Foreseeing near future opportunities for oil and gas fields, Petrobras created a corporate program dedicated to study, develop, and implement Digital Integrated Field Management (GeDIg) among its production assets. Over the last three years, Petrobras has been developing a pilot strategy based on multiple scenarios to evaluate the technology level of digital oilfields. Six assets were chosen, taking into account the diversity of production processes (heavy oil, offshore, onshore, brown, and green fields) found all over the Brazilian fields. Two different approaches were implemented: in-house development and partnership with integrated companies. Petrobras program is supported by three fundamental elements: people, process, and technology. Humanware, workflow processes, and change management are the key factors for new technologies implementation such as collaboration centers, intelligent completion, and fast loop artificial lift optimization. After the pilots first year of operation, lessons learned will be gathered to guide the expansion of the digital oilfield concept for other Petrobras assets. The objective of this work is to describe the methodology applied in the six pilots and how Petrobras is going to improve its digital way of work and add value to its assets with Digital Integrated Oil and Gas Field Management. Introduction E&P is moving towards a new digital era, where technology supports new workflow processes, and Petrobras, foreseeing the near future opportunities for oil and gas fields, created a corporate program dedicated to study, develop, and implement Digital Integrated Field Management (GeDIg) among its production assets. Petrobras defined a pilot strategy based on multiple production scenarios, taking into account its production processes diversity (heavy / light oil, brown / green, offshore / onshore fields). The main goal of the pilot strategy is to evaluate the benefits of digital oilfield implementation, combining production scenarios with asset intelligence level. Six assets were chosen and different approaches were considered. In each pilot, the digital fields are being designed with real time operation, data base integration, and collaborative functional model to achieve faster decisions based on concise and reliable information. To implement the new digital way of work, humanware, workflow processes redesign, and change management become important tools to transform the processes into its TO BE form. The methodology applied in the pilot strategy is presented in the next section, followed by the detailed description of each pilot. At the end, the lessons learned from the GeDIg program will be presented. Pilot Strategy Digital Integrated Field Management (GeDIg) is E&P integrated management for production processes to add value to oilfield through personnel training and right time information access (automation, modeling and simulation). In addition, GeDIg aims real time monitoring and control, production and cost optimization, pursuing ultimate reservoir recovery augmentation. Besides digital oilfield benefits evaluation, GeDIg program expects to design the best strategy for a multi-production scenario in broad digital field implementation.

The development of the GeDIg program was performed through the implementation of six pilots which have been selected considering the diversity of their operations (automation level, location, type of crude oil, level of exploitation, and assisted recovery method) and with two different approaches, in-house development and partnership with integrated companies (Moises et al., 2008).This methodology allowed Petrobras to evaluate the strategies and drivers to be adopted when extending to other assets this new way of work, where skills, workflows, and technological resources are integrated in a systemic perspective, with the objective of generating a significant change in operating and producing oil and gas fields.The diversity of scenarios, in which the pilots were implemented, and the different experiences acquired in each one constitute a valuable source of information and learning, especially for planning change management.The quantification of the benefits obtained through this new way of operating is another important aspect that deserves special attention, since they are, ultimately, the ones that demonstrate the success of the program.The present work has the objective of describing the different aspects of the change management process in Petrobras pilots, the impact observed through an adequate planning and sponsorship, as well as the approach adopted to quantify the benefits, not only the ones that directly impact the results, but also the ones that allow measuring the asset performance in terms of safety, environment, and information quality.

This paper presents the experiences of the Petrobras Business Unit (UN-RNCE), located in Rio Grande del Norte state of Brazil, during the installation and startup of a pipeline leak detection system. The application involves nine multiphase oil pipelines that link several productions facilities together over a total distance of 450-Km. Prior to the selection and installation of this leak detection system a significant pipeline accident resulted in the pollution of Guanabara bay. The leak was not detected by the existing monitoring equipment because of the two phase and multiphase pipeline characteristics. The UN-RNCE decided to install EFA Technologies, Inc., Pressure Point Analysis (PPA)™ technology in order to detect leaks. It is a sophisticated statistical method for leak detection, uses very simple field instrumentation, which facilitates ease of installation and maintenance. However, in order to get the best performance out of the system, it is necessary to understand how the pipeline control processes operate and to have a fast, reliable SCADA system for long distance communication. This paper includes the test results, conclusions and the recommendations to expand the system.