Future Vision: The Next Revolution in Production Operations

Abstract

Abstract In recent years there has been a proliferation of onshore control centres and advanced collaborative environments supporting the digitization of offshore oil and gas production. Information and communications technologies have facilitated this ‘digital’ evolution. To-date the results have been impressive, improved productivity and economics, together with health, safety and environmental benefits have been demonstrated. New advances in digital technologies are now poised to revolutionize how engineers and oil and gas professionals collate, visualize and interact with complex information, from real-time sensor data through to ‘fuzzy, asynchronous chat’ from instant messaging and other internet based communications tools. This paper presents a review of how the next generation information and communication technologies are impacting complex, virtualized operations in industries such as the military. Case studies and lessons learned are presented together with insights and experience on how these findings can be applied to offshore production operations.