Effective management of process safety risks while delivering flawless operational execution in an evolving oil and gas industry requires innovative applications of digital technology. Augmented Reality (AR) or Mixed Reality (MR) technologies have tremendous potential to meet these challenges by providing realworld digital landscape to intuitively interact with data, train personnel, and mitigate process safety risks. However, a major challenge with AR and MR technologies is the limited processing power and capability of available hardware. A cloud-based software platform can overcome these computational limitations of AR and MR devices, enabling interaction with significantly more complex 3D content. Additionally, enabling real-time connectivity across different hardware architectures – such as smartphones and Microsoft HoloLens devices – creating powerful new capability for remote collaboration. This unique software platform transforms consumer-grade AR and MR devices into powerful industrial tools for oil and gas applications. This paper will illustrate the application of AR/MR technology in critical risk management including the adoption of AR/MR technology for process safety operational readiness and response capability to critical risk associated with major accident hazards. Enhanced AR/MR provides full-scale virtual digital landscapes that enable practical demonstration of crew resource management including the evaluation of collaborative human performance in teamwork activities. Using gamified AR/MR techniques, allows for multiple outcomes based on user inputs to test decision-making and eliminate human errors. These enabling technologies can drive significant improvements in process safety risk management while increasing operational efficiencies across the oil and gas industry.

As the oil and gas industry undergoes a digital transformation, the massive volume and variety of information being ingested at increasing velocity necessitates new methods of data interaction for decision making. Additionally, effective management of safety risks and flawless operational execution in an evolving oil and gas industry requires innovative applications of digital technology. By superimposing contextually-relevant digital information on the physical world, augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) technologies have tremendous potential to meet these challenges by providing a more intuitive way to interact with data, train personnel, and ensure process safety. However, a major challenge with AR and MR technologies is the limited processing power and capability of available hardware. A cloud-based software platform has been developed to overcome computational limitations of AR and MR devices, enabling interaction with significantly more complex 3D content. Additionally, this enhanced AR/MR software platform enables real-time connectivity across different hardware architectures – such as smartphones and Microsoft HoloLens devices – creating powerful new capability for remote collaboration. This unique software platform transforms consumer-grade AR and MR devices into powerful industrial tools useful for a variety of oil and gas applications. This study will illustrate the functionality enhancements provided by this software platform and how it greatly increases the application potential of AR and MR, including a case study on adoption of this enhanced AR/MR technology for process safety using threat response drill (TRD) scenarios. Enhanced AR and MR provides full-scale virtual TRD scenarios that enable practical demonstration of operational readiness and proactive risk management. Crew response capability and human performance can be collaboratively evaluated with gamified AR/MR techniques, allowing for multiple outcomes based on user inputs through multiple interaction modalities, enabled by the underlying software platform. Enhanced AR/MR enabled by this software platform can drive major improvements in process safety and ultimately help reduce CAPEX, increase efficiency, and mitigate risk across the oil and gas industry.

"Would you recommend that your son or daughter go into petroleum engineering?" This is a question SPE presidents and senior executives have been asked for decades and, for most of the last 40 years, the answer has been positive. However, how realistic is a positive response today? In today's society, negative attitudes toward the extractive industries, and fossil fuels in particular, have made the oil & gas industry less attractive to college students. In addition, this negative opinion has been greatly exacerbated by issues surrounding climate change, not to mention the seemingly constant cyclical demand and massive layoffs during downturns. Factor in the inherent pressure for efficiency, new data-driven approaches and AI-based systems and the future of petroleum engineering looks to be quite different from what has been experienced in the past. In addition, decreasing oil demand in American and Europe may well portend radical changes in how the industry functions.