Integrated Operations in the High North (IOHN) Joint Industry Project

Demonstrating the digital platform for next generation Integrated Operations

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Twenty-five companies from different parts in the value chain have joined forces to design, implement and demonstrate a reliable and robust ICT architecture to be used for petroleum exploration and production in an Arctic setting. Open standards are used to ensure interoperability, to facilitate integration and to transfer data. Combined with advances in information sharing and knowledge management technologies, this readily improves the basis for collaborative decision making and thereby facilitates more effective work processes.

Background

Arctic region

The Arctic region holds vast amounts of extractive energy resources. Most of these resources are located offshore in environmentally very sensitive areas possibly beneath thick ice and/or in deep water. Weather and distance from existing infrastructure and centers of population add additional operational and logistic challenges.

Second generation Integrated Operations

In order to meet all these requirements and at the same time maintain profitable operations, the industry needs to create new field development and operational concepts that include heavily instrumented facilities. These operational concepts will be often based on a lean local organization supported remotely from a combination of an asset organization, multi-asset support centers and external expert centers. This is what has been called the second generation of Integrated Operations.

An important prerequisite for this development is a robust and secure digital infrastructure as a platform for effective and efficient data and information exchange and decision making. To enable collaboration across boundaries in a smooth and efficient manner, a digital platform based on open standards is required, thus allowing for a much higher degree of interoperability across applications, disciplines, geographic locations and organizations than is common today.

The Arctic region holds vast amounts of extractive energy resources. Known areas of reserves are the North Slope in Alaska (USA), East Siberia, West Siberia, the Timan-Pechora area, South/North Barents (Russia), the Barents Sea and Lofoten area north-west of Norway, and East Greenland.

Digital platform for next generation Integrated Operations

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 organisational boundaries add to the complexity. Further, operations in the High North require a lot of attention to be paid to environmental aspects, as the tolerance for environmental hazards in such vulnerable areas must be as close to zero as possible.

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 centres located elsewhere, and on automated key work processes. Hence, a prerequisite for this development is a robust digital infrastructure and a platform for effective and efficient information exchange, which is the project’s main task.

The digital platform will be demonstrated through three pilots; one for drilling, one for production and one for operations and maintenance.

Integrated Operations in the High North (IOHN) project

The project is set up as six coordinated activities; three related to the digital platform and three related to the business processes that will be piloted.

The three activities related to the digital platform are:

• Integration platform: networks, infrastructure and web services
• Semantic model: information assurance
• Safety and risk

The three activities related to the business processes are:

• Drilling and Completion: unmanned drilling rig
• Reservoir and Production: improved production
• Operations and Maintenance: sub-ice operation

During a four year period starting May 2008, the 25 participants in the project plan to go from conceptualisation to real-life pilots. During this period the project will both benefit from and contribute to the extensive integrated operations development on the Norwegian continental shelf and in other parts of the world.

The IOHN project consortium includes operators, service providers and software vendors. In addition, the Norwegian Defence is working with the project to resolve common infrastructure and communication challenges. The project is managed by Det Norske Veritas (DNV).

The project is supported by the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF), the Business Association of Norwegian knowledge- and technology-based enterprises (Abelia), and the Norwegian Defence and Security Industries Association (FSi). Financing comes from the partners and the Research Council of Norway (RCN) for parts of the project (GOICT and AutoConRig).

Participants

Overview of the 25 companies participating in the IOHN project.

More information

Contact: Frédéric Verhelst (IOHN Project Manager on behalf of DNV), i n f o @ i o h n . o r g.

Some relevant links

• POSC Caesar Association, the custodian of the ISO 15926 Oil and Gas ontology
• brochure: Integrated Operations and the Oil and Gas Ontology by the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF)
• W3C workshop on Semantic Web in Oil and Gas industry, Houston, December 9-10, 2008. Position papers from several participants in IOHN.
• Semantic Days 2009, Stavanger, May 18-20, 2009. One session is devoted to IOHN.
• IO 09 Science and Practice, Trondheim, September 29-30, 2009. One session is devoted to IOHN.

Some articles about the project

• SPE Intelligent Energy Conference, Transformational Solutions session (2010-03-24). Digital platform for the next generation IO: a prerequisite for the high north (SPE 127550).
• Oil&Gas Journal (2010-02-04). IADC/SPE: Project is devising autopilot drilling standards Retrieved on 2010-02-09.
• Rigzone E&P News (2008-08-26). Norway Takes Reign to Provide Next Generation Integrated Operations Retrieved on 2009-05-08.
• Digital Energy Journal (2008-08-27). Norway developing next generation Integrated Operations. Retrieved on 2009-05-08.
• E&P Magazine (2008-12-2). Offshore R&D pushes the limits. Retrieved on 2009-05-08.
• Wikipedia. Integrated Operations in the High North. Retrieved on 2009-05-12.