On Monday 12 October the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) and ISO/TC 67 organized two virtual workshops on contemporary opportunities for standardization in the oil and gas industry: Lower carbon and Information and standards digitalization. Mr Richard Mortimer, chair of the IOGP standards committee moderated both workshops which included a perceptive panel discussion with all presenters.
Workshop on Lower carbon
Ms Kirsi Silander – van Hunen (ISO CS) kicked-off the workshop by shedding light on the perspective of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on lower carbon. She drew attention to ISO Guide 82 and recently published Guide 84 on providing guidelines for addressing sustainability and climate change in standards. See for the presentation here.
Mr Terry Qin (CNPC), convenor of the ISO/TC 67 ad-hoc group “Green Manufacturing” discussed a new work item on green manufacturing of oilfield equipment and materials. He stressed that standardization of green manufacturing is the way to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and contribute to achieving the other 2030 Sustainable Development Goals for our oil and gas industry. See for the presentation here.
Ms Diane Gonsalves (IOGP) and Mr Wilfried Maas (Shell) elaborated on the progression of the IOPG lower carbon agenda. An objective is to identify areas where Engineering Standards and IOGP Operation technical sharing and collaboration can potentially contribute to progressing the lower carbon agenda and to propose a strategy how IOGP in collaboration with others (in particular the International standards development organizations) can progress. Steps that have been taken are:
- Framing Sessions (April ELC, May SDOs/Industry Groups)
- ELC Operators Questionnaires & Bilateral Calls (May-July)
- SDOs & Other Industry Groups Questionnaires & Bilateral Calls (June/July
A report has been presented outlining a way forward. The results will also be proposed to the Enigineering Leadship Council and the IOGP MC to define a way forward.
Mr René van der Meer (Neptune Energy) introduced the PosHYdon project which aims to integrate three energy systems in the North Sea: offshore wind, offshore gas and offshore hydrogen by producing hydrogen from seawater on a platform in the Dutch North Sea. The aim of the pilot is to gain experience of integrating working energy systems at sea and the production of hydrogen in an offshore environment. A video can be seen here and a presentation here.
Summarizing, the workshop was considered beneficial for enabling a good exchange on the lower carbon activities by the oil and gas industry. At both IOGP Standards Committee and ISO/TC 67 level discussions are scheduled to define the next steps on which and how to include initiatives in their work program.
Workshop Information and Standards Digitalization
Mr Ken Dunn (IOGP Digitalization & Information (DISC)) introduced the Digitalization and Information Standards Subcommittee (DISC) of IOGP. DISC focuses on establishing a common agreed framework and prioritization for digitalization and support development of preferred information standards that are used by the Oil & Gas industry. See for the presentation here.
Mr Tom Shortall (IOGP/Shell) presented the digitalization activities of the Requirements Digitalization Taskforce (RDTF) of IOGP. He explained that the group aims to maintain and expand the use of good requirement guidance. A position paper has been drafted, which includes a requirement writing guide. Further, the importance was stressed of alignment on a common data model for the industry and to digitize industry practice and standards to enable a digital transfer. He expressed that there are different needs in the market. See for the presentation here.
Mr Robert McAfoos (Barrios Technology) explained that Barrios Technology was involved in a Space Station Program 30 years ago. Paper was the main tool and Word processors and spreadsheets were state of the art back then. Now Barrios Technologies takes part in the 2020 Gateway Pogram where engineering data and information is integrated between custom purpose commercial tools. He saw transition from standalone models and information related through documents to shared system models with views into specific discipline models. Of specific interest was the slide that showed the transfer from standalone models to shared system models.
He introduced the INCOSE Oil and Gas working group which aims to entice standards bodies to move from documents to a database and modify the format and structure of their requirement documents to separately identify the requirement, the rationale / history, and verification method. See for the presentation here.
Mr Helge Olsen, convenor ISO/TC 67 Advisory Group Digital Implementation elaborated on the group's activities. The advisory group aims to function as a common arena for the oil and gas sector stakeholders, to include other sectors (ISO Technical Committees), and act as a linking pin between the sector and ISO Central Secretariat. The group has three deliverables 1) to establish a standard authoring guidelines for smooth digital implementation of content, 2) tagging/markup schema of content in standards (sentence centric) and 3) to establish a data centric semantic digital implementation solutions. See for the presentation here.
Mr David Miller (API) presented the activities of API in the field of digital standards. API has established an Emerging Issues Taskforce, which firstly focuses on standards digitization. It identifies cross-segment issues, reviews their potential impact on the API standard development and programs and will develop a paper with recommendations. Mr Miller noted that API is organizing a fourth Technology Forum in 2020 with topics such as standards publishing and delivery, customer-driven development, artificial intelligence and machine learning. API is looking into new software that can support standards digitization. See for the presentation here.
Ms Kylie Rodier (ISO CS) digital publishing manager at ISO CS presented several initiatives. She noted that an internal project team at ISO CS is considering and drafting a project plan for implementing ISO SMART, referring to the digitalization of standards in a more machine-interpretable/transferable way. She further remarked that ISO is collaborating with IEC and members on harmonized use of NISO STS in the XML distributed from both organizations. Moreover, ISO is also collaborating with IEC on the Online Collaborative Authoring/Fonto project and is involved with regional and international groups examining digitalization of standards.
It was concluded that alignment between the different initiatives was considered of importance and needed to be followed up.