In 2008, the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) was held in Denver, CO, from 21-24 September. At the Conference, Morten Irgens presented a paper entitled “The Impending Expertise Crisis: New Technology Comes to the Rescue”. You can order this paper (SPE # 116634-MS) from the SPE eLibrary.
Abstract
The growing exploration and recovery ambitions of the Oil and Gas industry are resulting in engineers poring over increasingly larger volumes of data using finer grained models. There is more to analyze, more to decide on, and fewer to do it. More than half of the industry's employee base will retire over the next decade. Key expertise is becoming rare, and this may cause increased vulnerability and reduced operational levels for companies in the sector.
The information value chain starts with the capturing and transformation of data into information, from information into analytical models and finally into decisions. While Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are key enablers of productivity, they are not applied evenly along the chain. The application of automation drops along the chain, which is unfortunate since it is at the analysis and decision levels that industry specific domain knowledge is needed and where expertise is in short supply. The examples are many, including geological modeling, reservoir planning, reservoir management, and operations planning and management.
An approach to dampen the effect of this development is to reduce the effort, time and expertise needed for the tasks through software applications that empower knowledge workers and retain their knowledge. Recent advances in optimization and artificial intelligence technologies make it possible to support more of the industry's knowledge workers in their tasks. This includes supporting the most experienced with getting more work done with higher precision, and empower the less experienced to tackle harder tasks. In operations, they help decision makers handle complex, dynamic situations and make decisions that are aligned with key performance goals