The Intelligent Mobile Office for IT-support on Large Onshore Plants - An ethnographic research searching for solutions that will do the process plants in the oil and gas industry more intelligent in the future

Abstract: The oil and gas industry is a large industry in the world and the oil and gas industryhas a history, since 347 A.D. The oil and gas industry generates a lot of money andhas been a reason for world conflicts. Many people associate the oil and gas industrywith high risk, hazardous working environments. Plant employees receive generousremuneration because of this inherent risk. One of StatoilHydro’s goals for manyyears is to have zero accidents and damages at their plants. Research is being carriedout to towards meeting this goal, with some results already implemented. Since 2006,StatoilHydro has run a large research project in “Integrated Operation (IO)”. One ofthe sub-projects is “wireless communication and wireless sensors” which alsoincludes research in “intelligent environments”. “Intelligent environments” is a quitea new and interesting concept. The purpose of this research is to explore if a processplant can be made more intelligent and how this might be accomplished?During the investigation stage, semi standardised interviews were hold with ninepersons who work with different working tasks in StatoilHydro, two seminaries werevisited and participant observations were done during 8 days at Tjeldbergodden,divided in 3 periods. From this data ideas were generated. One of the ideas was ofmore interest to StatoilHydro, which was consequently analysed in depth. This ideawas to increase the use of the cars which the operators at onshore plants use fortransport. Thus, this research enters the subject of mobile ICT (Information andCommunication Technologies) and will answer the questions: What will a mobileoffice in a car look like? How can the car as a mobile office (with mobile devices) beof assistance to the operators, especially in geographically distributed onshore welland processing facilities? How will the car as a mobile office influence the safetylevel at the plants? A detailed study was done for one potential use scenario,examining, how the car as mobile office might improve in the W.P (work permit)process. The result of the research was that plants can be done more intelligent usingthe ideas and findings which are presented in this paper. To have the possibility toimplement a mobile office in cars at onshore plants, the plants first need to a getwireless network solution. A mobile office will generate lot of benefits to theoperators at the plants, the greatest one will probably be time saving (less unnecessarytravels). This paper will present how the research was conducted, to answer theresearch question ”How can a process plant be made more intelligent?”, its results, aswell as background information regarding the oil and gas industry, intelligentenvironments and wireless technologies.