No not the feel-good-cheesy Kevin Costner baseball flick, real fields. Oil fields that is. Whether the topic of conversation is soaring gas prices, environmental impacts or new technologies it all comes back to oil fields, and the fact that every year there are less barrels in the ground, and the stuff that is there is getting harder to reach.
These and other factors, like cost higher prices for output, a increasingly aging workforce, with decreasing fewer graduates entering the industry; increased competition; and more stringent health, safety and environmental (HSE) regulations together mean oil and gas companies need to seek greater cost-effectiveness. One way to achieve this is improve traditionally labor-intensive oil operations into with technology-driven “digital oil fields. The concept if far from pie-in-the-sky dreams. As this article points out every major private-sector oil company has a digital oil field initiative in place — Shell’s Smart Fields, BP’s Field of the Future, and Chevron’s iFields as well as most large national oil companies, including Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and Kuwait Oil Company. Regardless of the name used they all share common characteristics with the Digital Oilfield of the Future (DOFF)
Any literature or presentation you see on DOFF will tell you that one of the keys to success is establishing a solid data architecture and communication infrastructure. Real-time data management is essential for capturing, storing, and distributing the data that provide real-time asset awareness and support fast, accurate decision making. Good decisions mean good success, but only if they are made on timely access to high-quality data to lets the right people, make the right decisions at the right time. Now where have I heard that phrase used before… Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? …the benefits of using standardized OPC communications and products.
What can OPC offer field of the future type initiatives? A few thoughts
- The breadth of OPC connectivity products makes it possible for companies to standardize all their connectivity, or better yet even from one OPC source.
- OPC is complimentary to a broad range of industry standard protocols yet independent of which ones each entity chooses to use. This eliminates the need for prolonged discussion around trying to get everyone to agree on the ONE protocol to use.
- OPC solutions are ideally suited to dealing with the growing legacy system problem
- Secure, DCOM-Free, and Firewall-compatible OPC technology allows for simple, hassle free data communications between upstream entities without colliding with the IT departments.
- OPC is well suited to work with real-time data, historical data and event driven data.
- OPC HDA solutions like Hub-and-Spoke architectures addresses data ownership issues by allowing different parties to store and share data without interfering with each other’s systems. This is especially important for remote operators who need access to up-to-date and recent history.
- OPC HDA history data links greatly simplifies consolidating historical data among different storage systems.
- OPC based redundancy and reliability solutions would be a given for remotely distributed assets like an oil field.
- And of course if you look you can find trusted OPC vendors who offer global, 24/7 support assistance J.
So what do you think? Is the Field of the Future a Field of Dreams? or an achievable reality if everyone focuses on standards based solutions? If you build it, they will come. (cost saving benefits that is)
