BP and Baker Hughes go live with big analytics on all Gulf of Mexico platforms
In partnership with Baker Hughes (a subsidiary of GE), BP’s Thunder Horse, Na Kika, Mad Dog, and Atlantis were the large platforms for BP to see if a combination of sensor analytics and digital twin technology could improve its upstream facilities uptime average of 96%, drive improvements in productivity and visibility into the state of its platforms. These offshore platforms were deliberately chosen because they already utilised the most advanced technologies.
Why it’s relevant to Nextspace
We’re covering this article for Nextspace Partners as we intend to cover updated outcomes over the years. The project began in 2016, so we’re now 6 years in.
At the time of the article, BP claimed that they had a template to deploy around the world but to date, we are yet to find any published ROI from this lauded project.
This article sets out the expected ROI:
- Hundreds of millions of dollars savings
- Transformation of how offshore facilities will be run
- Equipment automation, enabling remote work and control
- Detection of costly equipment failures and malfunctions (days in advance)
- Automated maintenance and operational reporting
A lot of these benefits were considered standard in 2016. What was notable about this project was the scale:
- 155 million data streams each day
- 60,000 sensors on 1,200 pieces of equipment
This excerpt paraphrases a key insight for Nextspace Partners:
“Another advantage with this system and its use of digital twin technology is that it visualizes and analyzes the interactions between machines… in the offshore sector, one equipment failure is almost always tied to something that happened in another machine. Traditionally the industry has relied upon human experts to detangle such interrelated machine failures. The lessons learned in these exercises get burned into these people’s brains after years of experience, however, such tribal knowledge is hard to scale in a global corporation."
Perhaps this quote best summarises why the Nextspace platform has come at the right time - with its data advantages including interoperability, futureproofing and federation.
"In the offshore scenario, one of the most important keys to making this all work involves constantly checking the sources of the data—the equipment sensors—for accuracy. The oil business is laden with sensors, but their biggest shortcoming is that they often require recalibration to avoid recording null values, or issuing readings that are so wrong they are not even physically possible.
Ahmed Hashmi, Head of Upstream Technology at BP characterized this data quality issue as 'the Achilles heel of most digital projects.' "
