Technical Director Insights: Lost and Found in Transition

According to Wikipedia, in the 2003 movie Lost in Translation, the director, Sofia Coppola, explores themes of alienation and disconnection against a backdrop of cultural displacement. In a more general (although not a literal) sense, the expression may also be used to say that something doesn’t sound as good when told in a different way, setting, or language.

I feel that something must have gotten lost when I listen to some of my colleagues’ fears about the energy transition and digitalization transition. I believe that while the rate of change will accelerate, we’ll likely lose very little of true value in this transition and are more likely to find a variety of incremental opportunities, especially for members of the Production and Facilities community.

World energy demand continues to rise and is driven by

• The desire of our fellow citizens for energy equity and economic development.
• A growing world population that may reach 10.9 billion by the turn of the century, according to the UN. While other experts predict a plateau of 9.7 billion in 2064, that is still a 22% increase from the current estimate.

Some SPE members seem overly concerned about the projected decline in the oil and gas market share instead of the projected demand in exajoules, quads, BBOE/D, etc. Lost in this transition discussion is that the demand for oil and especially gas is still increasing and is likely to do so for quite some time, especially if we can make rapid progress with decarbonization and CCS/CCUS.

Given the stated policies of consumer countries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that oil production won’t plateau until 2030 and gas production will continue to increase all the way through to 2050—a staggering 50% increase from current production levels.

Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, but it appears to me that by focusing too strongly on the horizon we may have lost

• An overarching sense of excitement over being part of a quarter-century of disruptive change akin to that during the early years of the North Sea, deepwater, frontier, tight-gas, and ultra-low-permeability oil resource developments.
• The willingness to make the time to share our in-field experiences (positive and negative) with not only emerging technologies, but also with the staples of
  
  • Production and artificial lift optimization and acceleration.
  • Improved or enhanced recovery processes (IOR/IGR; EOR, etc.), including waterflood optimization and automation, and the potential for CO2-assisted processes.
  • Production problem mitigation, including advances in flow assurance methodologies.
  • Improved water management and its usage for heat, mineral extraction, industrial wash-water, irrigation, and well service or frac fluid preparation.
  • Capturing and commercializing associated gas or other stranded-gas resources.
• The opportunity to engage, mentor, and recruit into SPE new entrants into our industry, especially those Young Professionals (YPs) who were not lucky enough to be members of an SPE student chapter and, therefore, may not know about PetroWiki or The Way Ahead.
• Sight of the fact that in the final analysis most of us are “value-creation professionals” who happen to work in the oil and gas industry. Continual improvement efforts need to extend to cash flow and commercial risk management and the evaluation of a plethora of new business opportunities to develop a portfolio of solid investments (what SPE terms as a Management function).
• The excitement of competition for capital and resources. Moreover, fiscal incentives for other sources of energy may translate into business opportunities for substitution of own-use fuels. The electrification of anything that moves often results in more-efficient operations, since electrical prime movers are generally easier to automate and quieter, winning a positive response from our neighbors.

By adding energy transition to the value creation and energy equity expectations of our industry, we are finding new business opportunities. However, many of these depend on innovation on technologies about which many of us currently know very little.

• Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and/or carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) not only pose new challenges for the reservoir and geotechnical gurus; also, the flow assurance specialists now must think about the hydrate and corrosion challenges posed by impure CO₂ and/or CO₂ flashing from a liquid to a gas in the facilities, wellbore, and reservoir.
• Expanding geothermal energy developments to include area or horticultural heating and mineral recovery projects as well as the more traditional geothermal power generation processes will require us to deliver fluids at higher rates with lower costs and less heat losses.
• Nonconventional products and methods for transporting and delivering energy to our customers will provide opportunities and technical challenges. We can anticipate an expanding electrical grid offshore as well as on land; more liquefied or compressed natural gas (LNG or CNG) projects; selling blue hydrogen (as a blend with gas or a standalone product) or ammonia; and commercializing the bottom of the barrel as carbon fiber, etc.
• The refurbishment and repurposing of existing infrastructure will require integrity assessments for its ability to handle different fluids such as acid gases, various blends of natural gas and hydrogen, pure H₂, impure CO₂, hot exhaust gas, etc.
• The marginal business opportunities that have been sitting on “the back-burner” or the “to do list” for some years may now make the cut to get onto the annual business plan (for example, commercialization of gas from the low-pressure separators, de-oiling units, crude stabilizers, and oil storage tanks. Similarly, un-appraised contingent resources of low-BTU gas may be more attractive if coupled with CCS incentives).

The cultural changes required to keep safety risks and environmental impacts as low as reasonably possible (ALARP) have been steadily gaining momentum over the past 50 years. Nevertheless, it has been a long and tortuous path to recognize the importance of human factors.

The Santa Barbara Channel (1969) and Bay Marchand (1970) blowouts had a profound impact on many of us baby boomers in much the same way as other disasters have affected subsequent generations, such as:

• Ixtoc I in the Bay of Campeche (1979); the Alexandra Kielland, off Norway (1980); and the Ocean Ranger off Newfoundland, Canada (1982)
• The Piper Alpha in the North Sea (1988) and the Exxon Valdez in Alaska (1989)
• The Mumbai High collision in India (2005)
• Seadrill West Atlas in the Timor Sea (2009) and the Deepwater Horizon at Macondo in the Gulf of Mexico (2010)

We have learned that it is insufficient to say or think “Not on my watch” because we may not be involved or watching at the time a series of ill-considered or imprudent decisions were made. Nor is it adequate to require everyone working in the field to attend an offshore survival or defensive driving course and hazard identification training.

We now accept that health, safety, environment, and sustainability are everyone’s individual and collective responsibility. Incorporating these operational and process safety philosophies into fully automated autonomous systems that will operate with minimal operator involvement continues to be an intellectually challenging design issue. It is, therefore, very exciting to see theSPE Human Factors Technical Section recently agreeing a memorandum of understanding with the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society to allow us to draw on the lessons learnt in other industries.

Similarly, work on many of the components of what we now term as sustainability started around the turn of the century after the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its first two assessments. Significant momentum was added when IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

To strengthen and retain their social license to operate, many in our industry, including SPE, elevated the profile of both sustainability and its cross-functional components. To facilitate the sharing of knowledge, experience, and action plans, SPE now has four technical sections and a newly established discussion group.

• The Sustainable Development Technical Section hosts the SPE Gaia Sustainability Program and includes the Measuring What Matters Work Group. This technical section reports to the SPE Board via the HSE&S technical director.
• Carbon Dioxide Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) Technical Section includes sequestration (CCS) projects and manages the SPE Storage Reservoir Management System (SMRS). The CCUS Technical Section reports to the SPE Board via the Reservoir technical director.
• Water Life Cycle and Strategy Technical Section looks at the treatment, management, and reuse of injection and produced water, as well as trying to reduce our reliance on fresh and low-salinity brackish water for completion fluids, cooling, and as makeup water. This technical section reports to the SPE Board via the technical director for Production & Facilities.
• In 2021, a Geothermal Technical Section was established and reports to the SPE Board via the technical directior for Drilling. Having a geothermal energy focal point should help facilitate collaboration with the existing geothermal organizations such as the International Geothermal Association and its national affiliates Geothermal Rising, Unione Geotermica Italiana, and Indonesian Geothermal Association
• In 2022, a Methane Emissions Measurement, Reporting and Abatement (MEMRA) Discussion Group was established to improve the connectivity between those whose primary interest is sustainability with those working at the asset level in completions or production & facilities. It is hoped that this will quickly progress to an official technical section status.

In thinking of sustainability as the key driver for the energy transition, one of the aspects that is sometimes lost is that there is a total of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This more or less brings us back to the start of this article. This is a great time to be working as an engineer, scientist, or economist in the oil and gas industry. (Oh, to be a YP instead of a SP!).

However, should you still be feeling a little threatened by advancing automation, take comfort in the fact that most of these grand sustainability challenges will need to be addressed by graduates from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs with the assistance of economists and teachers. So, there are bound to be lots of career opportunities both within and outside our industry.