Real-time IT becoming more important to drilling contractors

Real-time drilling information is become more important to contractors and operators following the April 2010 deepwater Macondo well blowout and resulting explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible, speakers acknowledged at a recent energy forum in Houston.

Investigators looking into the cause of the accident have questioned who had access to what drilling information about the Macondo well and the timing of that information. The blast killed 11 crew members, and the semi later sank. Industry and government jointly responded to a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

During a Feb. 2 panel discussion on consolidation within service companies, Amy Meyers Jaffe of Rice University’s Baker Institute suggested “the better players” among drilling contractors are going to offer top-notch information services.

“I see a real push post-Macondo for real-time information,” said Jaffe. She moderated the panel discussion during an Energy Mergers and Acquisitions Forum sponsored by Mergermarket.

William D. Marsh, Baker Hughes Inc. vice-president legal-Western Hemisphere, agreed that software and IT is becoming much more important to Baker Hughes and its competitors.

Lackland H. Bloom, a managing director with J.P. Morgan, said that IT remains the domain of major service companies. He described “isolated circumstances” for information-services companies outside the oil and gas industry to gain exposure within the energy industry.

Managing a shift change in Alberta’s oil sands

Companies operating in the Alberta oil sands are trying to figure out how to retain the corporate knowledge base that long-time employees carry in their brains. Many of those employees are expected to retire in coming years.

“What you see in the northern Alberta oil sands is a group who are in their late 40s or 50s, and there are a bunch of young guys who are in their 20s,” said Emon Zaman, vice-president of AVEVA NET Solutions, a division of AVEVA Group PLC.

He spoke recently about management of change during the Oil Sands Heavy Oil Technology Conference in Calgary.

“I think that there will be like a cottage industry of small companies that could provide consulting and training and other things to oil companies to help mitigate that [knowledge] gap,” Zaman said. “We’ve seen a little bit of that start already…the competition for skilled resources is going to be that much greater.”

He sees a need for oil sands operators to get more people—especially younger employees--trained to run the daily operations. Meanwhile, companies are extending contracts to temporarily retain the veteran employees and also are granting them more flexible work schedules in order to keep the corporate knowledge base intact.

Zaman says information resides in many different sources for any company. Software can help integrate that knowledge. AVEVA is an engineering information technology software provider. Zaman believes AVEVA NET software can help “close the gap between what is in an individual’s head versus what is out in the field itself.”

He foresees information availability and accessibility as something that is going to get easier. For instance, some innovations are coming from consumer products, such as applications for handheld devices.

Zaman envisions a time when an employee can take a picture of a pump within a plant using a handheld device. The device then tells the employee all the details of the pump, including whether the company has a spare pump in its inventory or where to buy another pump or where to get parts for that pump.