- The oil and gas industry could save over $6 billion per year through increased use of automation technologies, but companies have been slow to realize these benefits. - Successful automation requires not just technology implementation but also changes to business processes, organizational structure, and personnel. Change management is key. - While some national oil companies have made gains in automation, most companies have yet to fully leverage technologies to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Standardization and integration of systems remains a challenge.

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FEBRUARY 2015arabianoilandgas.com
TECHNOLOGY
Automating
change
The adoption of new technologies
could save the oil and gas industry
billions of dollars every year, but
companies have a long way to go
before they make that happen
WORDS: SLAVKA ATANASOVA
PROCESS AUTOMATION
F
alling oil prices and weakened energy
demand have reinstated the need for oil
and gas companies to become more effi-
cient and reduce spending. In many cas-
es, technology is seen as the key enabler
to meet these objectives. According to
estimates from a GE report, if deployed aggressive-
ly, smartfield technologies could save the industry
over $6bn a year, or $90bn over 15 years and add
billions of barrels of oil to existing output. Over
the past few years, great emphasis has been put
on harnessing automation to optimise operational
efficiency and lower cost. As a result, companies
have started investing heavily in modernising their
equipment. Last year alone five of the world’s larg-
est National Oil Companies (NOCs) spent $5.3bn
on technology and research, increasing production
and tapping into the hard-to-reach reserves.
Yet research suggests producers have hardly en-
joyed the wider benefits technology has been said
to offer, such as improving overall efficiency and
cutting cost. So where do they go wrong?

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FEBRUARY 2015 arabianoilandgas.com
TECHNOLOGY
Andrew Dennant, who is a director for oil and
gas in the Middle East and Africa at Emerson, said:
“This is not a technology project. This is a project
enabled by technology.”
“The first side of the coin is that people rush to
implement the technology and unless you have
a clear vision of the business reasons behind the
project, what you are going to achieve and how
you are going to achieve it upfront, then you will
likely not achieve optimised implementation.”
In order to be successful, the digital oilfield
requires far-reaching changes on different organi-
sational levels. Therefore, it is not a decision that
should be taken lightly.
“When you implement significantly dif-
ferent technologies and you engage dif-
ferent people with different workflows
in the decision making process, there is
a significant amount of change manage-
ment that has to be incorporated. Often
if you do not do change the manage-
ment effectively then people
will use the new technology
in the same way they used
the old technology and
you don’t get the benefit,”
Dennant explains.
When combined with
$5.3BILLIONTHE AMOUNT FIVE OF THE WORLD’S NATIONAL OIL
COMPANIES SPENT ON TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH.
AndrewDennant,
directorforoil
andgas,MEA,
Emerson
YannisBessiris,
regionalbusiness
leaderforad-
vancedsolutions,
Honeywell
the right business structure, work processes and
qualified personnel, technology and automation
can bring tremendous benefits to companies in
the region, with a number of NOCs already mak-
ing gains.
So far, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (AD-
NOC), Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Oil Company
(KOC) are said to be leading the way in the digital
revolution. “We have seen all of the oil majors
moving towards the intelligent field and that
will continue to happen. The intelligent field is a
great tool. It allows you to make better decisions;
to get more production on stream faster, striking
the balance between production in the near-term
and reservoir protection in the longer term,”
Dennant commeted.
Another common term for the digital oilfield is
process automation. In oil and gas, it could gener-
ally be explained as “the use of certain IT-related
functionalities to communicate with equipment in
order to either control or optimise work pro-
cesses”. This is according to Yiannis Bessiris, a
regional business leader for advanced technology
at Honeywell and a process automation specialist.
He says: “We are talking about solutions which
not only control the plant but also optimise pro-
duction; there are new heuristic algorithms that
can turn data into predictive analysis tools.”
Certain automation functionalities, Bessiris says,
have become the standard for certain units.
“You cannot commission a plant without a DCS
system. Of course, as soon as you move up the val-
ue chain you have technologies like operator train-
ing simulators, alarm management and advanced
process control, which are more about optimisa-
tion and value. Return on investment depends on
the practicalities and complexities of the process
itself. I have seen projects with a return on
investment in seven days but for most of
the projects it is between six months and
a year.” Remote control, round-the-clock
surveillance and data gathering have now
become an everyday reality for companies
in the region. This has given producers the
chance to move from repair-and-
go to predict-and-prevent
mode. The results are
more optimised work-
flows and better enabled
decision making.
“In the old days of well
test and no automation

3. hpsmarketing@honeywell.comhpsmarketing@honeywell.com
hpsmarketing@honeywell.com
39
FEBRUARY 2015arabianoilandgas.com
TECHNOLOGY
Processautoma-
tioncan help
reduceHSErisks
foroilandgas
companies.
at the wellhead, every three to four months if you
had a water break through a well, potentially you
would not know for a year.”
In the pre-digital era, processes would be rather
cumbersome but with the introduction of automa-
tion technologies this has changed dramatically,
Dennant explains. “Before they implemented
the digital field workflow, they had six or eight
different decisions that had to be made. Each deci-
sion had to be collected by a group of people or a
person within a group of people and sent by email
to someone else.
“That could take three or four days. Add that
up and you have 28 days before you can effect a
change. In the new digital environment you have
the right people in the same room, the data comes
in, they look at it, they make the decision and it
gets effected in hours,” he added.
“Process automation is about taking humans out
of the control loop, which is also out of harm’s way
or when they do not add value so that your process
runs optimally and automatically.”
When the control valve detects a friction build-
ing up or ‘wear’ in the valve, and before quality of
control is lost, the automation system will flag up
to the operators that there will be a problem. The
operators know the control loop needs more moni-
toring and the maintenance team go get it fixed in
a financially optimal way, Dennant explains.
“If you have a set of control loops, they will not
need human intervention until the system deter-
mines that there is something that will soon go
wrong and at that point humans should be brought
into the loop.”

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FEBRUARY 2015 arabianoilandgas.com
TECHNOLOGY
Increased mobility as a global and social phe-
nomenon has further advanced oil and gas digital
environments. One trend called ‘Bring Your Own
Device’ (BYOD) to work, which started off in
Asia, has now become a common practice in many
fields, including oil and gas, and could soon turn
into a requirement, experts say.
“The industry will move towards a more IT-
oriented environment and more innovative tech-
nology will come along. We are going to see more
solutions moving to the cloud. We need to address
cyber security issues accordingly.
“I also see an upward trend in mobility. Process
automation happens in the control room but with
all these solutions you can see your data, trends,
reports on your mobile devices, iPads, iPhones and
tablets,” said Bessiris.
Gert Thoonen, global process technical con-
sultant at Rockwell Automation, says the biggest
benefit from moving toward a more integrated
environment is that “you can run data and control
on one single platform” allowing your employees
to feed and access it from many different locations.
“Due to the fact that they are coming together
you can use one single platform and share data
between all systems in your plant much more
easily.” However, multiple data sources create one
big concern and that is getting connectivity to all
those different devices, Thoonen adds.
Normally, the plant, well or rig is at a remote
location and getting wifi connection or any other
signal for that matter often proves a challenge.
All these new technologies also require the right
infrastructure, configuration, maintenance and in
some cases standardisation and integration.
Then you have the sheer number of differ-
ent devices, software and operating systems used to
access or enter data, which makes standardisation
even harder.
The best investment companies can make is in pro-
cess integration, Thoonen says, as it not only increases
workflow efficiency, but eventually lowers the total
cost of ownership.
Systems requiring more frequent upgrades are now
increasingly being used by vendors and in a number of
industry applications, including oil and gas.
“I know solutions which have been running for the
past ten years such as DCS systems. But of course as
we are moving more towards Microsoft-based plat-
forms, the automation systems are following the ob-
solescence cycles of windows-related software. That
means that technology needs to be upgraded between
five to ten years,” says Bessiris.
However, oil and gas companies are still at the baby
stages of fully exploiting the benefits technology has
to offer, says Biessiris.
“Oil and gas is quite conservative and is lagging be-
hind. They tend to prefer the good old telephone and
fax machine instead of using a fancy iPhone 6 Plus.”
This is often due to the fact that if something goes
wrong, it could cost the lives of employees and bil-
lions of dollars in damage, Thoonen explains.
“Food and beverages are quite innovative because
the risk is lower. In oil and gas, where there is a risk
of explosion, you need to make sure that you can run
[the plant] for the next 15 to 20 years.”
Digitaltechnolo-
giescangiveyoua
fullpictureofthe
reservoir.
Employeescan
usetheirown
personaldevices
toexercisecontrol
oftheplant.
“PROCESSAUTOMATIONIS
ABOUTTAKINGHUMANSOUTOF
THECONTROLLOOP,WHICHIS
ALSOOUTOFHARM’SWAYOR
WHENTHEYDONOTADDVALUE
TOTHECHAIN”
ANDREWDENNANT,DIRECTORFOROIL&GAS,
MEA,EMERSON
Eprinted and Posted with permission to Honeywell International Inc from Oil&Gas ME Magazine. hpsmarketing@honeywell.com