Performance, as they say, is everything. Increase performance and you reduce emissions, save costs, improve reliability and ultimately better please your customers. But with every component on a modern vessel honed to something like perfection, it is close to impossible to identify large performance gains from a single area. The real gains to be had now stem from a companywide commitment to optimisation which can only come from the smart use of high-quality big data.

Marlink vice president of maritime IT solutions Tor Skeie is well versed in this new approach to vessel and fleet performance and he is quick to emphasise the speed with which companies must adapt if they wish to be at the vanguard of the operational technology (OT) revolution. “Kids today do not use email,” he says. “Email is a legacy technology, the same as fax and telex.”

It is a view that might surprise some, but that is the point; shipping needs to look beyond the current technology that some still see as new and understand that new technology is already out of date before most of us have had chance to apply it.

“We need to rapidly move into the digital world,” he says, “and that means using online information, live and in real time, filtered appropriately and sent from the vessel to the company’s OT centre without interruption.”

Mr Skeie is clear in his opinion that this is the only way shipping will truly transform the current crop of industry buzzwords – digitalisation at sea, connected vessels, remote monitoring – into real-world gains.

“We need to rapidly work towards connected and secure OT and digital services,” he says. “Real-time remote tracking and automated reporting to ensure we have strong performance analytics will feed into condition-based monitoring.”

The key obstacle to achieving this goal is, somewhat ironically, data, or rather too much of it. With so much information travelling around, it can be difficult to determine exactly what is and what is not critical to the operation, with the risk of users being overwhelmed as they try and sift through the data torrent.

This is where Mr Skeie sees the immediate gains to be had; from smart software that filters data appropriately, helping, rather than hindering, users. “With current installed technology there are obstacles,” he says. “There is a lot of data coming from the ships, but the quality of that data varies significantly. There are different protocols and proprietary systems, different providers, and data transmission is not straightforward because there are a lot of fragmented systems out there.”

But he explains that the rapid pace of change means that if shipowners are prepared to work together and standardise, such problems can quickly be overcome.

“Data is getting more and more reliable; it is getting better in all senses of the word. And that means it is now possible to accurately filter content and use technology to ensure you only send the necessary data back and forth.”

Mr Skeie advises shipping to look towards start-ups for the solution and enable these innovative providers to work alongside the industry to test, develop and drive forward positive change. “If you really want to unleash the power of digitalisation you need to look towards the start-ups,” he says. “They are the ones with the bright ideas, the new ways of thinking and the new mindsets.

“If we as an industry enable a basic testing infrastructure on board vessels we would be well placed to utilise and benefit from the energy within those types of companies. That is the way we as a sector can truly unleash the power of digital technology.”

Mr Skeie’s comments were made during a Riviera Maritime Media webinar titled Unleashing the power of data to optimise vessel performance, sponsored by Marlink.

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Petrofac has chosen Microsoft Azure’s Internet of Things for its Connected Construction platform designed to accelerate digital transformation at its project worksites.

“Microsoft’s mission is to empower every individual and organisation on the planet to achieve more,” said Sayed Hashish, general manager, Microsoft UAE. “Petrofac serves some of the largest oil, gas and renewable energy companies in the world and is known as a leader in its segment. The company is well underway with its digital transformation journey. Its potential to engage customers, empower employees and optimize operations for assured and ultra-efficient service delivery has been accelerated by the power of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge.”

In conjunction with Accenture Industry X.0, Petrofac developed Connected Construction on Azure and combined it with Azure IoT Edge analytics and PaaS cloud components to create a scalable ecosystem capable of accommodating many different types and sizes of project.

“Petrofac designs, builds, operates and maintains energy facilities, supporting our customers to unlock more value across the life cycle of an asset,” said Fady Sleiman, chief digital officer, Petrofac. “We’re future-proofing our business, combining technology with our engineering, construction and operations know-how to find new solutions to today’s challenges. With Microsoft and Accenture, we’ve created Connected Construction which tracks people, equipment and materials on site, enabling real-time insights and decision making which, in turn, improves performance.”

Azure’s IoT platform allows innovators to build visual Internet of Things applications that connect, manage, and monitor devices securely and at scale. With the options to run SaaS or PaaS deployment models, solutions builders can deliver real edge intelligence to field operatives that allows data-driven decisions through machine learning and advanced analytics. Azure IoT Edge moves cloud analytics and custom business logic to devices for organisations that prioritise business insights over data management, allowing them to scale out solutions by packaging heuristics into standard containers, deploying them to edge devices and monitoring everything from the cloud.

Following a significant surge in the demand for its cloud services in the region, Microsoft earlier this year launched its intelligent cloud to regional customers through two dedicated cloud data centres, one in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi. These facilities will cater specifically to enterprises in the Middle East. 

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Oil and gas assets are increasingly fitted with a multitude of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, causing exponential growth in data. This, in turn, is increasing the need for adoption of data management solutions for improved operational visibility. This approach also helps identify bottlenecks in operations and uncover patterns and relationships across diverse entities, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest thematic report, ‘Big Data in Oil & Gas’, discusses how growing dependence on data from oil and gas operations is compelling the industry to adopt big data solutions.

Ravindra Puranik, Oil and Gas Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The oil and gas industry has always generated huge volumes of data daily across the value chain. However, despite being awash with money it has been poor at data management. It is only when profits drop that the industry starts to investigate how to use data to improve operational efficiency. However, this laissez-faire approach is less prevalent now. Many players, across the value chain, are taking an enterprise-wide view to data, and applying analytics to improve existing business processes and to develop new revenue streams.”

Data management is a very complex process, particularly given that much of an oil company’s upstream data is created on remote assets and often stored in disparate, disconnected infrastructure. Moreover, there is a paucity of data scientists with a working knowledge of the oil and gas industry.

Puranik continues: “Big data in the oil and gas industry will experience incremental growth once it overcomes these barriers. The growth will be further accelerated by concerns such as falling profit and future uncertainty from renewables.

“The oil and gas industry traditionally relied on paper-based data collection for maintaining records from daily operations. This approach has largely been digitalized now. Effective data management is essential for this approach to succeed so that companies can make better use of their data.”

GlobalData’s thematic research identifies ADNOC, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Gazprom, Rosneft, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell and Woodside as among the major oil and gas players present in the big data theme.

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