In an effort to leverage themselves above competition, SLB and a trio of companies are teaming up to improve the reliability of critical assets on FPSOs.
Speaking at the Offshore Technology Conference, Katherine Rojas, SLB vice president of production systems for the offshore Atlantic Basin, said partnering with Rockwell Automation, Sensia and Cognite will help operators bring production online more sustainably and efficiently.
Each of the companies bring different domain-centric solutions to the coalition, she said.
“What (SLB is) bringing together with the coalition is many decades of production expertise, automation and control, and then also a…secure digital framework,” she said.
As the world’s largest oilfield services firm, Rojas said SLB has a large infrastructure install base on FPSOs.
“We also provide the production chemistry for the FPSOs and then the broader SLB digital infrastructure,” Rojas said.
Alejandro Capparelli, vice president of global lifecycle services at Rockwell, said his company is experienced in FPSO control systems, safety and power systems, and proper automation, as well as an advanced digital portfolio and cybersecurity.
“This coalition is going to be focused on the three stages of FPSO development, which is about the capex, or version implementation. It's about the opex operation but, also, at the same time, it's about sustainability along the vessel lifecycle,” Capparelli said.
Sensia, which is an SLB/Rockwell joint venture, brings automation and real-time responses and workflows to the coalition, said Andrea Monte, Sensia vice president of digital automation solutions and services.
Sensia deploys end-to-end metering measurement solutions that integrate with supervisory metering systems to make it possible to optimize production, he said.
“One of the main focuses of the coalition is really on the automation side,” he said.
Cognite Executive Vice President Francois Laborie said his company is “the software backbone that will bring all the data together from operational data control systems, sensors, historical data,” engineering data and more.
Instrumentation is “actually bringing a huge amount of information that we didn’t use to have access to,” Laborie said. The upshot, he added, is the ability to make this information “visible even when you’re not offshore,” which enables personnel to work more remotely and autonomously.
SLB won a contract at the end of last year to develop and implement a control system and dynamic process simulation solution for five FPSOs destined for Petrobras’ Buzios Field in Brazil’s Santos Basin, said Matt Mohajer, digital program manager for production systems at SLB.
SLB is developing the multipurpose dynamic simulation (MPDS) solution in partnership with Sensia and the Inprocess Technology and Consulting Group.
The goal is to help clarify understanding of each FPSO’s operations, Mohajer said.
The MPDS solution will provide an immersive digital twin environment to simulate operational processes and their control and automation systems, train personnel and strengthen safety elements for the FPSOs.