Oil prices rose after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its monthly oil market report for September that global oil demand grew “very strongly” year-on-year in the second quarter this year, which prompted the IEA to revise up its growth estimate to 1.6mn bpd for this year

DNV GL’s new DNVGL-RP-G108 cyber security aims to help the operators, system integrators and vendors to manage and prevent emerging cyber threat in the oil and gas industry, which is caused due to the increased digitalisation in the sector across the world

DNV GL has partnered with Gexcon in a collaborative project to investigate dust explosions at a larger scale and produce new guidelines for industry on how best to mitigate these events

Using its digital backbone, ABB Ability^TM, ABB is launching an enterprise-wide deep dive into a facilities data, presenting a common view of analytics available to CEO-level executives through to maintenance teams on production sites

Companies in the oil, gas and chemicals sector can deep dive into their data, regardless of which vendor’s control system is used, with business intelligence and data analytics across areas presented within a single  window. This allows more joined-up, and thus more effective, decision-making through improved, shared insights into company data. Using this common window, each user – whether maintenance manager or headquarters executive – is able to configure the view and have performance indicators and measures presented using the latest visual analysis tools. 

“With  ABB Ability^TM Enterprise Analytics,  insights are combined into a single dashboard that, for the first time, transforms data into easily actionable information for executives, plant, process and maintenance managers across the entire oil, gas and chemicals (OGC) sector,”  explains ABB’s  Håvard Devold . “The financial upside of this to operators is significant as up to 30 per cent savings in capital and operating expenditures are achievable.”

OGC industries have reams of data in many systems, most of which is essential to optimise performance. The ability to search, find, view and analyse this information and present it in different contexts and timeframes is the key to turning ‘dumb data’ into actionable insight for improved decision-making in a digital world. 

Presenting such diverse information to the right job function in the right manner, is due to ABB’s intellectual knowledge of numerous oil, gas and chemical processes together with its comprehensive portfolio that extends not only across automation, electrical and instrumentation but also telecommunications. 

Previously, companies have only been able to monitor the condition of a specific device, process or plant area or tackle individual alarms as they occurred. While helpful, standalone or isolated solutions increase the risk of error, deliver sub-optimal solutions and result in higher operating costs. 

By tapping into ABB’s domain knowledge and experts through the Collaborative Operations Centers, customers can identify the root cause of problems extremely efficiently. Not only that, at headquarters, executives can easily access plant performance at the enterprise level to assess safety, efficency and production issues. 

Driving demand for this dashboard are six challenges ABB has identified from decades of customer feedback: 

1. Safety and alarm management

2. Power management and electrification

3. Plant performance solutions and services

4. Asset management and condition monitoring

5. Smart wells flow assurance and production optimisation

6. Digital projects execution

This analytics capability now gives oil, gas and chemical companies the kind of joined-up view of operations that will transform their results by making it easier for the right information to be acted upon by the right people at the right time – all in a single view.