In an upstream investor presentation, which was despatched to Rigzone by the BP crew earlier this yr, Gordon Birrell, BP’s EVP of Manufacturing and Operations, stated the corporate was “busy creating the subsequent wave of applied sciences” and touched upon just a few synthetic intelligence (AI) developments at BP.
With a purpose to discover out extra about BP’s upstream AI functionality, Rigzone sat down with Jack Cameron, Vice President at BP Technical Options India, for a Q&A session, delving into what AI know-how the corporate is utilizing, the place it got here from, and BP’s future AI know-how plans.
Rigzone: What AI know-how is BP utilizing in its upstream division and the way does this assist the corporate?
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Cameron: A few of our most impactful use of AI is permitting us to maximise oil and gasoline manufacturing by serving to us totally optimize our wells and amenities.
Optimization Genie, for instance, is an enhancement to our trade main real-time digital hydraulic twin and helps us decide how our manufacturing operations may be adjusted to securely produce extra oil and gasoline. It autonomously identifies and checks manufacturing system bottlenecks, simulates changes, and recommends optimum configurations for engineers to validate and implement. It’s quick; what used to take engineers weeks of guide evaluation, Optimization Genie accomplishes in hours.
Within the Gulf of America, on our Atlantis facility, it helped prioritize and optimize effectively variables at no additional price that led to a rise of roughly 2,000 barrels per day.
One other instance is Wells Assistant, which is like utilizing Copilot or ChatGPT particularly for wells, giving customers entry to 100 years’ price of institutional information to allow them to get fast and correct solutions to almost any question about wells, from the straightforward to the extra complicated.
With round 15,000 distinctive knowledge factors on file, it helps make our groups extra environment friendly and preserves crucial institutional information.
Rigzone: When and the way was this know-how developed?
Cameron: Optimization Genie was developed in early 2024 by BP’s manufacturing and know-how groups. It was piloted on the Atlantis discipline within the Gulf of America, displaying its effectivity in figuring out and simulating manufacturing enhancements. By September 2024, it was totally applied and delivering features. It was designed as an enhancement to BP’s real-time digital twin platform, APEX, which simulates oil and gasoline manufacturing techniques.
Wells Assistant, additionally launched final yr by BP’s digital know-how crew, helps AI integration throughout Wells and Subsurface and was developed utilizing Frontier Massive Language fashions and our proprietary knowledge techniques. It’s related to 5 main BP wells knowledge techniques and has answered greater than 14,000 queries to date.
Wells Assistant and our devoted subsurface AI assistants can be found to greater than 2,000 customers, answering a whole bunch of questions every day and serving to us embed finest practices globally, construct functionality quickly amongst our junior workers, and assist make our operations extra dependable.
Rigzone: Is BP ramping up its use of AI in upstream?
Cameron: Sure, we’re. Between 2022 and 2024, we elevated BP operated manufacturing by round 4 % and guarded round 10 % extra from going offline by way of surveillance and real-time monitoring and evaluation.
We now have acoustic sensing put in on over 400 offshore wells to constantly monitor for sand incursion into the effectively. This enables us to proactively intervene and intention to keep away from pricey outages, which we imagine to be distinctive throughout the trade.
We’re incorporating predictive analytics, utilizing unstructured knowledge to forecast tools failures, enhancing reliability and inspiring early intervention.
We’re embedding knowledge scientists and engineers on-site, conducting bootcamps and hackathons to unravel operational points, and figuring out security dangers.
Rigzone: What are the largest challenges BP has confronted when implementing AI in its upstream operations?
Cameron: Adopting new applied sciences resembling AI requires our engineers to problem themselves and decide to working otherwise and sometimes this requires a shift in mindset. AI suggestions can differ from conventional engineering instinct, and we discover that being drawback centered and upskilling our groups may help create this tradition change. It’s doable, nevertheless it takes time. One other problem is guaranteeing the software’s security and reliability, a course of that may take time.
Rigzone: Does BP plan to launch every other AI know-how for its upstream division within the close to future?
Cameron: Sure, we are going to proceed to make use of AI responsibly in our operations. This can be aligned to particular wants of the enterprise and the place it will add essentially the most worth.
Cameron has been with BP for nearly 20 years. He has beforehand managed operations throughout offshore platforms within the Gulf of America, led danger and integrity packages, and held extra roles at BP in operations and course of engineering within the North Sea and Egypt.
To contact the creator, e mail andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com
