CRITICAL ISSUES IN DRILLING & COMPLETIONS
Aker BP is working through its drilling alliance partners to invest in technologies
that can reduce emissions from rigs like the Maersk Invincible.
What are your key considerations
when deciding whether to invest in a
digital technology?
Everything we invest in needs a busi-
ness case. One challenge with digital is
how do you actually link it to what’s cre-
ating value for the company? We’ve been
working a lot on this and finding ways to
convert it to value for the company and
show why we’re investing in it.
But we’re also investing in what I call
leap of faith, where we invest in something
because we believe it is the right thing
to do. It’s not straightforward, but as we
mature on our digital journey, we are prov-
ing why we invested in a technology.
Another important thing when invest-
ing in digitalization is to define what we
call end-to-end solutions. I have spent a
lot of time putting Drilling & Wells into
the value creation of our company – what
kind of value do we actually bring to the
table? As long as we can say, this is the
part that we are going to digitize now
when we create that kind of value, we can
build a business case. But still there is a
leap of faith when you initially invest in it.
Do you find that it’s hard to integrate
new digital technologies into existing
workflows? 24
Yes, but we have been in a much bet-
ter place since we started focusing on
these end-to-end solutions. This means
our front-line workers are always part of
the development process. And every time
we put together a use case, we pick where
we’re going to use it upfront. We know
which team is going to get the technol-
ogy, so they are a part of developing the
solution. We don’t want to end up with a
solution and then you run around looking
for a problem. We have to know, what will
you use it for?
It’s been a few years since Aker BP
entered into alliance agreements with
Halliburton, Odfjell Drilling and what
was then Maersk and now Noble. Can
you talk about your considerations
when you were selecting alliance
partners and share any lessons
learned over the last few years?
We spent a lot of time in the beginning
making sure we picked the right alliance
partners. We were not necessarily focused
on the technical stuff but more on the
mindset and behavior of the organization
and the leadership. I wanted to see that
we can work together to create more value
for each company by establishing a deeper
and longer relationship. This was impor-
tant because more than 90% of the work
within Drilling & Wells is done by the sup-
pliers. My thinking is: They need to win if
we’re going to win.
What we’ve seen with the alliances is
they give each company more predict-
ability. For example, we give our alliance
partners full insights into our five-year
plans. For the drilling contractors, that
gives them much more predictability on
their rig schedules.
But alliances also require everyone
to do things very differently than what
you normally do when you go to the
market and act in a more transactional
way. Because you have long-term con-
tracts, you will shave off the peaks, but
you will also remove some of the depths
of the dips. You also have much more
continuous operations, so you eliminate
costs associated with learning curves,
start-stops and the frequent equipment
mobilization. By working together to reduce cost, we
have also opened up opportunities for new
work. As an example, we contracted the
Maersk Integrator back in 2018 for just
nine months, but we ended up having it for
five years because we were continuously
pushing cost down, so new opportunities
came up.
Aside from the drilling alliances, we
also have an intervention alliance with
SLB and Stimwell. In the Valhall area, we
have a lot of work on normally unmanned
installations, and we found that we were
spending a lot of time rigging up and rig-
ging down equipment for well interven-
tions. So we started running coiled tubing
from a jackup from Maersk. That was an
inter-alliance setup between Maersk and
SLB/Stimwell, and it was a great success
creating value for everybody and creating
new opportunities that we never thought
of a couple of years back.
Does something like that come as a
result of having an open mindset?
You have to listen, and you have to cre-
ate trust. Our contractors need to make
money. If you’re a contractor that is losing
money, there will be no trust and they’re
going to move out as soon as you can.
We’ve learned a lot from our alliances
over the past five years, and we’ve recently
JAN UARY/FEB RUARY 2023 • D R I LLI N G CO N T R ACTO R