最初尝试在其主要领域使用数字孪生,这激发了这家跨国碳氢化合物勘探和生产公司在其整个产品组合中进一步采用该技术。

随着对低成本能源的需求不断增加,以及来自可再生能源的竞争,康菲石油正在利用数字孪生来优化其资产的安全性和效率。
这家总部位于休斯顿的公司起源于1875年,在其主要领域取得成功后,正在采用全产品组合的数字孪生技术。它被称为康菲全球数字孪生计划,为康菲石油赢得了 2023 年 CIO 100 IT 卓越奖。
石油和天然气是一个动荡的行业,充斥着价格的突然和显着波动。与此同时,当前的监管环境使得勘探新的碳氢化合物变得具有挑战性,给康菲石油等公司带来了压力,要求最大限度地从现有资产中提取。
“我们一直在寻找提高效率和优化资产生产的方法,”该公司新兴数字技术(EDT)IT总监Nick Purday说。“我们在过去几年中一直在做的一件事是优化我们的设施人员配备,并在可能的情况下将员工从设施调回办公室。这是有道理的,因为它有助于安全、成本和最终的温室气体(温室气体)排放。

将人员从生产设施转移到办公室需要新的工具。Purday说,这就是导致康菲石油挪威部门开始研究数字孪生的原因,数字孪生是实物资产的虚拟表示。它们帮助解决基本问题,例如“这台设备在哪里?”和“此资产的维护历史是什么?”该公司还利用数字孪生来回答更复杂和数据密集型的问题,例如,“最大化该设施盈利能力的最佳生产参数是什么?数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
尽管如此,看似微不足道的任务,如寻找一件设备,在规模上成为一个重大挑战。康菲石油的一些大型设施拥有超过一百万个资产标签,但借助数字孪生和手持设备,操作员只需输入标签编号即可接收到相关设备的步行路线——这一能力帮助挪威业务部门在选定的维护和检查任务中减少了 80% 到 90%。
“这就是起源,”Purday说。“我们如何提高效率,并在我们的业务方式上留下数字足迹?数字孪生是基础层,为加速数字化提供了平台。
一、大统一数字孪生战略
Purday说,康菲石油的每个业务部门都了解数字孪生技术如何帮助他们,但每个部门都在朝着自己的方向前进,寻找不同的供应商。从历史上看,这是康菲石油的标准做法:各个业务部门有权选择他们喜欢的技术,这导致了多样化但昂贵的IT组合,维护起来很复杂。
CDIO Pragati Mathur决定采取不同的策略,与康菲石油的全球数字孪生计划Global Production采取不同的策略,该计划将建立由帮助业务部门部署该技术的团队支持的全球标准。通过集中资助该计划,全球生产将能够快速部署专家团队,并消除业务部门预算周期的任何延迟。
“由于数字孪生现在是一个如此热门的话题,与我们合作的每个供应商都试图向我们出售他们的双胞胎版本,”Purday 说。“这促使我们迈出了下一步:我们能否确定一种可以在全球范围内部署的解决方案,并建立一个一致、可支持的低成本环境?”数字化转型网szhzxw.cn

阿拉斯加业务部门已经对该技术进行了广泛的评估。EDT接受了评估,与公司分享,并让各个业务部门提交他们的要求。数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
“我们非常幸运,在我们与业务部门合作研究的 10 种不同解决方案中,我们一致认为其中一个已经扩展到全球部署,”Purday 说。
Mathur表示,EDT采用数字孪生的提议感觉像是“不费吹灰之力”,因为它将为进一步的数字化转型奠定基础。
“我的背景是航空航天和汽车,”马图尔说。“每次你建造汽车或飞机时,你都会虚拟地表示一切,无论是2D还是3D设计,我把它等同于数字孪生。
她指出,康菲石油将其数字孪生分为三类:可视化、监控和模拟。
“借助可视化数字孪生,我们为数据和工作流程提供了一个引人注目的界面;监控数字孪生是否提供实时上下文;仿真数字孪生能够预测我们的设备和潜在的整个设施的行为,“Mathur 说。“最终,数字孪生帮助我们加速整个业务的数字化,并从我们的资产中获得更大的洞察力和价值。数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
二、发展愿景
该项目的主要挑战是围绕一个通用平台调整组织,然后可以实现快速部署。为了应对这一挑战,Mathur 和她的团队决定开发和资助一个全球计划,围绕一个共同的平台调整组织,并建立一个共享最佳实践并相互支持的社区。
该团队首先在澳大利亚昆士兰州附近的一个岛屿上建造了该公司澳大利亚太平洋液化天然气 (APLNG) 设施的数字孪生模型,该设施的建设成本为 8 亿美元。它与国家供应天然气和出口到日本签订了长期合同,团队花了一个月的时间从数据收集到工作最小可行产品(MVP)。在六个月内,该设施积极使用数字孪生来支持运营。
该公司将交付速度归功于业务部门中专注于全球的团队、拥有数十年构建数字孪生经验的咨询团队以及致力于该项目的软件供应商的组合——所有这些都在可扩展的云环境中交付,可以从任何地方进行访问。
该团队继续为该公司的阿拉斯加油田开发数字孪生,并正在研究如何为美国48个州的非常规油田构建数字孪生。加拿大、挪威、阿拉斯加和APLNG也计划进行重大项目和扩建。数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
为了选择单一的数字孪生软件解决方案,康菲石油与全球供应链合作,执行信息请求/建议请求 (RFI/P) 流程。多个业务部门就选择标准提供了意见,以确保围绕首选技术保持一致。一旦公司选择了首选技术,Mathur和她的团队就开发了一个通用的数据集成层。该团队在 Azure Microsoft构建并部署了数字孪生技术,这有助于提供全局访问、性能、可伸缩性,并且比内部托管时成本更低。
就社区和最佳实践而言,挪威业务部门率先使用数字孪生,并为该公司的大多数北海平台开发了该技术。该团队分享了数字孪生的业务优势,并与每个小组举行了知识转移会议。全球团队利用 Microsoft Teams 来支持全球社区,定期发布进度更新并主持跨业务部门的信息共享会议。
迄今为止,康菲石油公司表示,其数字孪生的投资回报率已经达到了四倍,尽管个别例子的影响要大得多。早期的成功也导致了需求的爆炸式增长。
“当你开始这个项目时,无论你认为你要用你的数字孪生做什么,当你到达那里时,它都不会在哪里,”Purday说。“在我们的一个业务部门中,他们有 10 个他们认为可能使用的用例,其中,他们专注于三个。现在,他们列出了 100 个用例,这些用例可以通过使用孪生技术产生积极影响。访问数字孪生可以激发创造力。数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
Mathur说,她现在正在研究如何将数字孪生连接到公司的其他部门,以实现进一步的数字化转型。
“数字孪生本身是一回事,但连接到其他数据和系统的数字孪生变得更加强大,”她说。“这就是我们正在努力实现的目标 – 不仅仅是拥有数字孪生,而且能够连接其他系统和技术,以便技术人员或现场工作人员可以访问便携式设备上的所有相关信息。
英文原文:
ConocoPhillips goes global with digital twins
Initial forays into using digital twins across its major fields has inspired the multinational hydrocarbon exploration and production company to further adopt the technology across its entire portfolio.
With demand for low-cost energy ever increasing, along with competition from renewable sources of energy, ConocoPhillips is leveraging digital twins to optimize the safety and efficiency of its assets.
The Houston-based company, with origins dating back to 1875, is on a path to adopt portfolio-wide digital twin technology following successes across its major fields. Dubbed the ConocoPhillips Global Digital Twin Program, it’s earned ConocoPhillips a 2023 CIO 100 Award in IT Excellence.
Oil and gas is a volatile industry rife with sudden and significant fluctuations in prices.
At the same time, the current regulatory environment makes it challenging to explore for new hydrocarbons, putting pressure on companies like ConocoPhillips to maximize extraction from existing assets.
“We’re constantly looking for ways we can improve efficiency and optimize the production of our assets,” says Nick Purday, the company’s IT director of emerging digital technology (EDT). “One of the things we’ve been doing over the last few years is to optimally staff our facilities, and, where possible, transfer staff from the facilities back to the office. This makes sense because it helps with safety, costs, and ultimately GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.”数字化转型网szhzxw.cn数字化转型网szhzxw.cn

CONOCOPHILLIPS
Shifting people away from production facilities to an office has required new tools. That, Purday says, is what led ConocoPhillips’ Norway unit to start investigating digital twins, which are virtual representations of physical assets. They help solve basic questions like, “Where is this piece of equipment?” and, “What’s the maintenance history of this asset?” The company also leverages digital twins to answer more complex and data-intensive questions such as, “What are the optimal production parameters to maximize the profitability of this facility?”数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
Still, seemingly trivial tasks such as finding a piece of equipment becomes a significant challenge at scale. Some of ConocoPhillips’ larger facilities have more than a million asset tags, but with a digital twin and handheld device, an operator can simply type in a tag number and receive walking directions to the equipment in question — a capability that helped the Norway business unit achieve 80% to 90% reductions for select maintenance and inspection tasks.
“That was the genesis,” Purday says. “How can we improve efficiency and put a digital footprint on the way we do our business? Digital twins are a foundational layer, and provide a platform to accelerate digitalization.”数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
Grand unified digital twin strategy
Every ConocoPhillips business unit understood how digital twin technology could help them, but each was heading in its own direction, looking at different vendors, Purday says. Historically, that’s been standard practice at ConocoPhillips: Individual business units have been empowered to select their preferred technology, which has led to a diverse yet expensive IT portfolio that’s complex to maintain.
CDIO Pragati Mathur decided to take a different tack with Global Production, ConocoPhillips’ Global Digital Twin Program, which would establish global standards supported by teams that helped business units deploy the technology. By funding the program centrally, Global Production would enable the rapid deployment of an expert team and remove any delays around budget cycles with the business units.
“Because digital twin is such a hot topic right now, every supplier we work with was trying to sell us their version of a twin,” Purday says. “That drove us towards the next step: Can we identify a solution that we can deploy globally and make a consistent, supportable, low-cost environment?”

CONOCOPHILLIPS
The Alaska business unit had already done an extensive evaluation of the technology.
EDT took that evaluation, shared it with the company, and had the various business units submit their requirements.
“We were very fortunate that of the 10 different solutions we looked at in partnership with our business units, we aligned on one that has scaled to a global deployment,” Purday says.
For her part, Mathur says EDT’s proposal to adopt a digital twin felt like a “no-brainer” because it would lay the foundation for even further digital transformation.数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
“My background is in aerospace and automotive,” Mathur says. “Every time you build a car or a plane, you have a virtual representation of everything, whether it’s a 2D or 3D design. And I equated that to a digital twin.”
She notes that ConocoPhillips segments its digital twins into three categories: visualization, monitoring, and simulation.数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
“With visualization digital twins, we’re providing a compelling interface into data and work processes. Monitoring that digital twins deliver real-time context. And simulation digital twins enable predictive behavior of our equipment and potentially whole facilities,” Mathur says. “Ultimately, digital twins help us accelerate digitization across our business and gain even greater insights and value from our assets.”
Growing the vision
The major challenge of the project was aligning the organization around a common platform that could then enable rapid deployment. To address that challenge, Mathur and her team decided to develop and fund a global program, align the organization around a common platform. And build a community that shares best practices and supports one another.
The team started by building a digital twin of the company’s Australia Pacific Liquified Natural Gas (APLNG) facility located on an island off Queensland. Australia, that cost $8.5 billion to construct. It has a long-term contract to supply natural gas to the state and export to Japan. And took the team a month to go from data gathering to a working minimum viable product (MVP). Within six months, the facility was actively using the digital twin to support operations.数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
The company attributes the speed of delivery to a combination of a global focused team in the business unit, a consulting group with decades of experience building digital twins, and a software vendor committed to the project — all delivering in a scalable cloud environment that enabled access from anywhere.
The team moved on to develop a digital twin for the company’s Alaska fields and is researching how to build digital twins for its unconventional fields in the US’s lower 48 states. Major projects and expansions are also planned in Canada, across Norway, Alaska, and at the APLNG.
To select a single software solution for digital twins.
ConocoPhillips partnered with Global Supply Chain to conduct a request for information/request for proposal (RFI/P) process. Multiple business units provided input on the selection criteria to ensure alignment around the preferred technology. Once the company selected its preferred technology, Mathur and her team developed a common data integration layer. The team built and deployed the digital twin technology in Microsoft Azure, which helped provide global access, performance, scalability, and lower cost than if it hosted in-house.
As far as community and best practices go, the Norway business unit pioneered the company’s use of digital twins and developed the technology for most of the company’s North Sea platforms. That team shared the business benefits of digital twins and held knowledge-transfer sessions with each group. The global team leveraged Microsoft Teams to support the global community, posting regular progress updates and hosting information sharing sessions across business units.
To date, ConocoPhillips says it’s been seeing up to a four-times ROI for its digital twins.
Though individual examples have had a significantly higher impact. Early successes have led to an explosion in demand as well.数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
“Whatever you think you’re going to do with your digital twin when you start the program is not where it’s going to be when you get there,” Purday says. “In one of our business units.They had 10 use cases they thought they could potentially use, and of those, they focused on three. Now they have a list of 100 use cases that could be positively impacted by using twin technology. Having access to a digital twin spurs creativity.”
Mathur says she’s now looking at how digital twins can be connected to other parts of the company for further digital transformation.数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
“A digital twin, by itself, is one thing. But digital twin connected to other data and systems becomes much more powerful,” she says. “That’s the goal we’re trying to achieve — not just to have digital twins. But to be able to connect other systems and technologies . So that a technician or field worker has access to all the relevant information on a portable device.”数字化转型网szhzxw.cn
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