Workshop Digital Oil Field Took Place in Hanover

On November 5 and 6, 26 participants from industry and science met at ExxonMobil in Hanover for the Digital Oil Field workshop. In ten technical presentations over two days, numerous aspects of this broad field were examined in more detail.

Digitisation is the Future

At the introduction, DEA, OMV and Wintershall reported on their strategies for implementing digitisation in general and processes relating to the Digital Oil Field in particular. The companies are not only facing technical challenges. A core task is to win the workforce over to the new, digitised processes and encourage them to contribute their experience. There was consensus that one cannot and must not close one's mind to digitalisation if one wants to remain competitive in the market in the future. This also includes the labour market: young, well-trained specialists are increasingly paying attention to whether digital technologies are used and lived in a company when choosing a career.

Dr. Markus Plöbst addressed the question of ethical and moral issues and the fears of employees regarding digitalisation in his lecture "True Lies - Fear and Anxiety?

First Projects Have Already Been Implemented

The E&P industry has already implemented several projects in the German-speaking countries. Among other things it was reported about:

• Predictive maintenance on above-ground and underground plant sections,
• An oil treatment plant that can be completely controlled by smartphone or tablet - mobile and safe at the same time,
• Automated, data-driven calculation of the optimal time for the treatment of salt and paraffin precipitates in wells.

Interdisciplinary Work as the Key to Success

Contributions to parallel computing on supercomputers, neural networks, smart completions and an automated drilling rig came from university research.

All projects have one thing in common: the cooperation of engineering, geo, and data sciences is absolutely necessary for the implementation of digitized processes. This often requires the support of specialised providers. In the future, employees with knowledge of programming languages and data sciences will be increasingly in demand among E&P companies. Accordingly, universities will also have to take this trend into account in the education of the next generation.

Exchange Between Companies and Universities Still in Demand

At the end of the event we received a thoroughly positive conclusion. The participants praised the opportunity to exchange ideas with professional colleagues in a DGMK workshop. We will certainly organise further events on this topic.