Lessons from the Field: Creating a Robust Data Foundation for Oil & Gas Industry | SPONSORED
At the Impact 2024 event, Aker BP and Cognite revealed an in-depth look into their digital transformation journey. This narrative, centered on data integration, technology, and human expertise, offers valuable insights into how a company have learned and can drive operational excellence through strategic partnerships and innovative solutions.
Aker BP’s Challenge: Navigating Data Silos in Industrial Operations
Aker BP, Norway’s second-largest oil and gas company and Europe’s largest independent operator manages offshore assets and produces around 450,000 barrels per day. Like many industrial giants, Aker BP struggles with a common challenge: data fragmentation. In their digital ecosystem, numerous vendors manage various parts of their technology stack—from databases and data layers to applications and systems. This creates data silos, making it difficult to connect information across different domains, which is crucial for optimizing operations and maximizing value from their digital infrastructure.
In search of a solution, Aker BP teamed up with Cognite, a company specializing in industrial data integration. This partnership aims to solve the core issue: unifying and linking diverse industrial data streams. The collaboration targets the creation of an integrated, real-time platform that connects sensor data, engineering documents, records, and maintenance histories. For Aker BP, a unified approach represents a significant step towards becoming world’s first data driven oil and gas company.
Prioritizing Business Outcomes: The Strategic Approach
In tackling the complexities of data integration, Aker BP’s approach is methodical. Instead of deploying technology for its own sake, they focus on clear business outcomes. The company asks itself: “What problems are we solving, and how can data drive these solutions?”
By understanding the desired outcomes—whether optimizing processes, enhancing decision speed, or boosting efficiency—Aker BP ensures that its technological investments are purposeful and aligned with broader business goals. This mindset guides their efforts, helping them determine which data is critical and how it should be utilized to address specific challenges. The focus remains on building a comprehensive integrated ecosystem of data platforms that integrates multiple domains, from industrial through Cognite, for subsurface through ADME OSDU, and other company related data using Microsoft Fabric..
The Human Element: Integrating Expertise with Technology
Even with advanced technology, human expertise remains central to Aker BP’s strategy. The company acknowledges that while automation can handle repetitive, data-heavy tasks, complex decision-making still requires human intervention. Aker BP’s vision is to use technology as a tool to liberate human creativity, enabling employees to focus on higher-value work that demands judgment, collaboration, and ingenuity.
This strategy reflects a shift in the industry: rather than seeing technology as a replacement for human workers, Aker BP positions it as a supportive tool. The aim is to automate tedious and mundane processes, allowing personnel to spend more time on tasks that genuinely need their expertise. By integrating technology and human effort, Aker BP optimizes both efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Lessons Learned: The Importance of a Robust Data Foundation
Aker BP’s journey with Cognite is not without its lessons. Initially, the company faced issues with fragmented data management and insufficient processes for ownership and quality control. Through its partnership, Aker BP is on a journey to elevate data management to a critical priority, and to treat data as a “first-class citizen” within the organization. This transformation will ensure data pipelines are continuously monitored, reliable, and accurate, which is crucial as more systems and people rely on data for real-time decision-making.
By establishing a solid data foundation, Aker BP will set a benchmark for heavy industry companies looking to become data driven. It highlights the importance of building trust in data and ensuring it is fresh and accessible—key factors for any organization seeking to modernize its operations and remain competitive.
Applying Lessons to Existing and New Projects
Aker BP’s transformation journey involves digitizing both existing (brownfield) and new (greenfield) projects. One monumental initiative is the Yggdrasil project, which translates from Norwegian as Tree of Life—a highly complex, multi-facility offshore oil field on the Norwegian continental shelf, set to be operational by 2027. The Tree of Life project exemplifies how Aker BP applies its learnings from past digital efforts. As they build the physical facility, they are simultaneously developing a digital twin, allowing real-time monitoring and optimization.
This parallel approach enables the company to integrate past experiences into new developments, ensuring that new projects benefit from the latest technology and data-driven insights. It also demonstrates the value of using digital twins—not just as theoretical models but as practical tools for real-time management and optimization. This methodology proves that even as companies modernize existing assets, they don’t have to wait for greenfield projects to deploy new technology.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Data and AI in Industrial Operations
Aker BP’s experience highlights the transformative potential of data and AI across industries. The company sees the ability to harness these technologies as a competitive differentiator. The rapid pace of technological advancements, especially in AI, means that companies must continuously adapt to integrate new capabilities into their operations.
Cognite expands on this, noting that the data challenges Aker BP faces are not unique to oil and gas; they are universal across industries such as manufacturing, life sciences, and other energy sectors. The need for an integrated data system is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and for future AI developments, as data is the essential fuel that powers these technologies. Cognite’s solutions aim to bridge this gap, providing a strong data foundation that companies can build upon as they scale and evolve.
Data as the Backbone of Industrial Success
Aker BP’s digital transformation story, in collaboration with Cognite, illustrates the crucial role of data integration and human expertise in modernizing industrial operations. Building unified data platform ecosystem and establishing a strong foundation is essential for achieving long-term success. It is not just about technology deployment; it’s about aligning these tools with specific business outcomes and ensuring they enhance the capabilities of the human workforce.
The interview was recorded by Greg Orloff, Industry Executive, IIoT World, together with Paula Doyle, Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Aker BP, Knut Johannessen Vidvei, SVP Head of Product Management, Cognite. Travel expenses for attending the Impact 2024 event were paid for IIoT World by Cognite.
Sponsored by Cognite
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