GE Marine, Maersk Drilling expand their digital partnership

Following the positive outcome of their pilot project, GE and Maersk Drilling have extended the scope of their digital partnership.

During the extended partnership, the two companies will expand the scope of the 2016 pilot project — one vessel, one asset, one year — to nine subsequent vessels targeting 110 key equipment assets, such as the top drive, drawworks, thrusters and main engines, over a multiyear contract starting later this year.

GE’s SeaStream Insight Marine Asset Performance Management (APM) solution will be implemented to enable more consistent and predictable drilling performances on nine selected units across Maersk Drilling’s fleet, ensuring an accelerated basis for time to value of the digital transformation.

“Through our partnership with GE, we are not only creating value for our two companies but the industry as a whole,” Jesper Hansen, CIO of Maersk Drilling, said. “We believe that the systematic adoption of reliability-centered maintenance analysis and digitization will be a step – change in our industry, and Maersk Drilling plans to lead the way. To do that, we must acknowledge the need to break down the industry silos and work collaboratively across the value chain, as the sharing of data will enable further digital breakthroughs, which can enhance efficiency and remove waste across the supply chain. By offering new efficiency services to our customers, Maersk Drilling has taken the next step in digitalizing the offshore drilling industry. Together with a number of relevant industry partners, we are now executing on our ambition to offer oil majors the world’s first digitally optimized drilling operation.”

“By scaling from one pilot project to fleets, it helps drive consistent drilling excellence at a global level, and this is how digital solutions will bring a multibillion-dollar impact to the industry,” Tim Schweikert, President & CEO, GE’s Marine Solutions, said. “The extended partnership with Maersk Drilling speaks volumes of our partnership, our solution and the digital capability for the industry. Moving forward, we will continue to deliver measurable outcomes through the program and help Maersk Drilling and our partners better perform even during this period of industry downturn.”

Enhancing drilling productivity presents value to customers by reducing total well cost. By offering performance analytics for the rig, Maersk Drilling can reduce deviations and increase productivity enterprise-wide in drilling operations such as drilling, tripping in, tripping out, running riser and pulling riser.

Another digital milestone enabled through this partnership is predictive maintenance. Maersk Drilling and GE have developed digital twins — virtual representations of key equipment on the rig tuned through sensor and other equipment data – for the major drilling and marine systems equipment. By using the digital twins in combination with GE’s zonal analytics, the digital solution can reduce unnecessary maintenance and its associated cost. In addition, the solution is able to detect equipment anomalies that could result in an equipment breakdown, providing foresight weeks in advance of pending issues.

GE’s SeaStream Insight APM solution provides real-time efficiency reports and performance indicators based on data gathered during daily offshore operations. The implementation of digital APM for the additional nine vessels will commence later this year and target 20% maintenance cost reduction and improvements in drilling efficiency.