Cyberhawk Innovations has improved the safety, time and cost of inspecting cargo oil tanks on operational FPSOs using Remotely Operated Aerial Vehicles (ROAVs).
Maersk Oil, which owns and operates the Gryphon FPSO in the UKCS, traditionally inspected cargo tanks for integrity, damage assessment and class certification using rope access technicians who were suspended on ropes to inspect the tank structure, focusing on areas of high stress such as stiffeners, brackets, bracing, webs and stringers.
However, carrying out a visual inspection of the tank using Cyberhawk’s ROAV – Cyberhawk mobilised an experienced two-man ROAV team consisting of an ROAV pilot and inspection engineer – garnered many benefits.
Human risk factors presented by rope access such as working at height for sustained periods and in confined spaces were reduced. The inspection of the critical components of the tank was completed within a day, in comparison with rope access which would usually take between three and four days and significant cost savings were made. In turn, Maersk Oil could identify and more efficiently plan for any possible contact based inspections in both this and other tanks.
This inspection technique can now be applied to all large internal tanks, on vessels such as FPSOs, bulk carriers and tankers.
Malcolm Connolly, Cyberhawk’s technical director and founder, said: “We and Maersk Oil were keen to develop an effective ROAV inspection method for FPSO cargo oil tanks as well as other tanks and storage vessels. Not only have we removed one of the most significant risks associated with tank inspection, working at height, but we have also highlighted the significant cost and time savings achieved by ROAV inspection.”
Aberdeen based Shipbrokers Online Limited (Shipbroker.com) launched earlier in 2015, offering an innovative digital platform to manage the shipbroking process that promises to transform the shipping market and drive efficiencies in the brokering process.
The newly launched online platform will create a more efficient, cost effective and transparent shipbroking environment by replacing traditional shipbrokers with an advanced and user-friendly online service.
The technology behind shipbroker.com uses the most up-to-date digital processes but works in much the same way as leading travel or real estate search engines.
The company was established to put the power into the hands of vessel charterers and operators by creating an online marketplace that offers significant savings in brokerage fees and removes unnecessary complexity from the process. It also makes tendering a completely transparent exercise.
The founders of Shipbroker.com have over 30 years’ experience in the shipping and oil and gas industries and have been on both sides of the chartering process.
Kenny MacLeod, Shipbrokers Online Limited’s Chairman said: “After more than two years of development and testing the platform is now ready for use.
Against a backdrop of increasing uncertainty in the oil and gas industry, now is the time for a disruptive technology like Shipbroker.com. It demonstrates tangible solutions to help charterers and the supply chain cut costs and creates efficiencies to help secure the future of the industry”.
“We are speaking to a number of interested charterers and vessel operators and look forward to working with them as they continue to trial the platform.”
Petrofac, Faroe Petroleum and Eni Hewett have established an innovative cost-saving partnership to drive efficiencies and commercial synergies across their UK operations in the southern North Sea.
The tripartite agreement sees collaboration between Petrofac as the duty holder and the respective equity owners and operators of the Hewett, Schooner and Ketch gas fields to share logistics and accommodation services across the facilities.
Faroe Petroleum has invested in a new variant of NHV’s Augusta Westland 139 helicopter, enabling an increase in passenger numbers and freight capacity, and will share the usage of the helicopter with Eni Hewett.
In exchange, offshore personnel contracted to the normally unmanned Schooner and Ketch assets will stay nearby on the Eni Hewett complex rather than returning to shore each day, cutting down travel time and ensuring cost efficient mobilisation of personnel. The arrangement also allows for greater flexibility when deploying personnel as Petrofac can mobilise its workforce, as required, across both operations.
This approach will see the partnership deliver significant cost reductions and effectively manage resource mobilisation through a collaborative and open commercial arrangement.
Walter Thain, managing director, Petrofac Offshore Projects and Operations said: “To deliver the greatest value for our customers we always place a strong emphasis on cost management. The challenges we currently face as an industry are unprecedented and require us to constantly think differently and be innovative in the approach we take commercially to operations and engaging our supply chain.
“Reducing the cost of operations in the UKCS is a collective industry responsibility and we are absolutely committed to playing our part. By delivering cost reductions and synergies safely we benefit our customers and support a broader step change in the culture of the UK oil and gas industry.”
Graham Stewart, chief executive of Faroe Petroleum, said: “Since taking over operatorship of Schooner and Ketch last year, we have focused on a number of measures across the supply chain designed to improve operational efficiency without compromising safety which we feel is especially relevant in this new era of low commodity prices. This arrangement is one such innovative measure, which entails the sharing of key services which will materially reduce offshore operating expenditure, and improve operational efficiency.
BP has worked hard over the last three years to improve its management of inventory to reduce lead times in getting critical spare parts offshore and reduce waste from the purchase and storage of excess materials.
Over the last five decades of operations in the North Sea， the company has built up a large amount of inventory， stored in many locations. This complexity and excess often resulted in long lead times to transport materials offshore and besides being costly， could have a negative impact on production when these materials were critical to the operation of the platform.
BP launched a project to improve its inventory management – identifying a number of improvements， including better materials cataloguing， disposal of surplus spare parts and a reduction in the number of storage locations being used. As a result， the company has created a more effective materials management process and reduced the costs of inventory management. The number of storage locations has more than halved from 120 to 48， greatly reducing storage costs. The number of inventory items has also halved from 158，000 to 75，000 and around $32 million has been generated by disposing of scrap and materials identified as surplus to the company’s needs.
BP is also participating in Oil & Gas UK’s workgroup focusing on the use of inventory. Through collaboration with other operators， materials are being shared， inventories are being slimmed down and required materials are being made available more quickly.
Arnie Mouat， BP Materials Management Delivery Manager， commented: “The need to address high costs and production efficiency issues in the UK Continental Shelf is clear. Our work to eliminate waste and excess is a good example not only of our relentless focus on making our processes more efficient and reducing operating costs but also of the benefits of collaboration across the industry.”
TOTAL, a major international operator committed to maximising oil and gas production from the UK continental shelf (UKCS) is taking bold action to improve the productivity of offshore field operations as part of its group-wide initiative to drive sustainable growth.
To achieve the business transformation required, the company is encouraging staff to commit to making a cultural change in the way they work, think and behave to help bring about improvements under three themes: safety, production and in managing costs better.
Improving the efficiency of offshore field operations, including maintenance activities, is one of the company’s eight key priority areas which include well construction, geosciences, contracts and procurement, projects, logistics, information services and overall corporate services. The company is using process improvement techniques such as ‘Lean’ to examine how its current practices in operations and maintenance activities could be improved to help control costs and improve efficiency.
“Our commitment to changing our cultural approach is an important part of looking at how our field operations could become more efficient”, explains a spokesman, “For example, we are using ‘Lean’ tools to reassess how we schedule tasks and now encourage our offshore teams in different roles, including supervisors, technicians and operators, to develop a greater awareness of one another’s roles and requirements in each assignment which might include activities including basic oil changes, electrical breaker maintenance, valve change outs and even gas turbine maintenance.
“On the North Alwyn platform, the team has introduced a visual scheduling process that helps technicians by improving visibility of the overall maintenance plan. This consists of new scheduling boards designed to give discipline teams a clearer 48-hour view of the planned work schedule, showing priorities and the impact of any interruption in equipment operation.
“The new process helps the teams identify additional work that can be carried out during equipment downtime giving them the opportunity to maximise productivity in other related activities. A simple Measurement and Root Causes chart tracks performance against planned work schedules and also highlights the reasons behind any delivery issues to improve performance still further. The plan is to apply these ‘Lean’ principles to other areas of the business.
“There are many processes to consider in each of the tasks
associated with field operations and a fair amount of time is taken up with essential preparation activities such as tool box talks, site checks and work permit requirements. However, even in this early stage of the initiative we have seen the completion of planned tasks within the schedule improve by 14 per cent.
“We believe our new approach has succeeded in helping us grow an even stronger team ethos within field operations crews and that it is helping us to develop a shared responsibility for controlling costs which can only contribute towards a sustainable future for our company on the UKCS.”
Major operator, Chevron Upstream Europe (Chevron), is making optimum use of the platform supply vessels which support its installations in the North Sea by taking a new approach to organising its marine logistics which involves greater input from its employees and more effective integration across different departments.
A spokesperson explains: “Marine logistics, involving the delivery of plant, equipment and materials from suppliers to our offshore installations, are a sizeable proportion of lifting costs which are some of the costs associated with producing oil and gas from wells on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS)). In 2014 Chevron launched an initiative to look at how the business could manage the costs of marine logistics more effectively.
“As part of Chevron Upstream Europe’s operations department, our marine logistics team is responsible for supporting the installations and key projects we manage on the UKCS, including the Alba, Captain and Erskine fields. Working together with the TEAM Marine Consortium, which we looked at ways to make better use of Platform Support Vessels (PSVs), share resources with neighbouring offshore installations and maximise every inch of each vessel’s deck space capacity.
“Chevron, as a member of the TEAM Consortium for the past 20 years, is well aware of the benefits of pooling resources such as platform support vessels. We therefore took this co-operative working approach a step further to pinpoint opportunities where we could improve marine logistics efficiency.
We have been using tools such as Lean Sigma to help our onshore and offshore teams assess potential opportunities for contributing to smarter ways to tackle both day-to -day and long-term strategic planning across the business. This approach is helping us to generate in our teams a sense of empowerment where they are encouraged to think creatively and constantly challenge themselves to find potential opportunities for efficiency improvement.
As a result of launching our efficiency initiative last year, we have been able to streamline work processes. We have also been able to reduce the cost per ton of cargo transported by platform support vessels and increased utilisation of deck space to 75-80 percent of each vessel’s capacity
BG Group intends to make its offshore platforms more efficient by significantly reducing ‘dead time’ on installations and empowering the offshore workforce to carry out scheduling and planning.
By enabling employees offshore， rather than logistics co-ordinators based onshore， to manage materials， plan projects and schedule jobs， the right parts， people and processes should be in place when a job is due to begin. So-called ‘dead time’， common when tasks are delayed， should reduce and efficiency increase.
BP expects plant efficiency on its UK assets to increase by over twelve percentage points this year as a result of reliability improvement plans put in place over the last three years.
While there must be periodic breaks in production for planned maintenance， the company’s production has suffered from unplanned shutdowns due to equipment failure on ageing topsides and subsea infrastructure as well as insufficient equipment redundancy. In 2013， BP took specific action to address these unplanned shut-downs through the development and implementation of reliability improvement plans. As a result of these plans， BP expects its plant efficiency to improve from 70 per cent in 2014 to over 82 per cent for 2015.
The plans are founded on an ‘n+1’ philosophy， meaning each asset has spare capacity and critical equipment in case of failure， allowing for fewer and shorter unplanned shut downs. A central reliability team has been established and is accountable for owning and updating the plans， which are reviewed by senior leadership on a monthly basis.
Brian Pridmore， BP reliability and maintenance manager， said: “The reliability improvement plans have enabled us to identify vulnerabilities and prioritise maintenance of topside and plant equipment to increase both reliability and plant availability. We are now seeing the benefits of these plans through real increases in plant reliability across our UK assets. Less frequent unplanned shutdowns and production deferrals are good news for our business and the sector as a whole.”
ConocoPhillips, the world’s largest independent exploration and production company based on production and proved reserves, has significantly improved offshore efficiency and reduced operating costs by integrating its operations, changing work processes and building a cutting-edge onshore operations centre (OOC).
In an aim to elevate operations performance across their North Sea assets, back in 2013 the company decided to change their operating model for the UK. The challenge was to integrate all their Central and Southern North Sea operations by the end of that year.
A dedicated cutting-edge Onshore Operations Centre (OOC) was also built, allowing the multi-disciplinary front-line support teams – condition monitoring, integrated planning, production delivery and health, safety and environment – to all be located in one place.
Since completion, the OOC has consistently delivered tangible results. Its ongoing operation, combined with a programme of continuous improvement, means it is growing in strength and it is successfully delivering improvements to the company’s UK operations.
Brage Sandstad, General Manager, Operated Assets, explains: “For ConocoPhillips, ‘integrated operations’ is a simple and creative solution that has enabled collaboration between our UK offshore and onshore functional teams to achieve results. By embracing this opportunity for change, we have safely reduced costs, whilst gaining a higher degree of assimilation and collaboration with our contractors and service providers. For us, it was simply good sense to integrate our people and improve our work processes facilitated by the use of new technology”.
ConocoPhillips has made significant savings on a complex and challenging well plugging and abandonment campaign in the UK southern North Sea by taking a ‘campaign’ approach and working collaboratively with vendors.
The company’s plugging and abandonment campaign in the southern North Sea focused on 15 offshore wells across a 541 day work programme in 2014. The teams adopted a ‘campaign’ approach to the tasks in hand, proactively engaging with personnel, working collaboratively with vendors and continually challenging assumptions. As a result, it only took 435 days which reduced costs by 35 percent, saving over £50 million.
The wells were originally developed in the 1970s so there were a number of challenges to overcome. The team incorporated a wide variety of skill sets including, drilling, completion, intervention, fluids and wellhead specialists to ensure the safest and most cost effective solutions and tools were used in all cases.
Due to the unknowns of 30-40 year old wells, the team had to continually learn, formulate, apply and reassess mitigation strategies making constant suggestions for improvement throughout.
By remaining as flexible as possible and applying a rigorous approach to ensuring that risks were controlled as changes were made, every scenario had back-up plans identified up-front which was pivotal to delivering the performance improvements.
Gerry Cooper, UK well operations manager, commented: “Our objective was to safely simplify our infrastructure in the area to reduce the cost impact of assets that were no longer producing. We also wanted to enhance the focus of our integrated operations team and demonstrate the value of collaboration.
“The success of the project really hinged on close collaboration between onshore and offshore, functional groups within ConocoPhillips and our suppliers. Thanks to this teamwork, we jointly delivered an outstanding business result – re-focusing the right people on efficient implementation, reducing operating costs, and safely achieving our goal at a much lower decommissioning cost than originally estimated.”
The learnings from this campaign are now being shared widely across the industry and the approach continues throughout ConocoPhillips’ ongoing southern North Sea plugging and abandonment and decommissioning campaign.
BP has worked co–operatively with fellow operator, GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd (part of the ENGIE Group), to increase exploration activity and help maximise economic recovery from untapped oil and gas resources in a mature play in the Central North Sea.
Using advanced seismic data enhancement techniques and careful analysis of pre-existing well data, BP’s exploration team identified a prospect named ‘Vorlich’ in the central North Sea. The challenge was to see if they could drill and test this cost-effectively and expeditiously. In the UKCS, the days of simple quick finds are behind us. Finds are now in small and complex structures, which are challenging, requiring a large amount of time and forensic effort to properly understand. The high drilling costs in the basin can also quickly erode the value of smaller opportunities, making new discoveries increasingly rare.
It was recognised that the Vorlich prospect extended into adjacent acreage which was licensed to fellow operator GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd, who had previously identified the prospect and named it as ‘Marconi’. This then allowed BP to identify an opportunity to drill the prospect in collaboration with its neighbour.
Ronnie Parr, BP Geophysical Advisor, said: “We identified that drilling the main wellbore into the BP acreage was the optimum exploration location, but a side-track into GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd’s neighbouring licence block would allow us to confirm the scale of the resource and its extent, so BP and GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd jointly designed the well to test and appraise Vorlich across both blocks. GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd operated the well in 2014 in partnership with BP which allowed both companies to share exploration costs, resulting in a successful, potentially commercial, oil discovery”.
“At a time when exploration in the UKCS is facing severe investment and cost pressures, we believe the Vorlich project has demonstrated that two UK operators can work together to apply their expertise, expedite a project efficiently and maximise recovery of the considerable remaining resource. We believe there is great potential for other operators on the UKCS to find new ways to work together to ensure that oil and gas is not left stranded and undeveloped.”
BP and GDF SUEZ E&P UK Ltd’s innovative approach to developing the Vorlich discovery aligns with the recommendations in the Wood report ‘UKCS Maximising Recovery Review’, which notes that exploration will be most efficiently carried out on a regional basis, dependent on the existing infrastructure, collaboration on geological information where there are mutual benefits to both parties , and prospectivity within the region.
Other partners in Marconi / Vorlich are: DEA UK SNS Limited, Maersk Oil North Sea UK Limited and Total E&P UK Limited.
North East company Advanced Industrial Solutions （AIS） recognised the need to reduce the cost of training for offshore workers in the North Sea early on – and has created a whole new approach to training， offering real cost savings which could have a significant impact on training budgets for the sector.
Over the past three years AIS has invested millions of pounds to create a state-of-the-art 150，000 square-foot offshore training village on North Tyneside. The world-class training on offer includes emergency response， sea survival and wind energy， as well as CompEx electrical， rigging & lifting and more than 120 other courses. The company has also developed an onsite hotel to provide affordable， high quality accommodation for delegates.
As a result， the centre allows people to get all the skills they need in one accessible， affordable location with onsite accommodation from just £29 per night. The company hopes this will eliminate the need for employers to manage bookings and bills for multiple courses， in addition to often costly hotels and travel.
Dave Bowyer， Director of Training for AIS commented: “Inevitably cost is becoming a key consideration for oil and gas companies. Employers looking to do things more efficiently and intelligently find having multi-skilled employees who can effectively complete numerous tasks can help.
We hope our training village will help saves employers significant time and money – so they can squeeze the maximum out of their training budgets. This flagship village in North Tyneside is in addition to new locations in Aberdeen， Grimsby （Humberside） and Cleckheaton （West Yorkshire）.”
Erskine is a gas condensate field that was discovered in 1981 in Block 23/26 in the Central North Sea. It was the first high-pressure, high-temperature field to be developed in the U.K. Continental Shelf, achieving first production in December 1997. It comprises a normally unmanned installation (NUI) which is remotely controlled from BG Group’s Lomond platform. An 18.6 mile (30 km) pipeline links the two facilities.
Effective teamwork between operators and suppliers has resulted in the completion of a highly efficient maintenance programme on Erskine, one of Chevron Upstream Europe’s (CUE) offshore installations, which has significantly boosted production performance.
Processing of hydrocarbons takes place in a dedicated module on the Lomond platform. Gas and condensate are exported separately to BG Group’s North Everest platform before gas is finally exported via the Central Area Transmission System, while condensate is exported through the.
BG Group and CUE have been working together on a large scale maintenance campaign to upgrade the Lomond hub to improve the efficiency of Erskine production, part of which comprises the cleaning and inspection of the 30 kilometre pipeline using a practice called ‘pigging’ with devices known as ‘pigs’.
Andy Brooks, Erskine Asset manager, explained: “Pigging involves inserting a pig into an oversized section in the pipeline known as a ‘pig launcher’ located on the Erskine Platform. The launcher is then closed and the pressure-driven flow of the product in the pipeline is used to push it along the pipe until it reaches the receiving trap called the ‘pig catcher’ located at Lomond. Carrying out this process enables us to clean and inspect the pipeline.
“By developing a joint vision for the campaign with BG Group and securing committed integrated input from the Erskine Asset and Intervention Team, Facilities Engineering Pipelines Group including pigging vendor companies, Logistics, BG onshore and Lomond offshore teams, we ran a total of 14 pigs, including an intelligent pig, which was essential for proving the long term integrity of the pipeline.”
The work took place over three mobilisations spanning a period of three months and, along with BG’s major refurbishment and maintenance programme on Lomond to improve long-term reliability, has resulted in all five Erskine wells coming online for the first time in two years.
The daily production rate is now the highest it’s been in two years, at approximately 27,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and the combined production from Erskine and Lomond is at its highest since changing to a single train operation. Daily production efficiency is currently sitting at more than 90 percent.
Steve Cox, BG’s Vice President UK Operated Assets said: “The recent pigging campaign is a great example of the ongoing success of the collaboration between the two companies,” a sentiment echoed by Dave Dillard, General Manager of CUE’s UK Operated Assets, who added: “With Erskine back on line, the teams are on course to deliver against their performance metrics for 2015 – a position Erskine hasn’t been in for a number of years. These results highlight the impact of exceptional teamwork and reinforce how a collaborative approach can add real value to the business.”
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