Page 383 - Intelligent Digital Oil And Gas Fields

322 Intelligent Digital Oil and Gas Fields

to increase their spending on digitalisation to 28% of their IT budget in 2018
from 19% in 2016… While companies are still focused on preserving cash
flow, the high-impact nature of digitalisation is proving so attractive that
companies want to spend money on it…”(Pipeline Staff, 2017). In another
example, in a 2017 World Oil article Exxon Mobil’s chief computational
scientist is quoted as saying, the “oil patch’s digital transformation will be
comparable to horizontal drilling’s tech revolution” (Endress, 2017) (which,
of course, was the game-changing technology that enabled the shale gas rev-
olution, among other major industry achievements). Furthermore, the
report states that “…he predicts the digitalization of oilfield equipment
and operations will continue for the foreseeable future, due to future com-
petitive advantages and untold economic value” (Endress, 2017).
This final chapter highlights a few of the exciting technologies that are in
development or are being envisioned for the digital oil field (DOF) of the
future.
Chapters 1–8 present DOF technology and processes that today are state
of the art and have been documented in the technical literature. It is impos-
sible for anyone to know all that is coming in the near future. So we have
enlisted some help from some industry experts to provide their insights for
technologies they see for the future and highlight a few technical areas that
will impact O&G production. Our panel includes company CEOs, engi-
neers, and scientists in companies ranging from large national and interna-
tional to midsize independent oil companies and service providers.
We hope these chapters have led you to the conclusion that
implementing DOF has the potential to transform O&G companies, to
allow them to manage their operations and businesses more efficiently.
However, through 2017, it is estimated that less than 25% of all companies
(national and international oil companies and service companies) have
applied or introduced DOF concepts in many of their internal processes.
Only 10% of the total process and workflows are actually automated. We
can argue that this low implementation rate is due to lack of experience
and a slow approach to making internal process changes.
A number of exploration and production (E&P) companies have estab-
lished that the main priorities of DOF investment can be classified as follows:
• improving people’s safety in high-risk areas and protecting process
security;
• cybersecurity, data protection, and data sharing;
• expanded connectivity and communication across the fields, operation
centers, well locations, separator batteries, tank farms, office, and
terminals;