Aker BP building data factory in the cloud to improve productivity

Norwegian oil and gas company Aker BP has joined forces with a digital, cloud, and security services company, Accenture, to develop and deploy a cloud-based solution in a digital transformation push to improve oil and gas operations.

Accenture informed on Monday that it was helping Aker BP to become a data-driven enterprise by building a cloud-based foundation and data factory to improve its operations.

Per Harald Kongelf, SVP Improvements of Aker BP, remarked: “This project is key to our vision of being the leading offshore oil and gas exploration and production company. We look forward to working closely with Accenture and Cognite, as we create a culture of innovation and experimentation to build the data foundation with a high degree of automation.”

Based on Accenture’s statement, Aker BP launched this project – central to its data-led digital transformation based on Cognite Data Fusion – to accelerate its goal of digitalizing the full lifecycle of its operations to cut costs, improve productivity, and lower its carbon footprint.

Cognite’s Industrial DataOps platform, Cognite Data Fusion, enables industrial data and domain users to collaborate quickly and safely to develop, operationalize, and scale industrial AI solutions and applications to deliver both profitability and sustainability.

Aker BP selected Accenture to develop a data factory solution in collaboration with Cognite, which applied its Cognite Data Fusion software at Aker BP to more rapidly implement the transformation by freeing and contextualizing data across IT and operational technology siloes, according to Accenture.

To remind, Aker BP also partnered with Cognite in November 2020 to deploy Spot, the quadruped robotic dog, to pioneer the remote-controlled offshore mission on the Skarv FPSO installation in the North Sea.

At the time, it was explained that the data from Spot was available and sorted in Cognite Data Fusion while Spot was remote-controlled from a Cognite home office onshore, demonstrating how robots and digital twins can have synergies and enhance each other.

In its announcement, Accenture further explains that many oil and gas companies have only been able to use a fraction of the data they generate and own, with information locked in functional areas with differing legacy applications, rendering it unusable across their organizations. In light of this, the firm believes that a modern data foundation can help overcome common barriers to value, which may include data accessibility and trustworthiness.

Sven Erik Skjæveland, managing director and Nordic Energy lead for Accenture, commented: “By applying automation, innovation and technology, the project team can deliver more reliable data to help improve the company’s operations. Aker BP will be better positioned to take advantage of cloud-native services and more efficient workflows that promote greater efficiency and collaboration.”

Moreover, the data foundation – managed like a factory – will be focused on delivering business results at scale, with automation and innovation, predictable delivery schedules and quality controls while enabling new ways of working, including agile and DataOps. In addition, other goals include exploring the Open Group OSDU Forum’s data standards and formats for wells and seismic data.

“All three companies share a similar approach of driving value through digital technologies, which will greatly benefit this project,” added Kongelf.

It is worth noting that, aside from being a partner in the Johan Sverdrup field, Aker BP is the operator of Alvheim, Ivar Aasen, Skarv, Valhall, Hod, Ula and Tambar fields, which may benefit from these new digital technologies.

The Norwegian oil and gas company is currently in the process of merging with Lundin Energy’s oil and gas business in a push to create an E&P firm, which will be the largest listed E&P company focused exclusively on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).