Gaming Technology for Improved Upstream Operational Efficiency

The year is 2020, and when OG-Gal22, a lease operator for XYZ OilCo, sits down to “work,” she’s at home, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. OG-Gal22, whose “real” name is Jane, checks her email, and now, with a cup of fresh coffee, logs into the XYZ game. She checks her cumulative score and compares it with other gamers in her guild and a best-practice benchmark. Then she checks to see if her guild leader has assigned any tasks to her while she was sleeping, and begins to plan her strategy for optimizing her personal score and the collective score of her guild that day.

She looks at the queue of operational issues that have appeared during the night and have subsequently been vetted and prioritized by an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm based on a configurable set of business-driven parameters. She invokes a workflow wizard in the game interface that directs her to the source of the highest priority issues. The wizard presents real-time data and design parameters together with recommendations on how best to correct the situation remotely.

Because part of the game interface is a 3-D, virtual model, she not only can see the terrain around the wells, but can fly through it and view video through an in-game window when a live-camera feed is available, allowing her a better comprehension of the process issues. She can send commands to control the pump-off controllers and query the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. As she works, she chats on-line through the game with other members of her guild, which is, in reality, her production operations group. This enables her to get their input as well. If she decides a situation cannot be remedied remotely she flags it for a field visit.

After resolving several nasty problems from the comfort of her kitchen, she instructs the logistics wizard to optimize her route. This will enable her to resolve the remaining problems in order of the severity of their impact on the business, which translates to maximizing her cumulative game score. She pours her second cup of coffee into a travel mug and heads out.

The scenario above is actually a very simple example of the power of using 3-D virtual models as an interface for performing work in the oilfield.  In this narrative OG-Gal22 is a lease operator, but the same advantages described above can be helpful to a facilities engineer who is optimizing a gathering system network.  The same model could also be used by other disciplines including well work planners, health, environmental and safety professionals and managers.

The value of gaming interfaces has long been acknowledged in the training arena where an immersive, dynamic and interactive environment enables more effective information retention compared to traditional training methods. SAIC is actively involved in extending this paradigm to real-time operating environments, by developing the first operations and engineering focused oilfield application of this technology.  The power of this approach lies in utilizing the virtual 3-D model, constructed within the game environment as a replica of the field or facility, for training and operations as well as simulation and modeling.

Very Serious Gaming

One of the significant areas where this technology is being used is by the Department of Defense in its own high-value, high-consequence training and operational environments. SAIC has been at the forefront of this transformation through our involvement in a variety of modeling and simulation and gaming projects.  SAIC continues to have extensive involvement in developing military games for public consumption as well as operational gaming environments used in a battlefield context. This expertise, combined with the interest of a visionary client, provided the impetus for launching a program aimed at proving the value of this approach in a broad range of oilfield applications.

The future of gaming in oil and gas: advantages, barriers and lessons learned

Getting over the initial perceptions of gaming technology has proven to be a challenge.  Current oil and gas company senior managers cannot be characterized as a group of natural "gamers" who would be quick to embrace this approach.  That means that demonstrating an actual proof of concept, using real data from an existing field, is critical to showing the value of using this approach for visualization of operational data.  The good news here is that younger engineers and employees will be much more likely to intuitively "get it" and enthusiastically embrace the use of this new approach and wonder what took us so long to get here.

Lesson learned:

1) Focus on the architecture, not on the technology.  Build it right and it will keep on working. Gaming, 3-D modeling and collaboration software functionality is progressing rapidly.  Focusing on the architecture over the technology will enable you to keep up with the latest developments in software without having to rebuild everything from scratch. For example, we are continuing to mature what we refer to as our Virtual Visualization Architecture (ViVA), which enables the reuse of 3-D models in other visualization and collaboration applications.  While we have experience in using several commercially available gaming technologies, we are also experimenting with how these can be combined with, or even replaced by, geographic information systems (GIS) packages with additional 3-D functionality.

2)  Make sure applications are architected with a distinct dividing line between data access, workflow, business logic, and data visualization.  This is a critical design criterion, as it will provide flexibility as the concept matures.  This approach should leverage the programs that most companies have for implementing services-oriented architecture (SOA) or enterprise service bus (ESB) technologies. 

3) Start small. Prove the value with an example of a real field.  Doing this well will enable the decision-makers and potential end users to engage in "suspension of disbelief" that is to focus on the added value of 3-D, contextually correct visualization rather than take issue with the details of how models have been built, or colors or other visual elements that have been used.

4) Involve users in developing the visual elements of the virtual model.  This is sound advice for any technology development program that results in a graphical user interface, but it is especially critical in this type of project.  Involve anyone who sees this as fun - use the gaming technology as an edge to get these people involved.

5) Do not reinvent systems - focus on added value through contextually correct display and methods of interacting with data and models.  It is critical that end users do not see this type of effort as an attempt to change their underlying data or models, but rather a way to visualize them in a way that brings a richer understanding of the data and models.

Technology adoption in upstream oil and gas continues to accelerate, and while the use of gaming technology and 3-D visualization capabilities may seem far fetched to some, I predict that it will find a place in mainstream oilfield operations as early as 2012.  It is entirely likely that people like the fictional Jane will use mature 3-D virtual models combined with collaboration and process changes, optimized to exploit the full value of both. She and others like her will one day take for granted what we now would define as a major advancement of the digital oilfield concept.