This year’s Offshore Europe will provide the backdrop for ITF, the Industry Technology Facilitator, to showcase the success of the Energy Talent Development (ETD) initiative, a collaborative programme set up to provide real industry projects for postgraduate study.
With support from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and the Energy Institute (EI), the ITF-led programme was established 18 months ago and designed to provide a platform for young talent to move into the energy sector by giving them industry-generated projects for use in postgraduate research degrees.
A total of 26 industry projects have been submitted to ITF for the ETD programme over that period, five of which have been successfully used for academic research study projects. These are now in their final stages and the facilitator will be sharing the results and benefits of the programme at an event on the last day of Offshore Europe, but in the Holiday Inn Express next door to the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre.
The event will comprise case-study presentations from students and company representatives who worked on such projects. ITF will also be using this event to call on industry to increase the number and scope of projects that could benefit from collaborative relationships between industry and universities. This is the sort of relationship that should have been forged years ago.
Operations director David Liddle said of the programme: “ITF has made use of its long-established network of contacts among academia and industry to move the ETD programme forward – nevertheless, it has been a long process to reach this point.
“In relative terms, this is still in early stages and, taking that into account, it has achieved considerable success and now has support across the sector. It is, however, important that the industry truly engages with ETD to maximise its success.
“The event in Aberdeen is designed to demonstrate the value and benefits of the programme by unveiling some of the actual projects that have been successfully progressed through the collaborative scheme.
“We would like to encourage industry representatives to attend the ETD event and make the most of the opportunity to speak directly to the students who took part in last year’s academic projects and hear objectively about the benefits from the companies sponsoring students.
“In order to prepare for the next academic year, now is the time to start thinking about prospective new projects. It is imperative that, as an industry, we bring fresh new talent into the sector, and ETD is one way of giving our next generation some insight into the type of exciting projects and developments that this sector has to offer them. We are calling on the industry to rise to the challenge and engage with the ETD programme to enhance future prosperity through the development of new projects and new talent.”
It should be noted that, for several years, the Energy Institute did its best to help petroleum-related Master’s students at Aberdeen and The Robert Gordon universities. The ETD programme is an evolution of this, but covers other universities, too.
So what of the presenters and their projects?
Babatunde Lashore, an MSc student at the University of Aberdeen, undertook a research project centred on data communication, specifically looking at the application of IT to reservoir surveillance. The project, sanctioned by TecWel UK, required the student to research techniques (current, emerging and still blue-sky) for moving data from the downhole environment to the onshore office in real time. This involved evaluation of the current status of wireless communication downhole, remote control of complex offshore systems and the trend to “remote operations rooms” and virtual environments.
This project led to the production of a reference overview manual that will be of great benefit to the industry, in particular operations managers and engineers, and a proposal for new areas of activity in this field for well operators.
Bernard Oke Oghenekevwe is an MSc student, also at Aberdeen. He undertook a design-and-build project for Mud Automatics to further develop a final design for the Rheo Watcher – a natural evolution from a previous ITF-funded joint-industry project.
The Mud Watcher, which has been reviewed in Energy, allows real-time and continuous monitoring of mud weight and viscosity. Having established a theoretical design for the technology, Mud Automatics wanted to develop a database to allow final design of the Rheo Watcher.
Bernard took a practical hands-on approach to measure, record and analyse data, and understand how to use the data practically to develop a final design. The findings from this project will be revealed at the showcase.
There will also be two poster presentations from Stephen Ojji and Ying Shi Chan, both MSc students and also at Aberdeen, who undertook industry-specific projects commissioned by ConocoPhillips (UK).
Ying Shi carried out a literature review for a conceptual design of a pipeline integrity management system for dense phase/supercritical carbon dioxide.
At the showcase, Ying Shi will be talking about his proposals for a pipeline integrity management system and an accompanying structured report he produced describing the work carried out against each of the objectives along with recommendations and learning.
Also working on a project authorised by ConocoPhillips, Stephen will be presenting results from a literature review-based study he is finalising to identify mitigation strategies for releasing CO from catastrophic failures of dense phase/supercritical CO pipeline transportation systems.
He will be presenting the findings of his study to identify credible mitigation strategies that are “as low as reasonably practicable” and how they might be implemented in order to demonstrate HSE and regulatory compliance.