Most would assume that technology jargon and computing prowess need
not be part of conversations with senior oil and gas executives, and the
sector is often chided for being behind the digital curve. However, in an age where bits and bytes are everywhere, at a time
when oil and gas majors crave process efficiencies, such clichés are
destined for the dustpan, according to David Eyton, Group Head of
Technology at BP.
Despite trying times for the industry, Eyton says the oil and gas
major invested two-thirds of a billion dollars towards digitally driven
research and development (R&D) last year, and a similar amount
deploying fruits of the labor that led to its recent “digital oilfield”
modelling concept. In pursuit of the optimal solution, BP has notched up a series of
firsts for the oil and gas business – from 4D seismic site surveys to
state of the art ocean floor detection nodes, drones tracking
installations to hubs processing high density real-time data that is
pouring in from installations.
David Eyton, Group Head of Technology at BP, addresses a team meeting. Photo by Graham
Trott © BP
Eyton’s face lights up when he mentions “Advanced Collaborative
Environments”, BP’s monitoring centers based onshore that enable experts
to work directly with offshore operators using real-time information. One such center in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas is
capable of data processing speeds of up to four petaflops. “That’s four
quadrillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS) requiring a
massive number of computers working in parallel on the same task with an
aim of processing it in the quickest possible time.”
To provide some context, US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Laboratory Titan
supercomputer has a speed of 20 petaflops. So why does BP need four
petaflops? “Digital is everywhere within the company. Back office and
administrative IT department, of course, is completely separate from the
process technology unit.
“Members of my unit are not all are IT hacks – we have geologists,
surveyors, engineers, petrochemists and support staff, all contributing
towards developing digital processes. For instance, BP’s patented
Independent Simultaneous Sources (ISS) technology for land seismic
imaging was designed by our geophysicists in tandem with the
programmers.”
And Eyton, most certainly, isn’t an IT hack himself in a true sense
of the word. Having qualified as a civil engineer, he went on to hold
several executive offices in the upstream division of BP from Trinidad
to Australia over the last three decades, before taking on his current
role seven years ago.
“My career pathway brought about a holistic understanding of the need
to harness technology to reduce risk and create value. Away from
upstream, even when it comes to examining downstream chemical processes,
I cannot imagine doing it without a digital companion before the
physical experiment stage.
“Of my seven direct reports, two – the heads of technology at
upstream and downstream divisions – also dually report to [Chief
Executive] Bob Dudley; that’s indicative of the emphasis we place on
digitally supported hydrocarbon extraction.” Yet, BP’s core offerings – oil and gas – are physical products, so it
is not a Google or Microsoft, or trying to be one for that matter. “For
us digital is a massive enabler, and for the industry in general it has
been about the progress of computing and seismic survey techniques of
land and offshore prospection sites.
“In a competitive exploration and production (E&P) environment,
the whole point of harnessing technology is that you can model what you
do before execution, in large part by collecting, processing and
interpreting massive amounts of seismic data and deriving operational
benefits.”
Eyton says digital has been a great enabler for BP’s exploration and production efforts. Photo by
Graham Trott © BP
Sophisticated 4D seismic imaging improves the odds of BP finding oil
and gas in remote locations and, once in production, track movement
through reservoir formations over time. Other benefits have included
survey costs being halved, and it currently takes BP a fifth of the time
for surveying a prospection site than it did prior to the deployment of
recently conjured up digital solutions.
Eyton cites Valhall, an oilfield in the North Sea,
where BP shot its first ever 4D seismic imagery, as an example. “We got
perhaps one of the most accurate measurements of fluid flow. It was a
great experiment, and now the technique is being regularly deployed in
the Gulf of Mexico towards lowering costs and improving operations.”
Mad Dog offshore oilfield,
offers a case in point there. “In 1998, given the complexities of the
salt formations in Gulf of Mexico seabed we had to drill through; BP
went with a single well when the site came onstream in 2005. Today
digital seismic is assisting us as operators of the field to look beyond
a single well and enhance production.”
In fact, it is inconceivable to imagine BP venturing into an upstream
venture these days without deploying a digital survey to suss out its
prospects. Handy, some would say, when the company is budgeting for a
$60 oil price for the next few years. Yet, Eyton says cost has never
been the only driver; rather it is a natural progression of process
optimization.
“This has been a 25 year journey. The pace of our R&D picked up
around 2000-01 when we decided to work towards a bigger digital
processing platform. While it is true that some of the latest
enhancements have come into play during a lean phase for the oil and gas
sector, what we are deploying at the moment has been years in the
making.”
In 2013, BP did a review of digital technology, and one of the points
observed was the seemingly extraordinary potential of technologies to
enhance revenues and reduce costs. “Now, I could argue that the oil price was well above current levels
back then, yet we continued with our investment towards digital and are
better off. At the end of the day, digital technologies nearly always
drive efficiencies.”
The current climate poses serious challenges for BP, but Eyton says
the technology department takes a long term view. “Our head count and
investment does not go down because the oil price is at $60. For the
most part, the current situation has made very little difference to our
technology program because the long term view hasn’t changed.
“Most of the impact we’ve felt has a direct connect with business
logic. If partners are deferring or cancelling projects, or we have
decided to capture deflation – the point at which you can extract value
from technology investment has either gone back or possibly disappeared
entirely – then there are knock-on consequences and the department has
to adjust. But we’re not cutting just for sheer symbolism of reducing
headcount in trying times.”
An oil rig in the British sector of the North Sea, a region where the company first trialled its 4D
Seismic technology © BP
“Of course, nobody is in denial about the current operating climate.
It is clear that technologies which can be deployed very, very quickly
are getting added emphasis at the moment.” Eyton also flags up a crucial point. “Don’t forget that the cost of
technology has come down too in tandem with computing power following Moore’s Law.
“Hence, the cost of managing data in Houston has gone down and I also
see hardware costs coming down via competitive tenders. For example,
sensors costing $1,000 today could cost as little as $10 within a matter
of years. At the same time, the kit is improving, capable of operating
at depths of 30,000 feet which is a pretty hostile environment in terms
of temperatures and pressures for data gathering equipment.”
At the end of the day, regardless of the wider operating climate, for
BP’s technology team it is all about remaining a step ahead of the
competition even though it’s often hard to monitor what rivals are up
to. “If I say that we’re spending three-fourths of a billion dollars on
R&D, where it would lead to would not be apparent right now.”
In that respect, both for BP as well as the competition, the
benchmarks are slightly lagging behind. “If you dig into the business,
especially upstream, it is predominantly differentiated around
sub-surface technologies. We like to think that we are truly
differentiated around seismic technology.
“The progression of seismic from 2D to 4D over the decades is a story
of an analog process going digital in leaps and bounds and we’ve been
the first to do a lot of things. It indicates that we are perhaps ahead
of the pack. That we have a lot of digital capability underpins that.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gauravsharma/2015/06/27/bps-head-of-technology-harnesses-petaflops-to-drive-headline-efficiencies/?ss=energy