A Digitalization Catalyst For The Oil And Gas Industry
Innovative new technologies are creating a digital revolution that is driving fundamental changes in a growing number of industries. Oil and gas companies should pay close attention because digitalization is creating unique opportunities for new products and services as well as new ways of doing business.
With the ability to ease the transition and accelerate digitalization for large and small organizations, digital platforms with open ecosystems are a game-changing development for the oil and gas sector.
Third-party integration
Open platforms will provide most, if not all, of the digital solutions a company or even industry needs in one place. Such platforms are usually based on a digital ecosystem, meaning that anyone can participate and add applications to the platform, whether they are customers, partners, vendors, ISVs, industry clusters or entrepreneurs.
With the right architecture, a digital platform enables rapid development of responsive web applications on desktop and mobile devices and supports new models for business such as software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. If the platform is built with a solid developer ecosystem, onboarding and integration of third-party applications is easy.
Data-centric operations
Well-planned platform architecture enables users to gather and combine data from the applications they have chosen and then analyze any combination of these data to simplify and optimize technical and business processes. This opens up a new world of possibilities and options not thought of just a few years ago.
There are obvious silos that exist in the oil and gas industry. Ideally, an operator wants to be able to integrate data from multiple sources and visualize those data in one place with streamlined workflows to negate “noise” they get when using different vendors with many different workflows.
KONGSBERG realized this opportunity through the release of Kognifai, an open ecosystem digital platform. It enables companies that provide advanced analytics to embed their software into the platform as applications delivering actionable insight from the analysis of real-time data and, for example, reporting data. These complementary datasets have traditionally been in silos and operated in isolation, but Kognifai allows an integrated, more comprehensive workflow within the same system.
A digital future
The future is renewables, and KONGSBERG works with energy in many forms to use advanced analytics and physical models across industries. Kognifai provides new business models and emerging solutions not only for traditional oil and gas operations, but for offshore wind farm performance and conditioning, providing huge opportunities to integrate these applications and improve efficiency.
By providing this type of complete digital ecosystem to the market, oil and gas operating companies will be supported by collaboration and knowledge-sharing between all companies in their community. Innovation such as this will make knowledge more accessible and fully realize seamless workflow integration to provide new reach and business value across the entire oil and gas life cycle.
Revolutionizing Deepwater Drilling Using Software Analysis
The ability of advanced software analysis capabilities to produce high-performance, robust and dependable solutions is revolutionizing deepwater drilling and production. By increasing the performance of products before they even enter the water, companies using software analysis capabilities are able to provide the solutions needed to combat the increasing harsh environments presented by the offshore world.
Advancing product development
As companies move to ultradeep waters, the technology they use has evolved. Extensive engineering design work is performed using specialized software to produce local and global finite element and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to develop optimum designs. The ability to model equipment and system responses to environmental forces helps advance product development and design opportunities to maximize operational efficiency.
Companies with in-house analysis teams can simulate offshore drilling operations, offering customers solutions considering a fully coupled vessel-to-well approach. These riser studies can specifically be used to assist clients in defining operational methodologies and structural system limitations.
Drilling in deeper waters
For decades, the offshore drilling industry has used drilling riser buoyancy modules to reduce the overall riser weight and required top tension. Drilling riser buoyancy modules are highly effective at adding necessary uplift to drilling risers. However, the associated drawback is increased overall outer diameters.
Consequences from the phenomenon of riser vortex-induced vibration (VIV) develop from a complex interaction between the riser structure and the flow field around the riser. These forces induce periodic oscillations or vibrations of the riser, transmitting large amounts of dynamic strain from the riser system to subsea equipment. With exploration extending into deeper waters, the offshore drilling market requires solutions that allow buoyancy uplift without the penalty of increased drag and VIV forces.
Reducing VIV and Inline Drag
A new multifunctional buoyancy tool has recently been developed to integrate drag reduction and VIV mitigation into drilling riser buoyancy module equipment, reducing the necessity for auxiliary suppression equipment and alleviating complicated and time intensive riser running and retrieval procedures.
Inverted helical straking of drilling riser buoyancy modules allows for in-line drag reduction and VIV suppression of drilling riser systems through the use of a tri-helical groove design molded into the outer profile without increasing the overall hydrodynamic diameter of the drill riser buoyancy module. With the inverted tri-helical groove incorporated into the buoyancy itself, suppression of riser VIV and reduction of riser drag is obtainable without an increase in riser retrieval time, offering a solution for well sites with volatile environmental conditions.
Reduction of riser motion because of VIV in the in-line and cross-flow directions can limit the amount of dynamic loading transferred to subsea equipment and conductor casing programs from the riser, potentially increasing the integrity and lifespan of critical well containment equipment. Possible benefits of reducing riser drag and VIV by reengineering drill riser buoyancy are numerous.
Analytical modeling
Extensive engineering design work has been performed on the inverted helical groove geometry through numerical modeling in CFD software packages to develop optimum designs. Three-dimensional finite element models developed for use in CFD analysis help to illuminate additional benefits realized from the inverted helical design.
In contrast to traditional buoyancy modules where fluid flow paths occur almost exclusively in the horizontal plane, axial flows induced by the inverted helical groove introduce turbulence into the downstream wake profile of the drilling riser. Axial flow paths result in forces that act out of plane of cross-flow lift forces and in-line drag forces disrupting the cyclical rotation of these forces on the downstream side of the riser.
By using advanced software analysis, companies can continue to revolutionize deepwater drilling and production in increasingly demanding environments. Software analysis coupled with the advancement of riser drag reduction and VIV suppression technology provides an integrated solution to progressing drilling riser buoyancy. Solution-specific engineering of the inverted helical module will facilitate the ability of drilling vessels around the globe to continue to deliver the energy needs of the future.
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