Tag: Internet of Things

Looking for inspiration

I like to look across sources for analogy and stimulating ideas. A couple of things have recently caught my eye.

I find it amazing how hard it is for people (including me) to see the implications of new technologies and ways of working. In retrospect, once a change has happened, it’s obvious what the outcome would have to be. But when the change is happening it’s not so clear.

Going up

Ground floor
Perfumery, stationary, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food. Going up…

Can you remember the theme tune to Are You Being Served?

I’m old enough to remember the lift operators in Aberdeen’s E&M and Watt & Grant department stores. They were replaced by automated lifts in about 1980. The stores have both succumbed – one to the shopping mall, the other a victim to digital retail.

Being a lift operator was a skilled profession, making sure that you stopped the elevator car level with the floor and opening the concertina iron-work doors with the brass handles.  Apparently New York’s last lift operator was only made redundant in 2009 Link

The Economist 1843 magazine just ran a story making the connection between the elevator operators strike and the adoption of self-driving cars. We could probably do the same with roles in the oil field.

The elevator strikes in 1945-47 crippled the city, and led to calls to redesign the city so that only low-rise development was permitted – to reduce the power of unions.

Of course, the answer was – as we know – automated elevators. But a lot of change management was required before people started to use them. Innovations such as emergency stop buttons, telephones for help and recorded announcements all came about in this time.

I’ll wager that we will look back at some of the manual ways of operating an oilfield we use today in the same way was we look back at the anachronism of the elevator operator.

Electricity – who’d want that?

Another story that I picked up on and found illustrated a point was this one [Link]. It’s written by the BBC’s Tim Harford. He asked and answered the question why did it take so long for electricity to displace steam in the factories in the North of England. It was decades after the invention that it was fully adopted.

He explained that it required a redesign of factories before the economics made enough sense for people to abandon centrally powered manufacturing and move to individually powered machines. We’ll see the same adoption economics in oil field operations and technologies such as 3D printing.

Digital Marketing – a lesson for oil and gas?

Today I found another article that resonated. This one is from Marketing Week [Link]

Mark Ritson makes the case that the separation between Digital Marketing teams and Traditional Marketing is ridiculous. What I think he’s saying echoes my point that there should be no separation between “IT” and “The Business”, because IT needs to be just how things are done around here. It’s true in Marketing, it’s true in Oil and Gas too.

“… On the one hand you need to avoid being precious about your digital creds. Signal early you are entirely comfortable losing the D prefix from your title and, for good measure, add something re-assuring like ‘I do not even know what digital means anymore’ or ‘isn’t everything digital now?’.

The merger process means that anyone who is a member of the extreme digerati will be the victim of the new regime. You know the type: obsessed with AI, convinced in the long-term value of VR, boastful that they don’t own a TV. They will be the first to go when the revolution comes.

Digital experience is a prerequisite

But make no mistake, it’s no good proclaiming that digital is wank and it’s time to get back to basics, pull all the money from Facebook and get it back into ‘proper’ media. The post-digital era cuts both ways.

While idiot digerati will be exposed, so too will those who aren’t open to the potential of all the new research and media options that have appeared over the past decade. When Alastair Pegg, the leading marketer at Co-op Bank, noted that that there was “no such thing as digital marketing” he followed up with the corollary that “all marketing is digital marketing”.

I think I can see the parallels between what he’s saying is happening in Marketing now, and what will overtake the world of Oil and Gas operations in the next 3-5 years. What do you think?

O&G –Development, Projects and Industry 4.0

In an earlier post [link] I introduced four areas of the Oil and Gas value chain that would change because of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). In this post I am going to present some ideas about what might change the activities occurring between finding a deposit of oil and gas and going into production.

There are four widely recognised phases during this period I’ll label these: Concept, Design, Construction and Commissioning.

There are many interacting functions contributing to this process besides engineering. These include: Project Controls, Stakeholder Management, Finance, Legal, Risk, Marketing, Contracting & Procurement. Because oil projects tend to range from 100’s of millions to 10’s of billions of dollars these activities can have more impact on a project’s viability than the engineering.

In this post I am not going to consider the changes that I4.0 will bring to the underlying technology deployed in a field (such as intelligent completions, sub-sea completion systems etc.) but rather will concentrate on the operator process of bringing a field from discovery to on-line production and how this may change.

CONCEPT SELECTION

Concept selection involves generating options for ways to develop a field – such as what type of platform, how many wells, where to sell the product, how to transport it etc. This involves assessing various trade-off’s between cost, production profile, technical risk and time to market.

This area is one where experience and networks count. Advisors add value here. Unless an operator is a super major, the number of concept selections processes undertaken during their development teams’ career can be low.

Concepts rely on relationships and contracts with external parties such as governments, partners and financiers. The goal of selection is to examine possibilities and choose the most promising to work up in more detail. Detailed work-up of ideas costs a lot and takes time, so it’s best to avoid re-doing it. Selecting the best concept is important.

Selection is through an assessment of feasibility and creation of valuable approaches for external parties aligned to their appetite to participate. Better modelling of risk/reward profiles and the ability of AI and machine learning to help with option generation and assessment will create change here.

To generate viable options and to make introductions to partners requires wide experience, a diverse set of skills and set of external relationships. Companies like io oil and gas consulting, Granherne, Genesis and Xodus and others are go-to companies for serious operators.

I4.0 will likely impact the work of these companies in three ways:

  1. Technologies will be adopted that enable better collaboration between parties and facilitate the exchange of information. This, by itself, will result in faster turnaround, reduced waste and lower cost.
  2. The value of networks and relationships cultivated by consultants to both source work and to introduce in related parties may reduce. Part of the value captured is because of “knowledge gaps” where players do not know all the parties who may be interested or how to contact them. It is likely that some of this role will be augmented with the introduction of automated agents. Reputation and relationships will still matter and will become a differentiator but it is likely that the ability to command premium pricing will be reduced.
  3. The value of experience will almost be wiped out. As an anology, consider how an app on a smart phone has given Uber drivers the ability to use the backroads of London like a black cab driver with 30 years personal experience. In concept generation, a system that constantly learns all the options that have been considered before around the world, combines them and add twists will provide novel approaches. This will mean the creative aspects of concept design will become increasingly automated. There is the potential for a google-like winner-takes all first mover advantage. Captured experience will lead to more opportunities for work and hence generate more experience. Perhaps we will see one consultancy decide that the value of knowledge will be higher than the cost of acquiring it and will start to work under cost price for the chance to become the first mover?

For concept selection, the differentiation will not only come from the depth of the accumulated knowledge-base but also from the ability to deploy emotional intelligence and maintain the confidence of stakeholders. Like many I4.0 opportunities value will be generated from blending human soft-skills with an ability to harness the power of the new machines and ways of working.

DESIGN

There are various iterations of design and “stage-gates” on the way from Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) to Detailed Design. For the sake of this piece I’m going to be broad brush in my approach, so apologies in advance to my engineering friends for the lack of detail.

There are four main areas within the Design phase that need to be addressed

  1. The engineering of components and systems
  2. The co-ordination of the design activity
  3. Developing the commerciality of design
  4. Maintaining the consistency to the original concept

Engineering of Components and systems

The engineering process has already been revolutionised by computational power and the transportability of information. No longer are drawings done on dye-line blue prints and red-lined in pen. The computation revolution included things like reservoir simulations, process simulation, CAD drawings and automated parts lists.

I4.0 will enhance the process by enabling more simulation – such as simulation of construction, operations and maintenance. The type of output that will be required is likely to change. As operations move towards more “digital twin” enabled processes the as-designed, as-built and as-operated models will require more detail and will contain more information. Therefore, I4.0 approaches will need to enable this by, for instance during design, automatically populating tags for equipment, and providing normal operating ranges for instrumentation alarms – all pulled directly from manufacturers information.

AI systems in the future may even make suggestions for more efficient ways to plan pipe-runs, or help by making suggestions concerning process engineering or instrumentation. For an example of this type of guidance look at MS Word. As I type I get underlining in blue when I misspell a word and in red when my grammar is off. This is accompanied with helpful suggestions should I want them. Engineering design systems in the future may do similar tasks alongside engineers.

We will see an ever-expanding repository of re-usable design components which will continue the progression towards modularisation and re-use of designs. Standardised design and construction (where appropriate) will reduce costs. Couple this with additive manufacture for specialist parts and design work may move away from run-of-the mill towards assembly of modules and the design of very specialised be-spoke components.

Co-ordination of design activity

Anyone who has worked in a large-scale engineering design office will say that much of the work (and most of the errors, and most of the wasted cost) is incurred in the co-ordination of work between engineering teams, subcontractors and clients.

Firstly, there is the problem of controlling the internal integrity of the design. For instance engineers need to know things like flow-rates, reservoir pressures numbers of wells etc. I have seen examples where the reservoir group and the engineering team will progress for quite some time when their assumptions have diverged. Same goes for all upstream-downstream processing, topside weights, fire-systems and instrumentation. This is an information co-ordination problem. I4.0 will help because there will be fewer engineers required to work on design due to automation (therefore less co-ordination will be required) and where it is by “compiling” the individual designs into an evolving a digital-twin, techniques from software engineering used to co-ordinate source code, apply updates. automate error checking and run-test can be used.

Sign-off between clients and contractors means document trails can be an immense source of frustration. The control of versions and reviews often needs a whole department of people dedicated to it. Contracts are tied to sign-offs and all have time-limits that must be observed. I4.0 has the potential to apply block-chain audit trails, digital twins, version control & roll-back. Block chains can even be used to automatically transfer value between parties to settle contracts.

Managing Interfaces is a whole discipline. Different teams – sometimes different companies – design parts of the plant and it’s important that pipes and wires all match up when the modules are constructed and delivered. Again, design component submission into a digital twin from the start can detect problems and eliminate this type of error from propagating.

There is schedule and cost management activity required. Normally this is either a P6 or MS-Project based process with email reporting of progress required from all parties and manual co-ordination to provide an approximation of current progress. This tries to highlight any dependency busts that have blocked the project and provide forecasts to management. Designing within a digital twin, where the design process can be simulated, will enable a risk-based approach to schedule and cost management to occur automatically providing visibility and risk-control.

Developing the commerciality of the design

I4.0 will require changes to decision process here so it may take a while for things to change. Good design provides both construction-dividends and operation-dividends. Designing a plant in a way that eases construction currently increases the cost of the design work. I4.0 automation may reduce or eliminate this extra cost, but the types of material or module may be more expensive to buy but cheaper to construct – balancing those trade-offs are difficult both because the information and the consequence of decisions are not visible to everyone, and procurement rules may favour a least-cost approach. I4.0 may help to present more transparent business cases and enable more informed decisions to be made.

Operation-Dividend is a hard one to address. Even today there are information, models and design files that can be created and could be of great value to operations. They may never be created or delivered to clients because of cost pressure. Many Oil and Gas project procurement processes are based on lowest cost supply – this drives out added extras which are not strictly necessary during design, but would have produced dividends later in the life-cyle of the project.

It is my belief that as I4.0 techniques become established and drive efficiency in the design process there will be a natural tendency for these dividends to arrive, however by forcing the issue now – operators could accelerate the adoption of I4.0 techniques among their suppliers. This they should do.

Maintaining Integrity of the Concept

It is a phenomenon that design decisions are taken for good reasons in the depths of the project and these can, unintentionally, add up to a fundamental change in the economics of the concept. These decisions are taken for good reason, but without the impact being fully understood.

A forward-thinking operator may employ representatives from the concept team to assure that, during design, no decisions are taken that alter the concept economics without due care and attention. Even then, however, it may be very difficult to detect all the small changes that may add up to a problem later on.

I4.0 means not only will this process be built into the “compiler” checks for the design but also it will have knowledge of the assumptions underlying the concept. The project owner will be able to track real-time fit between as-designed facility and the expected concept value. This means also that the validity of the concept economics can be monitored as external events challenge the assumptions made. By setting appropriate risk-tolerances actions can be taken to steer the design of a project faster the normal stage-gate system.

CONSTRUCTION

This is a huge topic with lots of interaction between subcontractors, yards, welders, steel producers, component suppliers, machinery vendors, site logistics etc. etc.

The order in which construction happens can be crucial. it’s an involved problem to solve because sometimes something can’t be built until a large piece of equipment has been manoeuvred into place. Sometimes there are contingencies such as road access or camp construction or constraints on access to lifting equipment time. These types of scheduling problems, full of constraints, dependencies, lead-times and uncertainties interact with physical layout. This type of problem is one that AI based simulation and machine learning has demonstrated value. I expect that the planning of construction work packages and sequencing will become much more efficient with I4.0.

I4.0 is likely to deliver technology in terms of sensors, autonomous survey vehicles and 3D model population that provide accurate tracking of progress against schedule. There are likely to be wireless condition sensors provided with equipment (such as rotating machinery) to ensure that it is properly maintained in the time before delivery and installation. This will save pre-installation maintenance and avoid delays.

We are likely to see technologies such as automated reporting of equipment positon on the way to site meaning that schedules and daily work-plans can be optimised to the prevailing circumstances.  Block chain style transactions are likely to reduce the formidable overhead associated with contractors and their execution of work. The same technology that can provide better than ISO-9001 trail of supply, fitting etc.

I expect to see more automated construction, on-site manufacture of parts (3D printing) and more just-in-time manufacture and delivery of equipment. All of this is going to combine with better visibility of progress to lead to faster construction, with less waste (and hence less cost) and deliver much higher quality and predictability.

COMMISSIONING

Commissioning of new plant as it starts up and before it is presented to operations is likely to change too. Simulation and machine learning will mean understand that different parts of the plant need to be brought on-line and in sequence. Experience and learning will shine a light on areas most likely to fail and their failure modes. Some potential failures will be detected and ironed out prior to attempted start-up.

As plant is brought on-line equipment settings will be noted in their “tags” and can be automatically compared to the as-designed expectation and the manufacturer’s recommendations. Equipment performance can be tracked through sensors from day-one, this will help with predicting failures in the future. Intelligent software can be used to highlight unexpected situations.

The automated learning and recording of the start-up procedure and equipment settings can be used by operations for plant re-start and for comparing as-operated settings to as-commissioned to track where, when and why parts of the plant are being changed.

CONCLUSION

Industry 4.0 has the potential to provide substantial benefits to the development of oil fields. Many of the processes described above have been technology back-waters relying on manual systems, ad-hoc applications and a lot of tacit know-how. I believe that this will change. It will take new technology and also take new ways of working. The supply chain will need to respond. FEED, EPC and PMC contractors who get on the bandwagon first will create the opportunity to assemble unassailable leads and take a dominant market-share in the way that Google did for internet search.

(Image credit : https://www.gie.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O&G – Exploration and industry 4.0

In an earlier post [LINK] I briefly introduced the four areas of upstream value chain that could benefit from the 4th Industrial Revolution. Here I put forward some potentially controversial points about how this may (or may not) affect Exploration.

First of all my definition: Exploration is concerned with finding and appraising new deposits of Hydrocarbons trapped under the surface of the earth. It’s the identification of these that I am addressing here, not how (or if they can be) exploited.

There have been many advances made in technology in the previous 25 years that have transformed the process of finding deposits. The two most notable have been around the use of remote sensing through Seismic Data, and the accuracy with which deviated wells can be drilled. Seismic acts like an x-ray into the composition of the rocks, while new wells use precision direction control and combine it with analysis of real-time feedback from rock measurements surrounding the drill bit to let operators steer the trajectory in real-time.

Many of the advances that have been harnessed could legitimately be described as pioneering in the technology of sensing, big-data, simulation and automation. These are the key technologies underpinning the 4th industrial revolution. Exploration got there first.

In my work with small companies seeking investment I continue to see a slew of new start-ups with fancy seismic algorithms claiming to be able to spot even more obscure sources of previously unidentified hydrocarbons. Maybe they work. Who cares?

In my view the major gains from the 4th Industrial Revolution have already been captured in exploration. Perhaps we are close to entering an era of more stable oil prices – driven by: elasticity of supply from shale; abundant reserves released from both tight reservoirs and hydrates; and managed demand through smart technology, electric drive-trains, renewable generation and batteries. So the commercial pressure to find obscure resource pools may have gone.

In the North sea there are over 300 pools of hydrocarbons already discovered but not yet developed [LINK]. So the question is: even if the new technologies are successful will they have a significant impact for operators? I suspect the answer is no.

New algorithms and systems may provide marginal gains around the edges of existing fields and provide additional in-fill development opportunities. They may reduce the number of people in G&G dept 10%. Commodification of techniques (as happened for 3D animation) may see the demise of some companies and job-roles. But I don’t think it’s going to provide a revolutionary impact. Of course, I may be wrong.

If I am right, this suggests that there will be two main opportunities for companies providing technology here – either to provide an “add-on” to the main interpretation platforms (Petrel, OpenWorks) and then sell small numbers of seats to operators in special circumstances, or attempt a wholescale assault to replace the platforms already in place. Neither of these are revolutionary for operators and result in minor cost reduction by pitting service company against service company.

I think the 4th industrial revolution is likely to provide only a small impact on the dynamics of this part of the value-chain. There may be a displacement of revenue from one software vendor to another, there may be some marginal in-fill development opportunities that will add more elasticity to oil supply (and help to further stabalise prices) but neither of those are going to be massive nor revolutionary. I think that the 4th Industrial Revolution gains have been captured already – AI, auto-pickers, attribute statistics, simulations, integration, cloud, geolocation, computing power in the hands of individuals – the main technologies are already in place. Gains from here-on-in will be marginal.

There is one thing that may change my view, however. If this happens it will have a profound impact and swing power towards the national resource owners. If these innovations are adopted at the level of the nation state things may change.

National Data Banks were established in the 1990’s (example LINK) to hold archives of seismic and well data and make them publicly available. These may get a boost.  Cloud technology and on-line AI-based mining-algorithms may change the way that license economics work by de-risking exploration and encouraging competition. If this is combined with a stable oil price there is a potential recipe for reduction in the incentives needed for exploration companies. That could change the economics and the structure of the discover, farm-down, refinance, develop and keep carried-interest process that is used today.

Innovation and productivity with 4th Industrial Revolution

This is a long post. There is a lot to understand on this topic and this is the primer you’ll need. Please do follow the links. It will take a while but it’ll be worth it.

There is much being discussed around the acceleration of technology and how exponential development in multiple areas is converging and how this will impact on industrial production. About time too really because productivity is failing to pick-up, interest rates at or below zero, cash being hoarded by companies and investment rates are low [link]. This exponential increase is actually not that new – Moore’s law’s been around since… well since Moore launched Intel, and it was a one-way flow before even Schottky was on the scene. These trends are not new and if you don’t believe me here’s a great talk from 11 years ago by Ray Kurzweil with lots of evidence and predictions [Link]. Even Bill Gates saw this in a book he published in 1999 called Business @ the Speed of Thought [link], though these days that speed would be seen as a little too slow.

In my opinion the Oil industry harnessed many of the aspects of this movement in upstream exploration during the 1990’s. It was an early adopter in the process of FINDING reserves. Then the process of adoption stopped. Productivity per geoscientist and the complexity of the information they deal with is orders of magnitude better than it was during the last oil-bust of 1986, so much so that we now have more fields and deposits than we know what to do with. We’re pretty good at finding the stuff. But we’re quite rubbish at developing and operating it at low cost – especially small deposits, which we are so good at spotting now. Development, Operations & Maintenance has ossified – contracts and work practices are stuck. From an operator approach, the production of hydrocarbons has barely moved since the early 90’s (FPSO concepts aside). In my opinion through outsourcing, procurement, short-termism and misalignment of incentives it has become positively petrified.

If the Fourth Industrial Revolution is really going to have an impact we’ll need to address development on four fronts: Economic, Social, Political, and Technical

Economics

If this is going to happen then it has got to make sense for the bottom line. That means productivity: outputs, inputs and the cost of technology. McKinsey, recently cited in Industries of the Future, by Alec Ross [Link], suggested that the manufacturing sector could raise productivity by 2.5% to 5% and save more than $1Trillion in cost annually.

In one example McKinsey says “To capture the potential, manufacturers can consider three moves. Primarily, companies can gather more information and make better use of it. An oil-exploration company collected more than 30,000 pieces of data from each of its drilling rigs—yet 99 percent of that data was lost due to problems of data transmission, storage, and architecture. The tiny trickle of data it did capture was incredibly useful for managers. But so much more can be done. The executives we surveyed said that correcting these data inefficiencies should improve productivity by about 25 percent. [Link]”

Of course some traditional economists think we’re doomed to no innovation and permanent low growth – such as Robert Gordon [Link]. There are many in the old-guard of Oil and Gas that would agree. Most of them have their secretaries print their emails out for them, and refuse to carry a smart phone. Good luck chaps, I think you’ll find the millennials don’t care what you think anymore. Others say differently [Link]

There are many big hitters with some very big numbers, they’re all pointing in the same direction. I’m backing the future, not the past. And I think that Industry 4.0 will feature in the future of Oil and Gas. There are challenges but the prize is big enough that we will overcome them.

Social

The way that many of us work is going to have to change. Luckily the Millennials are already preparing for this shift with their search for meaningful work, emphasis on creativity and individuality; and understanding that they can blend their work and leisure time in ways that the crumbly generation see as slacking and entitled. Forbes have a top ten ways in which the work place will be influenced [Link] and Linda Grattan has her views here [Link]. For me it just seems an obvious way to work. But then I’ve never been very good at dealing with routine, structure and command-and-control. It’ll be interesting to see how we can blend the command-and-control requirements of operations with the caffeine fuelled micro-attention span of people even more “wired” than me.

We’re also seeing cyber-social developments such as the creative commons movement [Link] and open source projects like the Arduino [Link] all of which are fuelling exponential cross-fertilisation of ideas. We are witnessing the rise of the sharing economy [link] and temporary configurations of people who move about often. These are all challenging assumptions about ownership and permanence that are at odds with our current ownership-model for resources.

Political

The Guardian in Nov 2015 reported that ” this revolution could leave up to 35% of all workers in the UK, and 47% of those in the US, at risk of being displaced by technology over the next 20 years, according to Oxford University research cited in the report, with job losses likely to be concentrated at the bottom of the income scale.” [link]

With modern communications and the ability to mobilise quickly we’ve already seen massive changes in the way the people (or, in Greek, demos) interact with conventional democratic systems and capitalism. This is very thoughtful piece by Yanis Varoufakis the recently deposed Greek finance minister [link]. Whether that’s the Arab spring, so-called ISIS, Brexit, the mass-migration of populations or the astonishing rise of Donald Trump, things are getting decidedly odd in traditional politics. There’s a lot of complaint and not a lot of traditional power that can be exercised in public anymore [link]. Just take a look at the mass-mobilisation of a Brazilian flash-mob to protest graft allegations levied against the establishment [link]

Cyber-politics is a whole new dimension. Whether cyber aggression is aimed at accessing private information, denying or altering the dissemination of information or compromising the physical integrity of machine-based systems the ability of people to alter the course of events through “hacking” has never been so great. China has its infamous PLA unit 61398 [Link] one of over 20 cyber-military units it controls, North Korea doesn’t like Sony much as the 2014 hack showed [Link], Iran might be the land of the rising Shamoon that hit Aramco [Link], Ukraine has got on the wrong side of Russian Hackers who shut off their power grid [Link], and who knows who might have written Stuxnet that took out the Iranian centrifuges while telling the control room all was normal [Link]? Now the actors are not only nation-states, but also corporations and little boys alone in their bedrooms [link]

We have the Geneva convention that is supposed to stop states shooting the red cross, bombing civilians, gassing troops and firing mercury-filled dumb-dumbs. We have the international court in The Hague (funded by Andrew Carnegie incidentally [link]) that prosecutes war criminals. I’m not sure who I should call if North Korea invades my X-Box or steals my Bitcoins. And if you are a corporation with cross-border operations you don’t either.

Technical

There are a number of technologies that are developing exponentially at the moment and they’re feeding into changed ways-of-working that will bring about the fourth industrial revolution. Ultimately this will help you plan to build better plant and it will help you operate what you have better. Optimising operations is a sense-and-respond problem. Prepare for the future, know what’s going on right now and do things to make it better. Technology that helps falls into four areas that increase:

  • learning about what’s possible;
  • what’s going on right now and situational awareness;
  • knowledge of interdependence, decision options and consequence; and
  • ability to execute quickly and accurately

Increased learning about what is possible

Big data has gained traction in the last decade. Grab lots of data from everywhere, apply some Bayesian stats, set a base-level and determine the probability of correlation. Works really well when you buy a book from Amazon and it suggests that you might want to buy some reading glasses to go with it. Works pretty well in finding potential hidden relationships and developing predictive algorithms for equipment failure too [link] [link]

Like a lot of developments, this area is moving fast. How do you know what’s even possible these days? It’s so hard to keep up. Data overload, over-stimulation, who even has time to read this stuff?

I remember Schlumberger creating an amazing “portal” called the hub [link], Other companies did similar [link]. Initiatives were started to capture the learnings from each employee and make them available to all other employees. I even heard a talk once describing the use of retiree mentors to help existing employees [link]. People were planning for “The Big Crew Change” when the aging workers retire and new low people come on board [link]. This all tied into concepts like “Hive Minds” which were popular in the 90’s [link].

Well “The Big Crew Change” became the “The Big Layoff” when oil prices crashed in 2014. All that experience and knowledge was not on the balance sheet but was on the P&L. So it was fired without financial impairment and write-off. But the fundamental problem remained, and probably got worse. So much to know, so much to learn and no time to do it. Welcome to one of the drivers that will build demand for machine learning.

Machines can analyse masses of information much quicker than humans can. Up until recently, however, doing that in context and to derive meaning from them has been hard. Development has been showcased by game-playing computers such as Deep Blue for Chess [link], then Watson for Jeopardy [link], and most recently a Google built machine – AlphaGo for GO [Link].

Combine learning algorithms with connected systems, however, and things get really interesting. Learning requires teaching. Unlike programming in Fortran, learning machines construct their own programs by being taught and from the situations they encounter. Distributed and cloud-connected learning is exponential, one machine learns something somewhere and every other machine knows it. Forever. Perhaps we should blow the dust off those long-forgotten “portal” promises around knowledge bases, institutional learning and corporate memory?

Here is a great TED Talk on machine learning [link]. Of course it doesn’t always go well as Microsoft found out with it’s recent “Hitler loving Sex-Robot” [link]

What’s going on right now and situational awareness

Machines that learn what matters and suggest how to respond can eliminate operator overload by removing the trivial and hiding noise. Automated actions can be taken to keep things running. I recently heard an analogy about the difference between the information received by a pilot of a typhoon (arguably the worlds most advanced fighting machine) and a world-war 2 Spitfire. The Spitfire pilot had dials telling him the airspeed, engine speed etc. All just data. The Typhoon pilot, however, could not possibly cope with all the data available. So this data is assembled to show him only what he needs to know in the current situation and that depends on context.

Paul Smith, former UK RAF Pilot says “Bring all these [sensor and interpretation] elements together and it becomes clear why we talk about Eurofighter Typhoon operators having the ‘Combat Edge’ – the situational awareness and a suite of flexible weapons options that offer pilots a real advantage in the battlespace.” [Link]

Building on this, if the aircraft systems detect a heat-seeking missile closing, it launches flares automatically and tells the pilot afterwards – no point in raising an alarm and waiting! Same for the oil and gas sector, why do automatic fault development detection systems write a report and wait. Why don’t they just order the parts, consolidate shipments and schedule engineers for the next maintenance activity? It’s a small example but Amazon is already letting washing machines re-order soap powder [link], Imagine what Amazon-like logistics would do for the Oil and Gas industry.

In order to know what’s going on right now requires a lot of sensors talking to each other and reporting back. Too much detail for a human system to ever cope with properly. The data needs to be reporting to systems that learn what’s important, what actions it should take and how it should present its findings to its operators. The system needs to learn how to behave. These systems need to be aware of the situation and act accordingly. Cloud computing is also an important vector this mix, where systems are connected to each other through internet, and keep each other in synch sharing learning and preparing information so that it can be shared widely, securely and scalably. Google are letting developers play with their learning platform [link]. This is an area where we will see rapid innovation that Oil and Gas can benefit from.

Of course there are some very boring building blocks that will be needed. Connecting systems together will of course require a lot of plumbing – don’t underestimate the size of this problem, here is an example of the type of architecture you might need [link]. Companies like Eigen (www.eigen.co), Tibco (www.tibco.co.uk), BEA (www.bea.com) are active in this area. And it’s important that we really know that our data is correct – as in this case when a demolition crew targeted the wrong house and blamed it on google maps [Link]. So companies like datum360 (www.datum360.com) and Informatica (link).

Decision making & Interdependence

Knowing what’s going on is great, but what do you need to do to make your situation better? That’s the question that quickly arises once teams get sight of data and information in context. Firstly it’s important to know what the options could be – but also how choices in one system effect another.

Simulation is one of the keys to understanding the consequences of decisions – that’s why chess computers work out 100’s of moves ahead and choose the best one to use now. To simulate the decisions on a plant requires a digital model of the plant and its behaviour against which to run tests. The digital model is sometimes called a “Digital Twin” and this allows you to make a change or react to a fault condition and see what the knock-on consequences of selected actions will be in the future. This can be used to test options and optimise outcomes. Hit the model with a series of possible actions in an automated way and it’s possible to uncover the best sequence of actions and back-calculate why, rather than the normal forward progression. It’s very powerful – here are some articles discussing simulation of plant [link]

Integrated planning enables you to make a decision about sequencing events in such a way as to minimise down-time by running jobs in parallel within real-world constraints. This might mean being prepared and ready-to-act when an opportunity unexpectedly arises. Understanding system-wide effects is the key to getting this right, and with more complex interconnected systems with cross-ownership (like present in the UK sector of the North Sea) it not easy – and the owner stakes in oil fields can lead to misalignment of financial interests. Bain has a good article on integrated planning [link].

So far it seems that human + machine combination provides the best mix for solving problems. The creativity of the human is key and augmented decision making with rapid feed-back loops from simulation enables optimisation of decisions. From the first simple spreadsheets that appeared in business the testing of “what-if” scenarios has meant that we have been able to tune procedures across many areas of operations. The combination is not a new concept, here is a very relevant paper from Carnegie Mellon 1998 [link]

Increased speed and accuracy of execution

One of the issues that I’ve come across is the “precision” approach of some operators in the field. The best plans are of no use if they are not executed properly, if parts aren’t damaged and if the wrong parts were not fitted. It happens. Sometimes, of course, the instructions make no sense and the field have to modify them to make them work. That modification of instruction is rarely fed back into the system so little learning takes place. Sometimes the plant is updated and records not updated. All this leads to mismatch between what is recorded and what the plant operators “know”.

Sometimes the physical effort required to perform an inspection means that it cannot be done as often as you’d like, or perhaps is skipped by a crew unwilling or unable to schedule. Autonomous vehicles are in use for inspection activities firstly replacing deep divers and latterly, as costs have gone down they are found in inspections roles as Drones taking cameras into inaccessible places. Perhaps it won’t be long until we have small UAV’s mapping plant and equipment in huge detail. Here is a TED talk that demonstrates what’s already possible [link]

On-site machining of parts may soon be replaced by on-site manufacturing. Additive manufacturing (a broader term than 3D printing) is finding its way not only into printing of small intricate parts but emerging are the start of large-scale construction. It’s not there yet, but imagine what this would mean for logistics or construction in hostile environments. Here is an example of a team in Amsterdam who are in the process of printing a Steel bridge over a canal. That could change some of our approaches to Maintenance and Modification one day. [link]

And, of course, there will always be people involved. But multi-skilled and informed. Augmented reality displays – identifying parts, performing on-the-fly risk assessments and acting as advisors. This will change the way that operators will be able to apply basic skills augmented with real-time instruction and feedback. Meron Gribetz demonstrates here a virtual reality system that could revolutionise the on-shore-off-shore interface, as well as providing just-in-time information. Here is his TED talk [link]

And if you don’t think a Robot can replace people on platforms – have a look at this [link]

 

 

Digitally disrupted operations

I have already said that I believe the time is now for O&G operations to become digital. Radically different cost models are going to be needed and digital is one way they will be achieved.

“When assessing the implications, consider the fact that that new digital business models are the principal reason why just over half of the names of companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000. And yet, we are only at the beginning of what the World Economic Forum calls the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” characterized not only by mass adoption of digital technologies but by innovations in everything from energy to biosciences.” Pierre Nanterme – Accenture CEO [Link]

For me this revolution started with a computer programme called Mosaic, the first internet browser – which I discovered in 1993 while goofing around using Kermit, WAIS, Gopher, FTP and downloading cool stuff from GNU. I was being paid to generally muck-about and call it work. Since that moment I have witnessed a massive rise in computing power, information storage and interconnectivity that has left me gawping in awe. The chart below, from The New Machine Age, illustrates the trend.

Five Phases of Disruption

I model this disruption in 4 overlapping phases that are well established (each relying on the ones before it to progress) – and we’re about to see the fifth phase make itself felt.

Phase 1: Pure Information Industries

This was the first to be disrupted. It started with libraries, newspapers and advertising. As technology progressed this then disrupted industries requiring higher information capacity (bandwidth & storage) such as music and radio, and is now doing the same for television and cable companies. Bi-directional communication led to the X-Factor, the Huffington Post and any number of citizen journalists and bloggers.

Phase 2: Customer Engagement

As more people started to have access to and use the internet it was a small extension to make commercial transactions and shopping. As this ramped up customer experience of retail, customer-service departments and opened up access to a vast array of diverse products that could never be held in stock on the high-street. Now there are very few consumer engagements that do not have to integrate a digital channel into their offerings. Coffee and haircuts can’t be online – just about everything else can. Even there Starbucks is integrating a digital offering into their coffee order-to-pay process.

Phase 3: Co-ordination and logistics

It started with on-line parcel tracking, cross-docking and behind-the-scenes scheduling algorithms. Adding mobile GPS and mobile data allowed supply chain and logistics to start its transformation. Firstly on the containerisation and automatic freight and now down to warehouse location, stock control and soon perhaps delivery by dedicated drones [Link]. Phases 1, 2 & 3 have combined to give me my Occado delivery today at 12:30 (sharp).

Phase 4: Asset and resource sharing

This phase is still young and we’re seeing it play out in the consumer space first – a reversal I’ll elaborate on later. Companies like AirBNB, Uber, ZIPCar and others. In general this is the idea that Assets are not fully utilised by their owners all the time, and spare capacity can be made available through a brokering and booking service – and then scheduled and delivered.

Phase 5: Machine-optimised operations

Remote sensing, predictive algorithms, human-machine teaming – integrated with maintenance planning (plus all the attributes in phases 1-3) should lead to more reliable plant constantly optimised and operated by fewer people. This phase is being referred to as The Internet of Things.

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing manufacturing as we know it. Factories and plants that are connected to the Internet are more efficient, productive and smarter than their non-connected counterparts. In a marketplace where companies increasingly need to do whatever they can to survive, those that don’t take advantage of connectivity are lagging behind.”  Forbes Magazine [Link]

The reversing order of adoption

Sometime between 1992 and now a reversal in adoption sequence occurred. Prior to Mosaic the sequence of adoption was: Military, Big Business, Small Business, and Consumer. There was also a geographic sequence that meant technologies emerging in California took a few years (5+?) to make it to Europe and the same again to make it to Asia. The order has now reversed and the spread of ideas is both bi-directional and super-fast. For instance we’re going to see individuals install HIVE before most plant install remote operations. So I think we can already see the new technologies and ways-of working being successfully deployed for consumers – the question is how will the Oil and Gas industry adapt them for its use?

How could real-time sharing of Oil and Gas assets and equipment be made to work? How could we create an “Oil-Uber” for self-employed drilling engineers? How can we scale-up technology like HIVE, algorithms for maintenance diagnostics, combined with the GPS on a tag like that in my £100 Garmin watch attached to and despatch the most available uber-spare-part.

Of course, innovations will sneak up on us through lots, and lots, of small changes but the effect will dramatic – looking back we will see the change, but it will happen gradually with the companies that use more efficient technologies buying assets from those that don’t – or, more accurately, buying assets from their officially appointed receivers.