Following Up on the Digitalization Initiatives in the Norwegian Petroleum Activity: Regulatory Perspective

Abstract

The petroleum industry is becoming increasingly dependent on digital systems, and the companies have ambitious plans for increased use of digital technology – along the entire value chain. The introduction of digital technology involves increased use of data collection, automatization, machine learning and access to computer resources in order to analyse large volumes of data. Digitalisation initiatives in the industry will change work processes and will increase automatization and provide decision support in daily operations. Despite greater automation, the industry will depend to a large extent on people to monitor systems and intervene if the technology breaks down. The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) has tightened its follow-up of digitalisation initiatives in the industry. Over the last years we have performed a number of activities in order to build knowledge about HSE risk and follow up the digitalisation initiatives in the industry. In this paper we will describe the main areas that we emphasise in our follow-up of the petroleum industry on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.