Digital twins—virtual, data-driven representations of physical assets—are being deployed across enterprises to decrease downtime, improve safety, follow COVID protocols, and more.

The technology, which combines VR, AI, ML, and more, is especially poignant for oil and gas companies, which rely on complex, expensive, dangerous, dispersed physical assets. Digital twins can be deployed at all levels of the oil and gas supply chain:

• Fields

• Wells

• Pipelines

• Processing facilities

They can even be useful in drilling new wells and building new assets and helping operators, drilling contractors, and service providers more effectively plan and execute projects.

Data and insights from digital twins are applied to dynamically predict facility needs (e.g., maintenance based on time-to-failure models) and to prescribe remediation, mitigation, and proactive activities. Oil and gas companies using digital twin technologies are seeing improvements all around in operational safety, quality, delivery, and cost (SQDC) performance.

Digital Twins in Action

ADNOC uses continuous online monitoring, aided by machine learning analytics and digital twin models, so operators and maintenance personnel can identify impending machinery issues earlier, and shift from reactive to predictive maintenance.

BP has been using digital twins in its operations for years. APEX, BP’s simulation and surveillance system, creates a virtual copy of all BP’s production systems throughout the world. In 2018, BP Gulf of Mexico Petroleum Engineer Carlos Stewart said, "Engineering time has been the biggest payback—a system optimization could take 24-30 hours. In APEX, it takes 20 minutes.”

Eni is using digital twins to construct virtual versions of its wells in challenging operational conditions and simulate the effect of decisions in a safe environment. The company is also using digital twins to simulate walkthroughs of real facilities, operational playback of real field activity, and advanced safety drills training.

Equinor’s digital twin of the entire Johan Sverdrup field is helping optimize operations. Operators can view the asset on their tablets and phones to get an up-to-date overview of real-time operating conditions.

Shell is using digital twins to provide integration, visualization, and analytics capabilities to its global asset portfolio. According to Yuri Sebregts, CTO at Shell, “Digital twins drive efficiency by enabling remote operations, automation, and significantly improved collaboration. It supports our front-line operations to better leverage insights from big data, transforming ways of working to unlock value and increase resilience in the changing business environment.”

Digital twins are one major step oil and gas companies can take in their digital transformation toward becoming data-driven enterprises. It’s powerful when VR, AI, ML, and other advancing technologies become (con)joined at the hip.