The Arctic region holds vast amounts of extractive energy resources. Most of the arctic resources lie offshore beneath thick ice and deep water in environmentally very sensitive areas. Weather and distance from existing infrastructure and centers of population add additional operational and logistic challenges.Oil and gas operations in the high north are likely to entail the remote and distributed control of assets -leading to heavy demands on the communication links and information flow. Connecting and integrating business processes and information sources across disciplines, geographical locations and organizational boundaries add to the complexity. Further, operations in the high north require particular sensitivity to environmental aspects.In order to meet all the requirements and at the same time maintain profitable operations, the industry has to create new field development and operation concepts that include heavily instrumented facilities. There must also be put a significant focus on the transfer of real time data between fields and operation centers located elsewhere, and on automated key work processes to handle the large volumes of data. A prerequisite for this development is a robust digital infrastructure and a platform for effective and efficient information exchange. This is what the Norwegian Oil Industry Association has called Integrated Operations Generation 2. Central to this vision is a much higher degree of functionalities being distributed geographically and organizationally based upon a digital platform that is distributed to a higher extent than what is common today. The platform defines interfaces and employs data transfer and distributed intelligence based on open standards, allowing for a much higher degree of interoperability across applications, disciplines, geographic locations and organizations than is common today.The main aim for the "Integrated Operations in the High North" project is to build and demonstrate a digital platform for Integrated Operations Generation 2. The project is a unique collaboration between the ICT, defense and oil and gas industries, as well as university research groups. During a four year period starting May 2008, the 26 participants in the project are working together to develop a demonstrated platform for Integrated Operations Generation 2. Pilots defined for drilling, production and operations and maintenance, are used as a basis to generate the requirements early in the project, and at later stages in the project to demonstrate the value of the platform.The project is also relevant for gaining experience with where and how cutting edge ICT technologies, like semantic and agent technologies that target the "Internet of things", may generate value within the oil & gas industry.

The Arctic region holds vast amounts of extractive energy resources. Most of the arctic resources lie offshore beneath thick ice and deep water in environmentally very sensitive areas. Weather and distance from existing infrastructure and centers of population add additional operational and logistic challenges.Oil and gas operations in the high north are likely to entail the remote and distributed control of assets -leading to heavy demands on the communication links and information flow. Connecting and integrating business processes and information sources across disciplines, geographical locations and organizational boundaries add to the complexity. Further, operations in the high north require particular sensitivity to environmental aspects.In order to meet all the requirements and at the same time maintain profitable operations, the industry has to create new field development and operation concepts that include heavily instrumented facilities. There must also be put a significant focus on the transfer of real time data between fields and operation centers located elsewhere, and on automated key work processes to handle the large volumes of data. A prerequisite for this development is a robust digital infrastructure and a platform for effective and efficient information exchange. This is what the Norwegian Oil Industry Association has called Integrated Operations Generation 2. Central to this vision is a much higher degree of functionalities being distributed geographically and organizationally based upon a digital platform that is distributed to a higher extent than what is common today. The platform defines interfaces and employs data transfer and distributed intelligence based on open standards, allowing for a much higher degree of interoperability across applications, disciplines, geographic locations and organizations than is common today.The main aim for the "Integrated Operations in the High North" project is to build and demonstrate a digital platform for Integrated Operations Generation 2. The project is a unique collaboration between the ICT, defense and oil and gas industries, as well as university research groups. During a four year period starting May 2008, the 26 participants in the project are working together to develop a demonstrated platform for Integrated Operations Generation 2. Pilots defined for drilling, production and operations and maintenance, are used as a basis to generate the requirements early in the project, and at later stages in the project to demonstrate the value of the platform.The project is also relevant for gaining experience with where and how cutting edge ICT technologies, like semantic and agent technologies that target the "Internet of things", may generate value within the oil & gas industry.

There is an increasing focus on monitoring of site specific environmental resources and discharges. Systems for collection of Real time and on-line sensor data are evolving as an answer to these challenges. These systems generate large amounts of data, commonly used into planning/documentation and operational decision support. However, there exists no industry standard on how to design and carry out such activities. This paper outlines a guideline for conceptual designs of cost efficient and robust sensor monitoring systems. Based on previous sensor monitoring projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, a methodology has been developed to make conceptual designs of cost efficient and robust sensor monitoring systems. This paper proposes in the evaluation process of emerging technologies for possible incorporation in a cost efficient way to use a combination of (1) Existing sampling design strategies, (2) Identified key design variables and (3) Success and acceptance criteria's for implementing new Environmental Monitoring Mapping (EMM) approach. The approach has been tested on two cases; (i) off-line/physical sampling approach and (ii) on-line/modelling approach. A number of driving design variables have been identified for establishing such a system, whereas the most important are: (i) time - frequency and duration of the sampling, (ii) space - spatial resolution and number of sensors, (iii) collection: off/on-line and mobile/stationary sensor platforms (iv) Use: direct or derived use of the data and documentation/mitigation purposes, (v) analysis, and (vi) Presentation: availability and format. By assessing these key design variables one will provide decision support on complexity of the environmental sensor based solution on future environmental monitoring campaigns. In Norway, over the past decade, there has been made substantial efforts in offshore projects to apply use of sensors in different ways where sensitive environmental resources such as cold water corals and deep water sponge aggregations are present. On a general basis most of these projects have been real time data collection using an off-line solution, where the purpose has been documentation. Joint effort R&D projects such as IEM, ELMO and LOVE, and commercial projects like Morvin and Hyme have challenged the off-line application into an on-line setting. Benefits from collection of Real time and on-line sensor data can be to enable operations in compliance with environmental acceptance criteria; meaning more efficient, smarter and greener operations. So far little focus has been on how data from sensor based systems actually can be used for decision support. In order to address the complexity and challenges of setting up different type of sensor based systems, this paper presents a design guideline which is based on a structured approach including the main variables needed to be considered for such a systems. Lessons learned from several previous sensor monitoring projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) are reflected in the guideline. By applying the structured approach it is expected to design more cost efficient and robust monitoring systems.

A large part of the earth’s remaining offshore oil and gas reserves are found in environmentally sensitive areas where (extraction) operations and discharges to the environment can have negative consequences for the ecosystem. The offshore oil and gas industry needs to adapt to this reality, and develop new more prudent ways of working. On the Norwegian Continental Shelf, oil and gas operations often take place in areas with cold water corals, deep sea sponge aggregations or spawning grounds for sand eel and other benthic resources. In order to minimize the risk of negative impacts from operations in these sensitive areas, monitoring of discharges and of the vulnerable environmental resources is required. Two systems providing decision support in this new risk reality are under development. The first is a system for real time integration, analysis and visualization of multi sensor environmental data, operational data and modeled data. This system is applicable for oil and gas operations in general, but the initial focus has been on drilling operations in sensitive areas. The second is a system for real time modeling and risk assessment of drilling operations. This includes combining state-of-the-art models for hydrodynamic and discharge modeling. The model output will be combined and fed into risk assessment computations. The two systems combined will support decision making in order to minimize risk of negative effects on vulnerable resources during oil and gas operations. Analysis, visualization of real-time data from different data sources and modeling in real time enables the operator to continuously assess the potential impact to the environment and to control the operation such that the risk to the environment is minimized. To support different roles and to optimize the decision making process different graphical user interfaces are made available, presenting data in different contexts and at different aggregation levels. For example geographic representation and plotting of time series have proven to be particularly useful. For companies operating in environmentally sensitive areas, these systems represent decision making tools, enabling them to better plan and manage their operations. Intelligently integrated into daily operations this represents a large step towards Integrated Environmental Monitoring, which key industry players consider to be a pre requisite to obtaining license to operate in new unexplored sensitive areas.