In the past decade, the oil and gas industry has seen a period of major investment driven by $100+ oil price followed by the longest downturn the market has endured. While the industry has shown its resilience by reducing project and operational costs, more action is needed to encourage investment and the development of offshore hydrocarbon gas fields.
Wood is tackling this challenge with multi-sector facility design, automation and robotics, remote condition monitoring and inspection on offshore facility operations globally.
From design to decommissioning, automation technology is an untapped resource which could de-risk installations, provide new inspection opportunities in subsea and topsides, deliver virtual systems design while increasing safety and up-skilling the workforce.
“The automotive industry has led the way in this technology improving productivity, quality and repeatability. For new production lines, these are virtually commissioned prior to installations so control systems and safety can be tested via simulation.
“We are currently leveraging this technology to reduce both CAPEX and OPEX on offshore projects with virtually operated, unmanned facilities and see the opportunity for this to be applied on an unmanned floating gas compression facility for example.
The pressure on asset intensive industries is increasing and development investments, especially for brownfield infrastructure, have further added to the cost and complexity of projects. Additionally, stringent regulations and requirements are increasing industry constraints. Therefore, digital solutions have an increasingly important part to play in oil and gas.
Earlier this month, Wood announced an agreement with IBM to transform asset life cycle management. The multi-year agreement combines Wood’s engineering innovation and industry expertise with IBM’s advanced market-leading technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and analytics.
Find out more about Wood’s automation and control capabilities.