25 Sep The Transition of Oil and Gas Facilities from Local Control to Remote Operations
There is a lot of potential to use digital technologies and agile processes in the oil and gas sector to boost production integrity and efficiency while lowering environmental impact and raising worker safety.
Costs must decrease while production and efficiencies must increase for oil and gas operations to be profitable. This has always posed significant difficulties for the development of oil and gas fields and calls for creative solutions that go beyond conventional thinking. Implementing the idea of remote facility monitoring and control from an integrated remote center typically the head office is one of these creative options. Many sectors have devised a roadmap to autonomous operations over the past few years and started embracing certain remote capabilities.
Each corporation had its own justification for doing so and its own timeframe; some pushed forward quickly, while others moved slowly and piecemeal. Higher productivity, waste reduction, solving labor shortages, and replacing unhealthy, risky, and repetitive work have been the main drivers for deploying new automation and digital systems. What we did not anticipate, though, was how quickly a pandemic would rise to the top of the list of causes.
Remote Work Report
45%
26%
86%
34%
160%
People believe that the flexible schedule is the biggest advantage of remote employment.
Employers only use remote labor.
If they could work flexible hours, employees would be more inclined to stay with their existing job.
At least once a month, remote workers are more likely to be content and successful.
There are more people who work from home.
Due to COVID-19’s rapid proliferation, social withdrawal, travel limitations, and offshore activities have become necessary. Oil and gas operations, including start-up, commissioning, and operations in onshore and offshore, were suddenly more difficult as many operators struggled with fewer workforce, the need to keep a particular distance from their coworkers, or the fact that they are simply unable to come to the site. We now know how crucial it is for businesses to be able to carry out and provide support for jobs remotely thanks to COVID-19.
They may optimize operations not only in times of normalcy but also in these uncertain times by creating a digital asset. By using digital solutions, field lifetime costs can be reduced in a number of ways, and remote operations can now handle pressing issues.
New technologies on the market today have the potential to make such a solution possible. In order to enable the fusion of people and technology and to carry out remote activities in a more informed setting, it embraces digital solutions that facilitate integrated, intelligent operations. However, offshore fields are not new to the idea of remote operations.
Many offshore installations are already operational and have been built to be "usually unattended." The oil and gas industry does not frequently employ remote monitoring and control of a fully functional unmanned facility, nevertheless. The use of remote operations to cut costs and improve operational safety is becoming more and more popular worldwide.
There are 3 stages of remote oil and gas operations maturity:
1. Remote monitoring, including data on asset health, diagnostics, and performance monitoring, as well as KPIs, available and replicated in real-time at the head office for monitoring alone. The use of remote centers with high-level emergency response control to outperform local operations is common.
2. Field Control is utilized as a backup control center in remote places and facilities where the primary control is completely unmanned. The facility as a whole must be built to start up with a single pushbutton idea because control and monitoring functions must be able to run remotely without operator support in the field.
3. Owner-operators ultimate goal is autonomous operations. Only a few autonomous plants are now in operation worldwide. Operators can learn new skills and see how to remotely optimize production via remote operation. Additionally, the continuous closed-loop process behaves like a self-driving automobile, autonomously optimizing production and emergency response, when the actionable insights are included into it.
Regardless of the physical location of operators, the digital revolution and modern communications technologies have made it possible to operate oil and gas plants more effectively from a distance. This makes it possible to access data and conduct business operations in real time, around-the-clock.
This change encouraged a new style of working, better utilizing digital data to inform operators about the procedure and the site’s conditions, and reducing dependency on routine site visits to the plant, improving personnel safety risk.
While this transition depends on new digital technologies to handle new operating practices, it may also have some advantageous effects. If properly handled, the cultural shift could boost overall productivity and effectiveness for the staff by increasing job satisfaction and giving them a real sense that their knowledge and abilities are being used more wisely by utilizing new technologies for remote operation.
Prior to commissioning and starting this project, we should pay close attention to cultural transformation as it is a crucial component for the success of remote operations. The operating environment must be optimally designed in terms of human factors, task analysis, and technology in order to fully realize the benefits of distant innovation solutions. The design of the remote control must take into account people, processes, organization, and technology.
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