Welington Cintra

Local Division Manager | ABB México

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris began the wave of more ambitious efforts to contain climate change, as representatives from 193 countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 45% by 2030, and in full by midcentury. Moreover, thousands of companies agreed to reductions in their GHGs, including some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, which have agreed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

A key sector is offshore platforms, which extract offshore oil and gas, because more than 600 are located worldwide. Such facilities are energy intensive due to powering activities such as engines that move the platform at sea, pumps that extract fluid from the seabed, as well as running heating, cooling, and habitability systems for their crew. ABB research found that over 15 years of life, operating an oil rig can reach 173.6 megatons of CO2, the best-known GHG. This is equivalent to the emissions required to manufacture 7.985 million packages of cement.

Automating the operations of an oil rig not only reduces the number of personnel working offshore, in potentially risky conditions, it also decreases greenhouse gas emissions. The ABB Energy Transition Equation for Offshore Oil and Gas report reveals automation allows a maritime platform to reduce its GHG emissions by up to 320,000 tons per year while reducing its operating costs by 30 to 50%.

Since the 1980s, technology has made it possible to automate the activities of an oil rig. In countries like the United Arab Emirates around half of the most remote oil platforms are managed remotely, while in the North Sea, this proportion is 25% and in the Gulf of Mexico 10%.

Some key processes of the operation of an offshore platform are already automatable, improving its efficiency and reducing the risk to personnel: well drilling, process control, power transmission, technical improvements and measurement of operational variables.

In summary, the average carbon savings on floating and fixed platforms adopting automation solutions are up to 27%, according to the ABB Energy Transition Equations. This equates to:

1. 1. Removing up to 160, 000 cars off the road.

2. 2. Powering up to 210,000 homes.

3. 3. Reducing the amount of CO2 responsible for 5 billion kilograms of glacier mass lost each year.

Digitalization presents additional advantages, such as the reduction in the speed of restarting activities after a one-day power failure up to about three hours, as well as a reduction in maintenance costs of up to 50% – moving from a reactive maintenance paradigm to a predictive one.

The commitments established by nations in the Paris Agreement seem distant but involve radical transformations in industries like oil and gas. The digitization, electrification, and automation of oil rig operations will be increasingly important trends to ensure compliance with environmental commitments. It also improves the operational performance of an industry facing what will be perhaps the most important transformation in its history.

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