Statoil to Invest Up to $333 Million on Offshore Digitalization in Norway
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Statoil will invest DKK1-2bn ($166-333m) in digital technology up to 2020 in Norway to enhance its operations by opening an integrated operations support center (IOC) and a drilling operations center.
By establishing the two facilities, the energy giant aims to increase value creation from its Norwegian operated fields by more than $2bn from 2020 to 2025.
The two centers will be opened in Bergen and connected in phases, starting this year, to all the company’s installations on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS).
Statoil believes that the new centers will help boost production efficiency and production potential on the NCS.
The company’s decision on the new operations centers in Norway comes on the heels of opening up an operations support center in the US in last December. Currently, this operations support center is monitoring more than 1100 onshore wells of Statoil.
Statoil Chief Operating Officer Jannicke Nilsson said: “Digital technology contributes to continuous operational improvements on our existing fields. In new field developments oil and gas production will to an increasing extent be carried out from unmanned, robotized, standardized and remote controlled installations.
“Many operations will be carried out by fewer risk-exposed working situations. We will be able to control the maintenance work in a better way and improve safety and operational quality.”
Statoil said that the new IOC in Norway will help in the company in making more proactive decisions.
Statoil NCS Operations Technology Head Kjetil Hove said: “Our main goal is to operate our installations safely and optimally every single day, and to identify challenges and prevent shut-down before they occur.”
Further, the IOC is expected to improve the company’s interaction between offshore and onshore, and also its interaction with partners and suppliers.
Slated to open after summer, the IOC will support all Statoil-operated fields and installations on the NCS over the course of time. The Gina Krog and Grane fields in the North Sea and the Åsgard field in the Norwegian Sea will be among the first fields to be connected to the IOC.
Statoil said that the new drilling operations center will provide more cost-effective and improved geoscience support of drilling operations with the shifting of monitoring and control of offshore well path drilling to a joint geoscience operations center.
Source: Energy Business Review
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