Removing Risk and Cost from Remote Operations through Intelligent Practices

Abstract

Abstract The Arctic is the latest O&G frontier, opening new fields in North West and North Central Russia, Norway, Greenland, Alaska and Canada. The locations imply cold, remote, dark and harsh environments that bring about new challenges to operate in a safe environment while optimizing production and productivity. Furthermore, staffing these assets can provide additional challenges, with increased costs associated with transportation, personnel safety, and often-times high turnover rates. Vast improvements in operations are possible by adding intelligence locally in the producing asset and linking the asset into an enterprise-wide collaborative work environment. This has the effect of greatly reducing the personnel and systems footprint on remote platforms, wellheads and subsea; thus removing risk and cost from operations while improving reliability in such environments. Furthermore, these environments enable institutionalization of best practices between assets, with the goal of true knowledge management We will examine the latest advances in Remote Operations and Remote Collaboration infrastructure and tools and examine the benefits that they bring to operating companies. We will also articulate how these concepts can be incorporated into the project design cycle to improve delivery and how this can influence the supplier / operator relationship during the commissioning phase, but also over the entire life cycle of the asset.