In the Petroleum industry, Integrated operations (IO) refers to new work processes and ways of performing oil and gas exploration and production, which has been facilitated by new information and communication technology. Multi-discipline collaboration in plant operation is one example. IO has in a sense also taken the form of a movement for renewal of the oil and gas industry. In short IO is collaboration with production in focus.

In the process industry in general, the term is used to describe the increased cooperation, independent of location, between operators, maintenance personnel, electricians, production management as well as business management and suppliers to provide a more streamlined plant operation. By deploying IO, the petroleum industry draws on lessons from the process industry. This can be seen in a larger focus on the whole production chain and management ideas imported from the production and process industry.

A prominent idea in this regard is real-time optimisation of the whole value chain, from long term management of the oil reservoir, through capacity allocations in pipe networks and calculations of the net present value of the produced oil. Reviews of the application of Integrated Operations can be found in papers presented in the by-annual society of petroleum engineers Intelligent Energy conferences. A focus on the whole production chain is also seen in debates about how to organize people in an IO organisation, with frequent calls for breaking down the Information silos in the oil companies.

A large oil company is typically organized in functional silos corresponding to disciplines such as drilling, production and reservoir management. This is regarded as inefficient by the IO movement, pointing out that the activities in any well or field by any of the silos will involve or affect all of the others. While some companies focus on their inhouse management structure, others also emphasise the integration and coordination of outside suppliers and collaborators in offshore-operations. For instance, it is pointed out that the oil and gas industry is lagging behind other industries in terms of Operational intelligence.

Ideas and theories that IO management and work processes build on will be familiar from operations research, knowledge management and continual improvement as well as information systems and business transformation. This is perhaps most evident in the repeated referral to “people, process and technology”in IO discussions. As bullet-points this mirror many of the aforementioned fields.

Common to most companies is that IO leads to cost savings as fewer people are stationed offshore and an increased efficiency. Lower costs, more efficient reservoir management and fewer mistakes during well drilling will in turn raise profits and make more oil fields economically viable. IO comes at a time when the oil industry is faced with more “brown fields”, also referred to as “tail production”, where the cost of extracting the oil will be higher than its market value, unless major improvements in technology and work processes are made. It has been estimated that deployment of IO could produce 300 billion NOK of added value to the Norwegian continental shelf alone. On a longer time-scale, working onshore control and monitoring of the oil production may become a necessity as new fields at deeper waters are based purely on unmanned sub-sea facilities.