Human Centric Digital Transformation and Operator 4.0 for the Oil and Gas Industry

Thumeera R Wanasinghe,Lesley Anne James,Trung Nguyen,Peter J Warrian,Trung Trinh,Raymond G Gosine

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3103680

Thumeera R Wanasinghe, Lesley Anne James + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3103680

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Abstract

Working at an oil and gas facility, such as a drilling rig, production facility, processing facility, or storage facility, involves various challenges, including health and safety risks. It is possible to leverage emerging digital technologies such as smart sensors, wearable or mobile devices, big data analytics, cloud computing, extended reality technologies, robotic systems, and drones to mitigate the challenges faced by oil and gas workers. While these technologies are not new to the oil and gas industry, most of its existing digital transformation initiatives follow business or process-centric approaches, in which the critical driver of the technology adoption is the enhancement of production, efficiency, and revenue. As a result, they may not address the challenges faced by the workers. As oil and gas workers are among the essential assets in the oil and gas industry, it is vital to address the challenges faced by these workers. This paper proposes a human-centric digital transformational framework for the oil and gas industry to deploy existing digital technologies to enhance their workers’ health, safety, and working conditions. The paper outlines the critical challenges faced by oilfield workers, introduces a system architecture to implements a human-centric digital transformation, discusses the opportunities of the proposed framework, and summarizes the key impediment for the proposed framework.

Highlights

O VER the last few years, the oil and gas (O&G) industry has faced multiple challenges, including low oil prices for longer periods, “greater crew change”1, inherent health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risks, remoteness of the new and future oilfields, elevated regulatory and public expectations for benefits, and geopolitical conflicts in regions that are rich in O&G reserves
Since most big data analytics systems will be designed for parallel computing, and they typically will work on other systems or work with other systems, the communication between big data analytics and other systems will strongly affect the performance of the whole process of knowledge discovery in databases (KDD)
This paper proposes a human-centric digital transformation framework for the O&G industry

Summary

INTRODUCTION

O VER the last few years, the oil and gas (O&G) industry has faced multiple challenges, including low oil prices for longer periods, “greater crew change”, inherent health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risks, remoteness of the new and future oilfields, elevated regulatory and public expectations for benefits, and geopolitical conflicts in regions that are rich in O&G reserves. A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute showed that inclination towards automation is catalyzed by the COVID-19 global pandemic [27] While these studies consider the potential impact of automation or digitalization purely on the capabilities of technologies to automate the physical or cognitive components of the occupation, they do not consider the other modulation factors, such as the regulatory environment, corporate culture, the labour relations environment, and the expectations of the public and governments with respect to local benefits. These modulation factors typically slow down the technology adoption rate.

KEY CHALLENGES FACED BY OIL AND GAS WORKERS

OPPORTUNITIES

CHALLENGES

Findings

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION