A saving of $100m in one morning from your IT systems is something
all IT managers would like. Karl Cushing finds out how it
happened
Costs in the oil industry are considerable and mistakes are
measured in millions not thousands. Good planning is essential and
companies spend large amounts of time, effort and money trying to
iron out difficulties and get things right long before a drill bit
touches bedrock or the first section of a pipeline is laid. But
traditional methods of analysing complex subsurface data are not
foolproof and even the best-laid plans can go awry, with unforeseen
difficulties resulting in pipeline projects overrunning or wells
being drilled in the wrong place.
However, developments in IT are proving helpful in the industry's
fight to cut costs and boost efficiency, particularly virtual
reality technologies. The use of virtual reality or visualisation
software in the oil industry is being pioneered by British
Petroleum (BP) where geophysicist David Roberts has been closely
involved in the introduction of this new technology into this
company.
The technology has come a long way since Roberts started work on
visualisation at BP about six years ago. In the early days it was
difficult to get people to use the software, he says. The
visualisation software ran on conventional PCs and this proved to
be impractical for teamwork, with people complaining that they
could not see the images on the relatively small screens. It was
not until BP invested in setting up its own virtual reality rooms
or "highly immersive visualisation environments" (Hives) that it
took off.
The first time Roberts saw a Hive, which, for the sake of
simplicity he describes as "basically just a big computer screen",
was in 1997 at the California offices of graphics server specialist
Silicon Graphics (SGI). BP opened its own Hive in January 1999, in
Houston, Texas, and now has 17 scattered across the globe. The
Hives cost about $1m (£707,000) a piece and have two main parts -
an Onyx 2 computer from SGI and screens and projectors from US firm
Panoram. One of the core pieces of software used in the Hives is
Geoprobe, from Houston based company Magic Earth, which was one of
the first packages designed specifically for the big screen. All
the Hives incorporate active stereo and users wear infrared glasses
to experience the sense of virtual reality.
The first type of work to be done on the company's Hives was the
planning of oil wells. This was an obvious application, says
Roberts, due to the huge costs involved in drilling wells offshore,
and the first place BP made some major wins was in the Gulf of
Mexico, where on one project alone it saved $30m using
visualisation. The company also uses its Hives to plan the location
and course of pipelines. Again the opportunities for rapid return
on investment are enormous. On one exploration in the Caspian Sea
the company saved at least $100m in one morning using
visualisation, according to Roberts. He says BP is getting
"tremendous value" out of looking at its data using 3D. "We can
make all of our mistakes on the computer first," he says.
The Geoprobe software also has an opacity function, which the
company uses to produce simulations of water-injected wells. By
increasing the opacity of a rock image on the screen, highlighting
the oil deposits and then animating the flow of water through the
rock, BP staff can ascertain the best way of "flushing out" the
oil. Roberts says that this application has got "tremendous
implications" for the way that BP recovers oil from that
rock.
Other uses include interpreting highly complex seismic data, which
can be presented more clearly in 3-D. "For years we thought that
everyone knew what we were talking about when we showed them the
seismic charts but we found out that was not the case," says
Roberts.
The company is also investigating the use of visualisation
techniques in some of its other business streams and one area that
Roberts believes will become increasingly important is interpreting
financial data in a graphical format. "You can reduce the whole
business stream into one picture and that can be fantastically
powerful," he says, although the company is still some way from
success as it is more difficult to visualise this kind of data.
Oil platform modification is another potential application for
visualisation techniques, and the company is investigating the
possibility of using the technology to conduct "virtual tours" of
its facilities. "The more you think about it the more uses there
are," says Roberts enthusiastically.
On a day-to-day basis BP uses its Hives for technical meetings and
team meetings to review projects. The company is involved in many
joint ventures and conducts meetings with partners in the Hives to
discuss and visualise the work at hand. Decisions can be made in
real time, resulting in both quicker and better decision making.
"The time saving is dramatic," Roberts says.
There are also important implications for increasing safety and
reducing the environmental impact by planning the position of wells
and pipelines more effectively. BP also shows new and potential
employees around the Hives and Roberts hopes the technology will
help the company to attract and retain staff. BP wants to encourage
a new generation into the industry. Interest in disciplines like
geophysics is declining and by showing schoolchildren and students
around the Hives the company hopes to improve the image of
disciplines like geophysics.
It has not all been straightforward, however. The company realised
early on that it did not have the in-house IT skills to use its new
software. In the event it borrowed super-users from software
suppliers such as Landmark to act as "pilots" to operate the
technology.
Another major problem is connectivity between the Hives. The
existing bandwidth and software is not yet sufficient to support
this effectively, says Roberts, and improving this area is one of
the company's key objectives. Some users have complained that the
brightness and focus on the screens is not sharp enough, while
others do not like the dark rooms. As a result, BP is looking at
investing in better projector technology and the possibility of
building daylight Hives using very bright projectors.
Performance problems have been minimal. "It is pretty much self
running once it is set up," Roberts says, describing the Hive's
core computer, Onyx 2, as "a very robust visualisation workhorse".
And BP has built up its in-house skills so that about half of the
software pilots are "home grown".
Roberts says that BP is at the leading edge of using visualisation
in the oil industry but says it is not about to rest on its
laurels. The company's research centre at the University of
Colorado is already looking into what lies beyond Hives. The centre
has a computer-assisted virtual environment (Cave). Users enter the
Cave, which is basically "a 10ft cube", wearing stereo glasses and
are effectively "immersed" in data. "It is much more real than a
Hive," says Roberts. "Rather than just looking at data you can walk
around in it." This helps users to see things that they would not
be able to see in a conventional Hive. So instead of looking at a
3-D image of the seabed, BP staff can effectively walk on it.
The company is also part of the VR Geo consortium, based in Bonn,
Germany, which is dedicated to developing new visualisation
technology. Roberts, himself, is the chairman of the group.
"We have shocked ourselves with the speed we have been able to
deploy this around the company," he says. "It is not in research
centres, it is at the coal face and that is really important. We
use ours for work and we are really proud of it."
On top of this the company has made some major financial gains.
However, these are not the only benefits. "We have found a way of
getting people excited about their work again," says Roberts. "We
had not planned that but it is unmeasurable in terms of
value."
How visualisation saves millions for BP
Oil well planning
BP wanted to tap into five different oil reservoirs it had
identified in the Gulf of Mexico, where the cost of drilling a well
is about $15m. Normally this would involve drilling five different
wells, however, by using visualisation, BP was able to ascertain
that the reservoirs were closer together than it had thought and
that by drilling wells in certain spots it could hit more than one
reservoir with the same well. The company managed to reduce the
number of wells it had to drill to three, effectively saving $30m.
(Hives cost about $1m.) The saving was achieved over a two-hour
morning session - not a bad morning's work by anyone's reckoning.
Pipeline planning
On another occasion during a project to plan the route of a
proposed pipeline in the Caspian Sea, by using visualisation the
company discovered that its planned route went over a snow-covered
mountain. This would have added unnecessary time, cash and effort
to the project. BP changed the route and the company saved about
$100m in a single morning session.