The Use of Virtual Reality and PLM Technologies to Support Upstream and Downstream Offshore Asset Management
Authors: Daglas Harry 
Published: April 2012

We are not lacking in new IT technologies to improve our ability to operate, simulate, and manage the most critical Oil & Gas assets across the globe. Today, right now, we have a huge opportunity to contribute to our society byimproving the safety and operation of these huge, complex assets. We have thetechnology to move our society to a " zero accident" environment. Thesestatements may sound grandiose, but, the reality is that we have moved to apoint in our evolution where IT technology is available to improve our safetyand actually create a positive return-on-investment (ROI). This paper focus onone such IT technology - Virtual Reality (VR) and the life-like realism, emersion, and simulation it makes available to us. Specifically, we willdescribe how the convergence of Virtual Reality, systems simulation and plantlifecycle management (PLM) technologies can optimize training programs forhigh-risk, high cost offshore oil and gas operations.

Shutting down an offshore operation (esp. a drilling rig) for" close-to-real-life" training purposes is not an option for organizationstoday. This leaves owners/operators the unenviable task of relying onpaper-based school room training or expensive, custom-built practiceenvironments. Both of these strategies come with dubious effectiveness and costinefficiencies. Now the synchronization of virtual reality, systems simulationand PLM technologies can help bridge the training divide. Trainees of varyingskill levels will be able to safely try out new techniques in a virtualuniverse before applying them in the real world. Moreover, records of realoperational events can be turned into a large-scale simulation to test theskill of managers and subordinates. The result is an effective, cost-efficientenvironment to train employees throughout the organization rather than on a peroperational asset basis.

Introduction

Virtual Reality (VR) has its roots in the 1950s when Douglas Engelbartenvisioned computers not just as number crunchers but as digital displays of anunderlying dataset. Now VR technology is now in the mainstream largely throughthe efforts of the gaming industry. The latter rely heavily on VR technology togain the competitive edge in the gaming market space. None of this evolutionwould have been possible without the parallel development of high-performancecomputer and advanced visualization software. This in turn paved the way forlow-cost, high-resolution graphic workstations linked to high-speed computers -a perquisite for a thriving gaming industry. While most people now focus onVR's use in entertainment areas, the maturing virtual reality technology willhave some of its real impacts in how we operate and manage huge oil and gasassets, engineering system design, strategic decision-making, and many otherareas within the oil and gas industry.

From the days of the flight simulator (the earliest influential antecedents ofvirtual reality) we can now transpose our know-how onto an Avatar operating ina virtual operational environment. In computing, an Avatar is the graphicalrepresentation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. The use of theterm avatar for the on-screen representation of the user was coined in 1985 byChip Morningstar and Joseph Romero in designing Lucas Film's onlinerole-playing game Habitat. Individual Avatars (i.e. on-screen representativesof technical experts) have the ability to review a facility and procedures fromremote individual locations, rather than requiring we all meet together in a" cave" environment. These abilities of " emersion" using virtual realitytechnology (together with portable hardware) enable improved safety, training, operation, and documentation of these critical facilities.