BPX Energy Transforms Production Operations Industrial Automation
BPX Energy is BP’s US onshore oil and gas production business, part of its resilient and focused hydrocarbons portfolio, a key component of its strategy to become an integrated energy company and to be net zero by 2050 or sooner. bpx energy chose AWS as the strategic cloud platform of choice for Operational Technology stack (OT) for security, performance, and innovation agility. They have been operating their supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, Historian, and Remote Terminal Units (RTU) on AWS.
The Challenge
In the first quarter of 2021, bpx energy deployed the AWS Production Monitoring and Surveillance solution to further enhance business value through real-time intelligence. This post dives deep into the overall benefits to bpx energy.bpx energy identified an opportunity to consolidate data sources and democratize data access by increasing data granularity across the business. Previously, they used a data warehouse solution, which lacked several key features. For example, business operations teams require timely data to have visibility into how their assets are performing in near real-time, rather than waiting for a business report the next day. Business teams also require high granularity, high fidelity, and up-to-the-second data for machine learning solutions. The centralization of the systems and the simplification of access to those systems is really important from security and safety perspectives because it reduces safety risk through better governance.
The Solution
EOT brings data from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) assets to AWS in a structured way. Customers can extract insights from their OT data, increase efficiency, and reduce operational costs. During bpx energy implementation, we worked with partner solutions and teams to unlock data from proprietary applications and data silos. The cloud native solution integrated OT and IT for value-added analytical use cases. Data eventually lands in the Industrial Data Lake (IDL), shown on the right half of the architecture. The IDL implements a Lake House architecture on AWS, using an “inside-out” approach, where data in the data lake is ingested into purpose-built data stores for analytics. EoT deployed Twin Talk, the Operational Data Ops Software System at bpx energy. EOT’s TwinTalk extracts raw data tag values from the source SCADA system, enhances it with contextual meta data, and delivers it to AWS native services such as AWS IoT SiteWise and Amazon S3 via data pipelines in near real-time.
About BPX Energy
- BPX Energy is responsible for the U.S. onshore operations.
- 13,000 employees
- $30 billion in investments since 2016
- 7.5 billion barrels resource base on 5.7 million acres
Project Highlights
Overall, bpx energy sees a 45% reduction in IT and OT Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Additionally, for bpx energy, wellhead pressure anomaly detection at high frequencies is a priority. System pressure can tell the bpx energy team a lot about what is going on with a well, but substantive analysis is only useful at higher frequencies. The Production Monitoring and Surveillance solution enables bpx energy to solve these issues.
Learn More About Solutions & Architectures
Industrial Data Lake
An industrial data lake is a large-scale, centralized data repository specifically designed to store, process, and analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data originating from various industrial assets, such as machines, sensors, production lines, and control systems. By offering a highly scalable and flexible storage solution, industrial data lakes enable organizations to efficiently manage their operational data and unlock valuable insights that can drive cost savings and revenue growth.
Enterprise Data Historian
A cloud-based enterprise data historian is a specialized data storage and management system designed to collect, store, and analyze time-series data generated by industrial processes, equipment, and control systems, with a particular focus on historical sensor data. By leveraging cloud technology, these data historians provide a highly scalable, cost-effective, and secure solution for storing and processing large volumes of historical and real-time data. The primary objective of a cloud-based enterprise data historian is to help industrial companies make data-driven decisions and optimize their operations using historical sensor data.
Industrial Digital Twin
An industrial digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical asset, process, or system within an industrial setting. It serves as a single source of truth for asset metadata, asset relationships, and hierarchical structures, providing organizations with a comprehensive, up-to-date, and accurate view of their industrial operations. By utilizing real-time data, advanced analytics, and simulation capabilities, digital twins enable organizations to optimize their processes, enhance asset performance, and reduce costs.