A detailed analysis on Business challenges and Technical adoption.
Executive Summary
Global energy requirements continue to rise. The industry focus is shifting to an integrated approach on the exploration, development and production of new oil and gas resources and refining and distribution facilities. Industry leaders are building various centralized control and monitoring centers in the name of iField-Digital Oil Field, Smart Manufacturing, CWE – Collaborative Work Environment, IRIS – Integrated Refinery Information Systems, etc.
There are other key challenges that the industry faces in terms of forecasting and budgeting and they are exceedingly difficult in the face of the ongoing pricing volatility and many other uncertainties of a dynamic environment on and off the field, not to mention geo-political pressure, the country’s economy dependence, sustaining oil fields over the period of time, and finding and keeping experienced personnel to manage the production control centers.
This paper mainly discusses the current business challenges faced by the industry and how an organization adapts to growing technological solutions to overcome the challenges using Centralization of control centers.
Business Challenges
Industry leaders are turning to a variety of innovative technologies like unmanned control systems, mobile asset management, wireless sensors, robot based monitoring etc. But a few questions need to be answered before taking any investment decisions on these technologies
Some of the specific challenges of the Oil & Gas industry are as follows:
Organizational approach to new-age solutions
The approach to new age oil and gas systems implementation should consist of a clear road map based on maturity vs. value that it brings to the organization.
As part of an effective business and IT integration strategy, the solution needs to focus on the Visibility, Governance, and Automation needed to answer the challenges of providing superior operations as follows:
Visibility Bring together the business units in real-time and gain an understanding of systems, assets and operations. Deliver real-time insight based on complex event processing and access rich historical reports
Governance Model the organization changes including people and process, also minimize risk. Integrate assets across business and IT to reduce risks to services and your corporate reputation.
Automation Accelerate tasks and processes through work flow enabled IT applications and systems. Build greater agility into operations and speed service delivery by reducing manual intervention
Any solution to overcome business challenges mainly runs through investment cycle and development cycle and focuses on areas like,
Fig1: Organization Strategy
Typically in the upstream industry, many organizations have strategized and implemented major business transformation initiatives to bring the single version of truth across the organization. They keep technological advancements to bring interconnected smart systems by focusing on the following areas:
Current trends and Value Realization
Companies across the globe evaluate various platforms/solutions but their adoption is mainly structured with respect to maturity level and its business value. The level of solution adoption starting from capturing Real-time Data to Asset Optimization to the highest order.
Figure 2: Organization Focus area through cyclic approach
Fig 3: Value Realization
The list is not complete as many industry leaders strive to solve business challenges with enablement from technology and products.
Accessing real-time operational and field data through a secured system is currently achievable in many ways. The ability to use real-time data interface with the help of international standards and transforming it into useful information is key. The solution needs to be built by accessing the current level of technical maturity, landscape, people’s awareness and process integration in any organization.
Industry leaders are constantly striving to bring new technology to improve ‘Top line’ and sustain ‘Bottom line’. The top management’s focus drives companies to develop process re-engineering methodologies and adopt tools to meet their business and technology needs.
Technology Readiness
The technology readiness of Industry is grouped under Business level centralization and Field level centralization. Business level centralization is being achieved through various technology partners in the market who are following SOA and ESB based solutions. In summary,
Microsoft
IBM
SAP
For the centralization of Field Systems, the integration of Control systems are mainly driven through latest technology called ‘Distributed Server Architecture’ (DSA). Honeywell specific DSA has an unique capability of allowing seamless “integration” of Distributed Control Systems (DCS) from various locations into a single common unified visualization and control system. This concept of DSA allows multiple DCS systems to share Point data, Alarms, Messages and History in real-time without mandating duplicate configuration on any server. It requires very little engineering effort to establish DSA.
The centralization of Field System integration for real-time information and the Business system integration using SOA helps industry to build seamless Centralized Control Centers.
Conclusion
Integration and centralization of field level systems is the nucleus of Centralized Control Centers. The optimization, planning & scheduling, performance monitoring are the functions at corporate level are to be built around it. The data requirement for all such requirements starts from near real-time data to historical data up to few years.
The level integration and centralization is decided based on the values that organizations intend to realize, also, the technical maturity that an organization posseses and technology availability in the marketplace. Effective blend of value realization through technology readiness brings successful Centralized Control Center..
Appendix 1: References
Wipro helped an oil and gas major manage 50% of its production through a Collaborative Environment by enabling interfaces between disparate locations and teams.
e-commerce portal for Oil and Gas major to digitally engage with customers and personalize the relationship.
Wipro stepped in as the “thought-to-finish” partner for the O&G supermajor in this marquee demand sensing transformation program, delivered Proof of Concept (POC) to scale up across geographies and locations. The solution was piloted in the markets of West Europe and South East Asia.
© 2021 Wipro Limited |
|
© 2021 Wipro Limited |
Engineering, Construction & Operations
Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences