herweck, CEO, AVEVA

Check back for updates to this ADIPEC 2022 feature.

11.02.2022