Oil and gas (O&G) is a capital-intensive industry, and while carbon emissions from employee travel may not be the biggest issue the industry is facing, reducing travel can lead to significant efficiency gains. Digital twins are helping (O&G) companies increase returns on invested capital by reducing the need for stakeholder travel to supervise upstream, transmission, and distribution projects.

Get free access to this case study

The task

Consider a typical project: an O&G company is deploying new equipment at a project site that experiences harsh extremes of temperature, both hot and cold. There appear to be just two options.

A. Optimize equipment placement in complex sites.

B. Strategize 4D integration of new equipment in sites.

Either way, the project involves millions of dollars in capital expenditure and hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs. Team members are scattered across the USA and the UK — the travel generates many metric tons of carbon. Until now, projects such as this involve substantial make-ready work. Existing site documentation will be in a variety of incompatible formats. On-site conditions have often diverged from as-built documentation on file. There may be no alternative but to create a new CAD model of the facility to visualize the effects of each of the options. This adds to cost and delays as skilled CAD operators are in short supply.

How Prevu3D changes the game

Using Prevu3D in the pre-design phase allows project team engineers to quickly assess the feasibility of options. With minimal training, stakeholders can use Prevu3D’s user-friendly interface to create, edit, and share 3D environments, streamlining the decision-making process and improving project efficiency. The software also allows for remote collaboration contributing to reducing the project’s carbon emissions. To handle the complexity of O&G facility scanning and modeling; Prevu3D software optimizes crucial steps:

1. Select a scanning resource that is capable of accurately capturing the facility’s details. Prevu3D is compatible with a wide variety of scanning technologies, allowing the team to choose the best option for their needs.

2. Load the point cloud dataset into Prevu3D using its advanced data management system. While the files may be large, the upload process is designed to be efficient and user-friendly.

3. Import CAD models of the units into Prevu3D and use its Reality Modeling toolset to generate multiple layouts. Conducting constructability analysis is made easy with Prevu3D’s advanced features and tools.

Results

Steps two and three required just three days.

Because Prevu3D is an interactive tool, it was easy for the project engineer to quickly create multiple scenarios for the project. By having iterations done in just a few hours, it was possible for the various stakeholders to validate the best path forward.
The constructability analysis supported by Prevu3D showed that Option A was not viable and revealed a third possibility, Option C. That is, to house the two new units in existing outside infrastructure within the facility. Compared to construction, Option C would save US $2.9 million in CapEx and 14 weeks of schedule.
Prevu3D’s simple but powerful collaboration tools enabled ‌UK- and US-based engineers to collaborate to achieve these results with much less travel. Estimated savings in travel and living expenses and employee time were US $277,900.
Less travel would enable the team to prevent 13.4 metric tons of carbon emissions.
These savings will add up when applied to the oil and gas industry’s CapEx spending. S&P Global estimates annual CapEx for upstream, transmission and distribution alone will be over $4.5 T per year for the next 7 years.