Halliburton to help Aker BP in accelerating digital transformation

U.S. oilfield services giant Halliburton has joined forces with Norway’s oil and gas player Aker BP to develop – what it describes as – a next-generation intelligent system, aiming to evolve field development planning.

Halliburton revealed on Monday that it would co-develop next-generation field development planning software in collaboration with Aker BP. This deal will enable the two players to deliver a new cloud application – Field Development Planning (FDP) – and expand the scope of the current Digital Well Program, a DecisionSpace365 cloud application, built on an open architecture to provide integrated well planning and design to increase collaboration and connectivity across drilling activities.

Jeff Miller, Halliburton Chairman, President and CEO, remarked: “We are excited to extend our close collaboration with Aker BP and develop a cutting-edge intelligent system to evolve field development from the manual FDP process that exists in most enterprises. FDP creates a holistic view of field development and well construction, which will allow Aker BP to make more informed and expediated subsurface and reservoir/production decisions to optimize its investment and maximize the return on its assets.”

According to Halliburton, the FDP – built on the OSDU Data Platform – converts the manual process of collating field development data to make the decision gate process more efficient and auditable and provides a common audit trail across the subsurface community. In addition, this system is expected to help organizations better understand uncertainty and risks associated with field development concepts.

In a separate statement, Aker BP confirmed that it had reached an agreement with Halliburton, enabling the two to jointly collaborate on developing this system for field development planning.

Karl Johnny Hersvik, CEO of Aker BP, commented: “Aker BP aims to be fully digital and nearly fully automated towards the end of this decade. We are creating an ecosystem where work processes are seamlessly integrated, and data is flowing without friction. Halliburton is a key partner in this strategy. FDP will give us the ability to increase efficiency, maximize value and make data-driven decisions for entire field concepts. Furthermore, we will then understand and mitigate risk and uncertainty on a whole new level.

“Keeping different development scenarios in place for future use gives us a cutting-edge capability to understand how engineering work matures during the development phases. It will make it possible to collaborate and drive transparency across the assets as never seen before in the industry.”

This deal builds on a prior close and collaborative strategic relationship, which developed over many years between the two companies.

Tommy Sigmundstad, senior vice president of Drilling and Wells for Aker BP, stated: “We have successfully implemented Collaborative Well Planning for optimal well placements, reduced risk and increased resources. We are close to designing a well in a day with high quality in the open Digital Well Program built on Halliburton’s iEnergy solution. With Field Development Planning we are accelerating our digital transformation to the next level.”

Aker BP is the operator of several fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, including Alvheim, Ivar Aasen, Skarv, Valhall, Hod, Ula and Tambar. Earlier this month, the company inked a deal with Equinor for the transfer of operatorship for another field, allowing the latter to become the operator for all discoveries in the NOAKA area, off Norway.