But the industry must gain the courage in low oil prices to invest in the cost-saving technology, Siemens executive general manager David Pryke told ICN sister publication Energy News.

Siemens is taking its model – where it has helped the operators of Queensland’s CSG fields in the Bowen-Surat basin significantly reduce fly-in, fly-out service costs –offshore.

Pryke said the German company had completed a number of white paper studies for Australian oil and gas companies examining the next generation of offshore platforms, which could entail generating power onshore, running a cable out to the platform and running drives on electric motors.

This means much lower staffing levels and service demands.

Among the discussions Siemens is having with operators is whether it’s necessary for changing the technology of existing platforms, particularly when half-life refits are due.

“There are big capital constraints at the moment, so it’s unlikely that people would invest in that, but if you did manage to fit electric drives on platforms it would significantly reduce manning,” he said on the sidelines of LNG18 in Perth yesterday.

“They’re [operators] all running their numbers, so we’re constantly working with them to see what sort of solution would suit them.

“The message we’re getting is money is so tight at the moment that return on investment that oil and gas companies are looking for are in the range of 12-months to two years, and we’re talking about investment that has a longer payback period.

“It’s there ready to go. We’ve done the designs and white papers.”

Siemens is staking a lot on its “fundamental” belief that electrification is where industry is going to head, and that it will be the next step change, he said.

Expansion

While operators and some parts of the supply chain are cutting back, Siemens is expanding in Australia, where its footprint is now bigger than ever to be at industry’s doorstep as it seeks to keep operators’ investments running at capacity with “high levels of availability”, through a focus on automation, electrification and digitisation.

To this end, it recently opened up a branch in Perth, and one in Adelaide a year back as a mid-point between Queensland’s CSG fields and Western Australia’s busy offshore and onshore sectors.

“We’re moving much more towards predictive maintenance rather than routine or failure maintenance – monitoring the equipment 24/7, looking at predictions of what’s happening on the plant to mitigate significant service activities, or at least do the service in a planned way with the resources to do it in minimal time,” Pryke said.

“We see that we’re all in the same boat. So unless collectively, between companies like Siemens and our customers, we can cut down the cost of producing oil and gas, then new projects are going to get delayed or won’t get built.

“So, very much, our focus at the moment is working with customers in driving down the cost of production.”

CSG lessons

Siemens was able to do this with electrification of Queensland’s CSG fields using high pressure compression on all of the three megaprojects’ fields.

Traditionally, gas is gathered upstream in onshore fields through mechanical drives, either reciprocating gas engines or gas turbines, but they have high on maintenance demands.

A gas turbine usually needs to be shut down two to three times a year for major maintenance activities, which end up being a costly exercise considering the crew is often FIFO.

If electric drives are installed their reliability and availability means they can be operated with minimal maintenance, which increases availability and uptime, and reduces servicing.

Siemens is also working on increasing automation levels and sensing devices on all its plants, which includes not just gas facilities, but wind farms as well.

The data generated from this allows companies to predict what’s going to happen based on a fleet of equipment.