The Digital Oilfield – managing people transition 8th February 2022 – Posted in: Digital Transformation

GEO ExPro Article, vol.12, No.2, 2015

It is well established that successful digital oilfield deployment projects require careful attention to ‘People’, ‘Process’ and ‘Technology’. We are very good at recommending technology solutions and after many years of operational experience in the oil and gas industry we can extend our expertise to recommend optimum workflows. But just how good are we all at managing the people transition? Maybe a few interviews with the stakeholders backed up with a couple of workshops will address the concerns?

If we are honest with ourselves, we know very well that this approach is woefully inadequate. If the operations staff, be it in drilling or production, do not buy into the digital oilfield workflows, then a very well designed Realtime Operating Center (RTOC) may become little more than a glorified meeting room. As for business value, this falls well below predictions and the overall digital oilfield project can unfortunately take on the personality of a very expensive failure. 

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