OGV Energy - Issue 33 - June 2020

ASSET INTEGRITY

The key to safe and efficient oil & gas operations

Over the next five years, digitalisation and the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the energy sector is set to jump.

www.ogvenergy.co.uk I June 2020

ASSET INTEGRITY

The oil price crash in the COVID-19 pandemic has created a challenging environment for the oil and gas industry. The current crisis brings uncertainty about investments in the sector in the near term as oil prices languish at their lowest levels in several years.

Although imminent exploration and production (E&P) investments have been slashed amid the major uncertainties about market recovery, oil and gas operators and contractors have one certain investment in any price environment. This is to maintain the asset integrity of their facilities and operations in order to ensure safe, reliable, and efficient workflow and production at times of social distancing and market uncertainties.

Regardless of the price of oil and gas, producers and their supply chain providers work 24/7 to ensure the asset integrity of oil and gas platforms, pipelines, and refineries.

Asset integrity management (AIM) and asset integrity management systems (AIMS) are indispensable parts of every operation in the energy sector, securing the safe and efficient work of the assets during their lifetime, and the safe decommissioning after that.

Asset Integrity remains crucial in any oil & gas price environment

Maintenance, inspection, and monitoring of operational facilities onshore and offshore continue even if the drilling of new wells has grounded to a halt as E&P firms pull back on capital expenditure (CapEx) to weather the oil price rout.

Asset integrity management doesn’t receive much media attention, pushed back by headline-grabbing ‘unprecedented’, ‘crisis’, ‘crash’, ‘slash’, and other nouns, adjectives, and verbs to describe the ongoing challenges in the oil and gas sector.

But asset integrity is the most important part of every producing and/or operating asset in the energy sector—asset integrity management makes sure that platforms, refineries, or pipelines are designed, built, installed, operated, maintained, and inspected according to the highest industry standards, for safe and reliable operations.

During the oil price crash, oilfield services firms with large exposure to maintenance and inspection are some of the least impacted

in terms of share prices and market capitalisation, even if the oilfield services industry was hit the worst by the price collapse and the pandemic, Rystad Energy said in an analysis in May. “In a nutshell, our analysis indicates that companies with exposure to EPCI, facility leasing, maintenance and inspection services, SURF or subsea equipment have been less punished by investors, who have prioritised limiting their exposure to well services, drillers, acquisition contract seismic and the North American market,“ Rystad Energy senior energy service analyst Binny Bagga said.

Regardless of where oil and gas prices are, asset integrity and asset management continue to be firm commitments by asset operators and their contractors.

Inspection, risk assessment, process and people safety, safety-critical maintenance, and asset performance optimisation continue to be on every company’s priority list during these challenging times for the industry and for the world as a whole.

Digitalisation rising

Even before the pandemic, the oil and gas sector had started to embrace digitalisation as a means to protect people in harsh environments and help asset management and integrity. Major oil firms in the world have already adopted digital twins to monitor and control offshore assets in remote areas while workers are safely using virtual reality, augmented reality, or dynamic 3D printed models superimposed on the actual platform or other facility to perform the checks and see if everything runs and works as smoothly as planned.

Norway’s Equinor, for example, uses digital twin technology in the construction of Johan Sverdrup Phase 2—one of the largest projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) which is expected to produce around 25% of Norway’s total oil output once it reaches peak production.

“We have invested in digital solutions, and these new ways of working are already saving months in the execution stage,” says Anders Opedal, Executive Vice President for Technology, Projects and Drilling (TPD) at Equinor.

Like Equinor, UK’s BP is also using digital twin technology to optimise production, connect people and data, and, crucially, save precious engineering time. BP first rolled out the APEX digital twin at its operations in the North Sea, because some of the supermajor’s most complex production systems are offshore the UK. After the pilot in the North Sea, BP’s production teams in other parts of the world have also started using the digital twin technology.

Italy’s Eni has a digital transformation plan, whose goals include improving the safety of people and increasing asset security and integrity, alongside improving efficiency and increasing decarbonisation efforts.

“Eni’s digital transformation is currently based fundamentally on asset integrity and security, which is why innovation and digitalisation play a key role in our business model and help us to look to the future with our sights more firmly set on a circular economy-based model,” Eni’s Chief Digital Officer, Luigi Lusuriello, says.

“Digital transformation is a virtuous circle: people improve technologies and technologies improve people’s performance,’’ Lusuriello notes.

Most recently, Wood and National Energy Resources Australia (NERA) announced in early May a new partnership to develop and deliver an AI-based solution for the inspection of critical industrial equipment, particularly for subsea oil and gas infrastructure.

“It is fantastic to see that the energy industry is embracing new ways of solving problems,” said Azad Hessamodini, strategy and development president of Wood’s Technical Consulting Solutions business.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for remote inspection of offshore oil and gas assets has surged, according to testing, inspection, and certification services provider Bureau Veritas, which reported a 900% surge in demand for remote inspection of offshore assets.

“Since the start of this year demand has greatly increased. It is no longer a want but a need,” says Paul Shrieve, Vice President Offshore & Services at Bureau Veritas.

Over the next five years, digitalisation and the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the energy sector is set to jump.

According to a May 2020 report from MarketsandMarkets, the global market of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the energy industry is expected to jump to US$35.2 billion by 2025, up from US$20.2 billion in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.8% over the next five years.

ASSET INTEGRITY

Will the coronavirus pandemic have a lasting impact on the way we work?

Kirsty Ross, PIM’s HR Manager

In the 12-month period from January to December 2019 the Office for National Statistics reports that an estimated 1.7million people worked mainly from home, a mere 5% of the workforce. Another 1% of the total workforce reported working in the same grounds or building as their home. Fast forward to the middle of May 2020 and, as we continue to adhere to government guidelines, and stay at home to stay safe and to protect the NHS, the world of work has changed beyond all recognition.

We have all been asked, where possible, to work from home and, where remote working isn’t an option, non-essential businesses have closed. As I write this PIM has transitioned from having our onshore teams either in our or our clients’ offices to working from home.

Thanks to the available technology and a great IT team, PIM’s transition has been smooth and we are able to connect virtually and maintain the office environment while delivering our services to our clients. The team as a whole is responding well to working remotely while adapting to this new norm which also sees our schools closed.

Once we come out the other side of the coronavirus pandemic it will be extremely interesting to see what long-lasting effects this experience has on the world of work. Surely such a shift in our daily lives cannot pass without leaving its mark?

At PIM, we have always focused on having the right person in the right post and have been open to employees having different working solutions from the ‘norm’.

While the percentage of the workforce which can effectively work from home differs according to industry sector with some industries and types of work within each sector lending themselves to home working more easily, it has been clearly demonstrated that with the right technology and infrastructure in place home working is possible on a greater scale than previously thought. It follows that companies which have previously been reluctant to embrace remote and/or flexible working are likely to find that this approach will be challenged by employees wishing to continue this way of working.

At PIM, we have always focused on having the right person in the right post and have been open to employees having different working solutions from the ‘norm’. As a company, we have found this to be a very successful approach. It has meant that we have been able to access talent which would have been unavailable to us if we had insisted on the traditional office-based, nine to five scenario. This makes the company richer as a whole and opens up a broader talent pool when it comes to recruitment.

It may be hard to see at the moment, but I think there will be positives that come out of this strangest of situations and, hopefully, in the world of work a more open attitude to flexibility and home working will be one of them.

www.ogvenergy.co.uk I June 2020For more information visit pim-ltd.com

ASSET INTEGRITY

Challenging energy landscape forges route to greater production efficiency

The UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) is better-placed to “weather the storm” caused by the twin threat of Covid-19 and falling commodity prices than it has been during previous downturns, according to a leading industry task group.

The group has subsequently identified various areas of improvement and highlighted progress made over the past three years towards achieving these goals, with visible results recorded across a number of different aspects – including production increases within the past year.

Further, a reduction in plant losses in the UKCS may be attributed to the improvements made as a result of the task group’s roadmap.

Adam Sheikh, VP Business Projects at Repsol Sinopec, who has led the Asset Integrity Task Group since its inception, commented: “Significant progress has been made across all the areas identified on the roadmap for improvement in 2019, such as testing alternative insulation material, retro-fitting inspection sensors, and the development of analytical software to name a few.

“In addition, the task group has written joint industry papers on UKCS best practice for topics such as ‘risk-based inspection’ and ‘performing maintenance on live pressure equipment’. We have then followed up on how operators use the outputs of best practice papers.

Established in 2017, the Asset Integrity Task Group – a subgroup of the MER UK Asset Stewardship Task Force – began with the aim of driving improvements in asset integrity across all UKCS facilities, through reducing hydrocarbon losses and, thereby, extending the life of the entire basin.

The task group, which meets quarterly, examines how MER activity impacts on efficiency, and provides a platform for meaningful cross-industry collaboration; bringing together industry experts and specialists from operators, contracting companies, and other major stakeholders; including, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), the Oil & Gas Technology Centre, Oil & Gas UK (OGUK), the Energy Institute, and Step Change in Safety.

As part of its annual ‘Tier Zero’ meeting for industry leaders, the OGA announced that production efficiency on the UKCS had improved for the seventh consecutive year, reaching 80% in 2019. The latest analysis showed a five-percentage point increase on the previous year, driven by a 34% reduction in production losses compared with 2018, which represented 50million barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

Adam Sheikh, VP Business Projects at Repsol Sinopec

The new spirit of collaboration borne out of the 2014 oil price-crash has created the conditions where operators have come together to exchange knowledge, share examples of best practice, and discuss challenges faced; all geared towards ensuring a sustainable future for the North Sea.

Scott Robertson, Director of Operations at the Oil and Gas Authority and Co-Chair of the MER UK Asset Stewardship Task Force, said: “At 80%, production efficiency in the UKCS has risen by 15 percentage points compared to 2014. Achieving this target means that the basin is in a much-improved position to weather the current storm and, as a result, better prepared to adapt to whatever comes next.

“This target was achieved along with our community of integrity managers, especially those within the Asset Integrity Task Group. Fantastic progress has been made since it was first introduced, with the number of parties willing to join, share success stories, and find problems to common challenges faced continually rising.

“This further reduction in production losses over the past 12 months is a significant achievement. While production efficiency has gradually increased since 2013, it remains a continuous journey and we are not resting on our laurels.”

In 2019, the Asset Integrity Task Group developed and published a roadmap which aims to reduce loss of containment (LOC) events, planned integrity losses by 20%, and unplanned integrity losses by 60% in the UKCS.

“The cross-industry collaborative approach has made these visible results across key areas of asset integrity possible.”

Over the next three months, the task group is planning a change of leadership. Adam Sheikh will hand-over to Shell’s Paul Jackson and Matthew Blackburn from the Health and Safety Executive. Under the direction of the new leadership, the task group will continue to identify areas for improvements, cross-collaboration, and best practice for the UKCS industry.

Scott Robertson added: “The impact of Covid-19 and the industry’s ability to effectively man offshore is a concern and one that needs to be carefully managed to ensure safety remains the highest priority, whilst efforts to keep on top of safety-critical maintenance must continue with a laser-like focus.

Scott Robertson, Director of

Operations at OGA

“The wider MER cultural changes have created the right framework to allow the asset integrity group to perform an effective role. It is encouraging to see industry leaders and operators, among others, coming together and prepared to share key learnings and experiences.

“Further adoption of new technologies – as set out in the road map, will, in turn, allow for increased efficiencies in the UKCS and have undoubtedly had a positive contribution on overall integrity losses to date.”

ASSET INTEGRITY

Digital twinning delivers trust and value in reducing operating costs

The oil and gas industry is currently enduring one of the most challenging periods in its history. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly accelerated an existing decline in global demand for hydrocarbons, resulting in the lowest oil prices for 30 years. This has left the industry facing the dual challenge of ensuring successful and safe working conditions and practices for employees while maintaining the economic viability of assets.

How can you maintain, or even raise, safety standards and address maintenance challenges while reducing cost?

One solution is the growing adoption and recognition of the benefits of digital twinning i.e. the creation of a mirror image of an asset to support integrity management.

At the forefront of this cultural change is Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing, inspection and certification services, which has created a proven and ‘boxed’ digital twinning and smart data management system that is already helping to generate significant reductions in unit operating costs and capital expenditure.

The company’s Veristar AIM3D system, developed in partnership with Dassault Systèmes, has revolutionised asset management, providing a true, as is, four-dimensional picture of an asset’s condition instantly, everywhere on any platform or device, at any time.

Veristar AIM3D combines a digital twin of any marine or offshore asset with smart data. It improves visibility and understanding of the asset, allowing operators to make the right 2/5 choices faster to improve efficiency, safety, integrity, performance, return on investment and carbon footprint reduction.

The digital twin, linked to a comprehensive asset integrity management database and collaborative platform that will interface with any system the asset owner has - and is specifically designed not to replace existing infrastructure, can be accessed by all personnel. The model, which provides a 360º view, is constantly updated throughout the asset’s life. Any changes made within the systems it interfaces with, is immediately reflected in the VAIM3D twin. Through its integral Project Management module capability it allows shutdowns and turnarounds to be optimised, significantly reducing planning time, and it allows the preparation of maintenance and modification workpacks, to be done remotely. It assists in the execution of and preparation of maintenance and inspection reports and the results are automatically visualised in the twin to reflect the asset’s real condition. Furthermore, it helps operators anticipate issues, easing the move toward predictive asset management, bringing with it reductions in operational costs, inspections, maintenance and repairs. Bureau Veritas with one of their clients has estimated digital twining is reducing hull maintenance costs (OPEX) by 25% over five years.

Bureau Veritas discovered that by using its digital twin and smart data system, operatorscould save between 9% and 15% on total decommissioning project costs.

Benefits for the supply chain include: the provision of a mirror image of an asset which everyone can view and estimate against the ‘as it is’ information; mitigation of inconsistency across tenders; the elimination of additional cost due to access and egress issues on site; a compilation of accurate engineering work packs with minimal 3/5 requirement for site visits; more fixed-price certainty, and time and opportunities to evaluate alternative scenarios, approaches and technologies.

From a safety perspective, digital twinning enables virtual simulation to run hazardous activity without: a physical presence and thereby eliminate or mitigate risks; familiarisation with an asset prior to the mobilisation of personnel; the laydown and storage of plant and equipment offshore; links into Permit to Work (PTW) systems and the simulation of access and egress from hazardous operations for personnel. In the UK, a run-down of the safety case through visualisation could reduce the requirement for the Health and Safety Executive to make on-site visits.

By providing a visualisation of risks through simulation and respective mitigation, digital twinning can provide insurers and underwriters with a better understanding of the risks and control measures being taken. Indeed, insurers have suggested such increased visibility could remove a zero from the cost of premiums.

Bureau Veritas discovered that by using its digital twin and smart data system, operators could save between 9% and 15% on total decommissioning project costs. Data from the company, which was shared with the UK industry regulator the Oil and Gas Authority, showed operators could save in excess of £2 million on project costs for assets with topsides of 10,000 tonnes, increasing to more than £8.5 million for assets with topsides up to 40,000 tonnes.

Furthermore, following several months of data gathering and refining, it was identified that savings from 9% to more than 30% could be made from a range of individual decommissioning activities including topsides and jacket removal, subsea infrastructure, facilities de-energising, operator costs, onshore recycling and site remediation and monitoring.

Bureau Veritas has identified a total of 54 North Sea assets with topsides of 10,000 - 40,000 tonnes that would benefit from using a digital twinning system to gain direct savings in decommissioning. It has also identified 35 assets of fewer than 10,000 tonnes 4/5 that would benefit from the use of a digital twin in late-life operations through to decommissioning phases.

With the benefits of a digital twin system well established in cutting maintenance costs, maintaining safety and performance and extending asset life, Bureau Veritas then considered its benefits for the decommissioning sector.

It was assessed that the value from digital twinning would be realised across a range of spheres including environmental, societal, wells, the asset and regulatory requirements. Digital twinning was identified as a method of improving the definition of work scope, the quality of proposals and execution efficiency while lowering estimated and actual costs.

With decommissioning a hard cost on a balance sheet, the need for efficiencies and cost reduction is clear, as outlined in the Oil and Gas Authority’s Decommissioning Strategy. The results from Bureau Veritas indicate digital twinning could save millions of pounds in overall project costs and enable operators to make smarter, more cost-effective choices.

As the industry recoils from the double blow of COVID-19 and a low commodity price, digital twinning is a trusted and proven way to reduce unit operating costs. Its importance has elevated from a ‘want’ to a ‘need’ for the industry.

www.ogvenergy.co.uk I June 2020For more information visit marine-offshore.bureauveritas.com

FROM ANALYSIS TO ACTION:

Why integrity data analytics is key to developing vital new ways of working.

Faced with a continued pressure on oil price, manning restriction due to COVID 19 and no way of knowing how long this will all last; integrity, operations and asset managers are having to quickly find sustainable new ways of working to ensure continued safe, profitable operations. With a multitude of difficult decisions to be made and ever more limited resources, many are defining the optimum course of action by making use of both data already collected and the rapidly changing data gathered every day.

How do you navigate in an ocean of data?

Back in 2014, The HSE report on Asset Ageing and Life Extension (KP4) noted; “The KP4 programme found a need for better data collection and trending to improve predictions of equipment residual life to support ALE decision-making, and to facilitate proactive equipment maintenance”. Since 2014, the industry has certainly taken great strides in data collection, with drones collecting visual data and inspectors using tablet reporting all now quite normal. Additionally, as sensor data starts to pour in, the volume of data stored has become vast. This shouldn’t really be a surprise, data collection is what the industry already did: Images were gathered, readings taken, reports written and databases populated (sometimes) and as technology improved more images were gathered and more readings were taken and stored, faster and more accurately than ever before. However, unlike data collection, data analytics wasn’t previously part of day to day operations and until relatively recently remained far less familiar. Consequently, knowing how to improve trending and prediction was much less obvious. Nevertheless, as the concept of analytics becomes something that people are comfortable with and the benefits are realised across different sectors, it’s clear the adoption of analytics isn’t something that should happen over time but something that must happen now.

Addressing complexity to create efficiency.

Due to the way modern inspection, reporting and data storage technologies have been “organically” adopted over time; things have, inadvertently, been made more complex. Integrity related data is often relatively unstructured and stored in many different

formats and locations making it difficult for engineers to have a ‘full picture’ of the integrity of an asset’s components. This has an impact on the decision making and risk management processes related to inspection, maintenance and integrity management. Integrity related data may be held in multiple databases, Excel spreadsheets, PI, and historical reports with varying levels of quality and accuracy. It is therefore difficult (or even impossible) for an engineer, using conventional means, to view all relevant data in a manner which allows even basic correlation and trending to support decisions relating to integrity and direct resource appropriately.

Without the tools to sort, cleanse, analyse and visualise data, many integrity departments have been left with no choice but do their best to collate and relate this data manually. Trying to cope with the sheer scale of this task is no doubt the biggest obstacle to interpretation. It can frequently result in the omission of relevant information, as there is often no unified framework for viewing the data. Despite these difficulties and limitations, every effort still must be made to make best use of what’s available. However, in addition to being somewhat ineffective, manual effort is time-consuming and costly. For some large assets, annual onshore integrity costs may be in excess of £1m, with potentially 40% of this cost attributed to managing the data that’s been gathered.

Because of these challenges, business and safety-critical decisions may be made with incomplete, incorrect, or poorly understood data. Ultimately meaning:

• Failure patterns and genuine anomalies are not identified, leading to preventable failures.

• Data trending remains the goal but not the reality.

• Inspections are carried out which do not add value, incurring costs and reducing the resources available for higher priority scopes.

So, what’s changed?

Advanced analytics using new statistical methods and rapidly improving computing power to spot patterns among thousands of variables in continual changing process conditions are now becoming more accepted across the industry. In areas such as exploration & drilling, reliability and even shipping & transportation, the use of analytics to improve efficiency and profitability are becoming common.

At IMRANDD we’ve built our operations and service around the belief that integrity management should be no different. We understood that advanced analytics are particularly effective in environments that involve huge amounts of data and highly complex and variable operating conditions—that is, the same environment that integrity departments must contend with every day. Since our foundation in 2016 we’ve pioneered the use of data science in integrity management bringing completely new approaches and tools to the market, including AIDA© our Advanced Integrity Data Analytics software which helps cleanse, condition, trend and visualise inspection data in way that previously simply hasn’t been possible.

With the majority of our team having an Oil & Gas operator background we’ve leveraged our extensive domain knowledge to ensure that we use our analytics capability to develop tools that clearly add value and are easily deployed, providing unique solutions to common problems. Building on our analytics tools we’ve created a planning and resource optimisation solution that considers budgetary and physical constraints. We’ve also developed ‘RBI+’, our software that ensures knowledge management and auditability are built into the RBI process.

Meeting the demands of today while preparing for tomorrow.

In recent years we’ve successfully proven that analytics can be used effectively to better understand ageing, changing processes and degradation patterns across an asset, alerting operators to potential threats they may not know exist now, as well as those that will arise months and years into the future. In turn, this insight has been used to respond effectively, optimising plans for both today’s constraints and tomorrows challenges.

For more information on how to best leverage integrity data please visit imrandd.com

ASSET INTEGRITY

Data Migration:

unlocking the value of historical data

Advertisement Feature

The quality of data, how it is stored, and the automation of business systems can have a huge impact on decision-making and sustainable success, especially in the oil and gas industry.

William McLean is Director of Omni Integrity Limited, an ICR company

The importance of data

Data is becoming increasingly valuable to operators, as a means for operational efficiency and risk mitigation, throughout the industry and the emergence of technologies such as machine learning and advanced analytics show how it is possible to interrogate data and bring to light some interesting opportunities, perhaps missed using traditional analysis techniques. To extract as much value from such assessments, technology will be dependent on historical data records to provide an empirical foundation in which data models can be built and interpreted. A challenge in the oil and gas industry is the sheer volume of data available and the incompatible formats that make such analyses difficult to undertake.

Storage of data

Historically, methods of processing and storing data have made it difficult to access, as it is often stored in different formats, (e.g. Word, Excel or a database structure), and locations. This makes the data extremely difficult to collate and process for a meaningful review to be carried out.

What are the advantages of data transition?

Data transition is the process of migrating historical data, from various formats, into a centralised digital database. The advantages of carrying out a data transition exercise is to provide an easily accessible data platform, where the data is prepared in a suitable format to allow deep analysis to be carried out. This can uncover immediate areas for optimisation and establish asset-specific degradation models for transitioning the asset to a predictive maintenance and/ or prognostics health management working model.

Although the task of transferring disparate data into a central, accessible form appears challenging, the reality is that - if completed correctly - it can be straightforward and cause minimal disruption to operations.

William McLean, Director of Omni Integrity Limited (Omni), (an ICR company), explains the importance of data migration and storage and how it can be the first step to unlocking valuable information that can optimise asset inspection, maintenance and repair.

Data Mining - extracting essential data quickly

The most efficient and accurate method for migrating historical data is data mining. By writing specific data codes it is possible to automatically extract (mine) the required key information from millions, (or in some cases, billions), of sources of integrity data, by extracting the data that is relevant and useful. Importantly, this data is stored remotely and securely in the cloud - and in a raw data format that allows for advanced technologies to be applied to the datasets.

Data migration offers an opportunity to harness the power of automation and advanced data storage to create an exceptional data resource that has the power to make a tangible impact within the oil & gas industry.

The solution

Omni has developed a data migration solution in partnership with the University of Strathclyde that enables the rapid extraction of historical data records into a centralised data platform. The data is then processed through machine learning analytics to build degradation models for all systems and circuits and providing operators with the foundations for adopting predictive maintenance strategies. The aim is to increase clients’ efficiency when monitoring asset integrity, reducing the time required for data reconciliation and cleansing.

Omni’s proprietary design protocols have been devised to fully integrate with the latest technologies including cloud computing, automation, ‘Internet of things’ (IoT) and predictive analytics; setting the foundation for the development of full Prognostics Health Management (PMH) capabilities for real-time monitoring and visualisation of assets.

www.ogvenergy.co.uk I June 2020For more information visit icr-world.com