After its success with the implementation of Digital Oilfield program in Carapeba field, Petrobras decided to expand the concept to other fields and assets of the Campos Basin. These new fields had dissimilarities ranging from field instrumentation to varying production concepts and technical processes – posing a new set of challenges enforcing the need to review solution deployment strategy. The solution methodology required analysis of the various functional processes from these fields and assets. Therefore, a functional committee represented by the assets was established to help define the standard business process along with rationalization of the appropriate tools and technology coupled with scalable IT architecture. This clearly led to help achieve consistency and transparency in managing production operations across the organization – resulting in better integration of information and significant increase in efficiency of the functional groups. The key to success was certainly driven by strong management sponsorship and willingness of the asset teams to adapt to the new approach. The solution focused on key business processes which had a direct impact on the production of the assets e.g. Well Surveillance, Analysis & Diagnostics; Losses Control; Sub-Sea Integrity and Surveillance; Well Test Validation & Control; Turbomachines Surveillance – with clearly outlined objective to deliver immediate value to the assets and the business unit. This approach has helped establish Campos Basin as a potential role model for the other assets and business units within Petrobras. This paper intends to describe the challenges faced during the expansion of the program beyond the pilot implementation and the strategies used to overcome them. It also highlights the key aspects of the implemented solution with specific examples - delivering value creation through standardization of infrastructure and production processes of the assets.
The oil and gas industry has had a long-time vision to close the feedback decision loops in the Integrated Digital Oilfield. Petrobras has made initial steps toward this goal by integrating Production Surveillance (for wells, equipment, and facilities) with Remote Control Operations on five platforms that comprise 15% of production operations in the Campos Basin. This represents a step change from the way Petrobras has historically operated, and has required systematic and inter-dependent changes to various sections in the organization.The first step in this direction entailed bringing remote control technical capabilities onshore, to be in closer proximity to the decision center. This ensures stronger person-to-person inter-relationships between production engineers and control operators. The decision center has been operational for over 18 months and has undergone a transformation from reactive to proactive surveillance and analysis approach on the processes supporting production operations. Now that proactive processes have been established, Petrobras has instituted combined surveillance-control processes, with each onshore team focusing on a single platform. As the project has matured, the role has changed so that now each onshore team manages multiple platforms with similar levels of operational complexity. This has led to a strengthening of the quality of remote control operations, has allowed technical expertise to be leveraged across operations, and has reduced overall HSE exposure. This paper describes the initial steps taken by Petrobras to achieve integration between predictive surveillance and remote control production operations. It also describes the benefits that have been realized, such as reducing costs and the number of people on board platforms. Based on the early success of this work, Petrobras plans to expand the program to cover all of its operations in the Campos Basin. After proving success in the Campos Basin, it is expected that this approach will guide Petrobras as it prepares for the many challenges in Pre-Salt operations: complex logistics, personnel shortages, and environmental challenges.
The oil and gas industry has had a long-time vision to close the feedback decision loops in the Integrated Digital Oilfield. Petrobras has made initial steps toward this goal by integrating Production Surveillance (for wells, equipment, and facilities) with Remote Control Operations on five platforms that comprise 15% of production operations in the Campos Basin. This represents a step change from the way Petrobras has historically operated, and has required systematic and inter-dependent changes to various sections in the organization.The first step in this direction entailed bringing remote control technical capabilities onshore, to be in closer proximity to the decision center. This ensures stronger person-to-person inter-relationships between production engineers and control operators. The decision center has been operational for over 18 months and has undergone a transformation from reactive to proactive surveillance and analysis approach on the processes supporting production operations. Now that proactive processes have been established, Petrobras has instituted combined surveillance-control processes, with each onshore team focusing on a single platform. As the project has matured, the role has changed so that now each onshore team manages multiple platforms with similar levels of operational complexity. This has led to a strengthening of the quality of remote control operations, has allowed technical expertise to be leveraged across operations, and has reduced overall HSE exposure. This paper describes the initial steps taken by Petrobras to achieve integration between predictive surveillance and remote control production operations. It also describes the benefits that have been realized, such as reducing costs and the number of people on board platforms. Based on the early success of this work, Petrobras plans to expand the program to cover all of its operations in the Campos Basin. After proving success in the Campos Basin, it is expected that this approach will guide Petrobras as it prepares for the many challenges in Pre-Salt operations: complex logistics, personnel shortages, and environmental challenges.
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