The North Sea oil and gas industry was warned not to “waste a crisis” as consultants urged firms to adopt cost cutting measures.
Risk management from DNV GL expects that the region’s oul and gas industry won’t be “trending positive” again until 2017, while demand for rigs won’t do so until 2018.
Nevertheless, DNV GL’s Liv Hovam, director of divisional Europe and Africa, oil & gas, underlined a number of projects the consultancy firm has been undertaking which can save tens of millions of costs for firms in the North Sea -a basin which has experienced the highest cost inflation in the world in recent years.
Ms Hovam blamed a “lack of trust” within the industry for a 400% rise in the amount of documentation used to develop projects among authorities, accrediting organisations, operators and manufacturers that requires thousands of man hours to produce.
The firm said while an average project might have required 5,000 to 10,000 documents taking up 15,000 man hours three years ago, in 2015 this has escalated to 40,000 documents eating up 120,000 man hours.
She said 30% of the company’s joint industry projects (JIPs) were aimed at cost reduction initiatives.
These include a range of ventures with industry and academia, including a method of manufacturing subsea pipes that could be intalled from a spooler without requiring further welding. DNV GL said this could provide savings on a 30kn pipelay project between £4million to £5.5million.
Likewise, using computer modelling to test the integrity of composite materials and using this as a basis for evaluation rather than more expensive laboratory-based testing could also halve costs.
The firm is also developing ways operators could use sensors to monitor equipment for maintenance, mitigating the impact of failures and shutdowns.
Hovam said the firm’s research into implementing this had proved “very promising” and could deliver “huge savings” to the oil and gas industry.
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