How can offshore oil & gas projects compete in future against the growing headwinds from shale oil, shale gas and Renewable Energy?
Energy Transition will be a gradual shift over many years, not a ‘big bang’, and there will be offshore oil and gas projects sanctioned and executed for many years to come. However, we can expect growing competition between potential projects in oil/energy company development portfolios, such that only the most commercially robust will proceed into the execution stage. Continued efforts to improve efficiency and reduce life cycle costs will therefore be paramount.
There are already several effective strategies being employed towards these goals, including standardisation and digitalisation, but with varying degrees of success. Identifying and sharing best practice in these areas will be crucial for continued improvement in the competitiveness of offshore oil & gas projects.
Relocation of existing assets offers potentially lower-cost development scenarios than new-build solutions. A growing trend in the last 5 years is the relocation of FPSO vessels from field to field. Whilst there have been some very successful relocation projects, many others have suffered cost and schedule overruns, often due to unexpected scope growth in the shipyard. Relocation projects bring a new set of challenges, and again identifying and sharing best practices in these areas will be crucial for continued improvement.
New Technology can also play an important role but can also be perceived as bringing additional risks to project success and, as such, project teams will often be reluctant to embrace this. These risks can be effectively mitigated by a robust Technology Readiness Level (TRL) stage-gate process such as that defined in API 17N, developed for the subsea industry. Companies striving to lower life-cycle costs should push project teams to embrace new technologies, but only where appropriate TRL levels have been achieved. Suppliers need to be able to justify that new technologies meet required TRL targets for implementation on projects.
OpenWater Energy has extensive experience in standardisation, digitalisation, FPSO relocation and TRL management, and can deploy these tools to help make future offshore oil and gas projects more cost effective.