BP Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Integrated Field of the Future Case Study

Abstract

This paper will take us through the journey of integrating BP's Gulf of Mexico Information Management and FIELD OF THE FUTURE (Reddick, 2006; Reddick, et al, 2008) Strategies to deliver a powerful, combined technological solution. Only when both of these pieces are working together, can you truly start to use IT and automation technologies to optimize the business. The paper will start with the information management story four years ago when we had four producing assets and four major projects behaving as individual businesses. It will then describe the creation of a strategy that focused on getting the information foundation right first. The paper will then describe the integration of the foundation data sources into a web portal and organized in the way that people do their job. The paper will contain examples of real time data systems that give our asset support teams and vendors access to performance data on their machines. The paper will also discuss new processes that allow the advanced collaborative environments to take advantage of the new kit. Finally, the paper will discuss the optimization efforts that are possible after a robust information foundation layer exists and is tightly integrated in the way that people do their work. The lessons learned in the Gulf of Mexico over the last four years are:○Need merging of FIELD OF THE FUTURE and Information Management strategies○Need new processes developed and support models defined for new tools○Need to use common information management architecture across entire business Benefits that we have seen for our combined strategy are that:○Faster, more coordinated responses to severe weather events○Reduced personnel on board thereby lowering HSE risk and lowering our operating expense○Increased worker productivity due to much quicker access to and visual presentation of the data○More rapid development of business tools Introduction In early 2004, BP's Gulf of Mexico assets included four producing offshore platforms. Two were implemented by Amoco and two were implemented by BP. As a consequence, different data historians, process control architectures, etc. existed. When these businesses were combined into one strategic performance unit in the Gulf of Mexico, it was difficult to benchmark the platforms against each other. Key performance indicator definitions were different and status updates were performed differently. However, leadership was committed to delivering a one team vision and created a new information management role to bring it all together.