The first day of the EGYPS Technical Conference had a flow of discussions aimed at giving insight into the conference’s theme “Delivering Energy Today and Shaping the Future Energy Agenda”. Each technical presentation aimed at providing new and innovative solutions under the umbrella of the conference’s theme.
The technical session was co-chaired by Wael Korosh, Drilling and Completions Technical Advisor, Halliburton and Ahmed Atif, EUG Project Manager, Schlumberger. The technical session entitled “Smart and Digital Solutions” discussed various essential points that would aim to revolutionise the technical section of the oil and gas industry. For over a couple of decades, smart solutions have been used in the petroleum business to achieve a better understanding of petroleum production processes and, as a result, operational efficiency. With that, the technical session included three imperative and interesting presentations.
The first presentation by Islam Zaki Ibrahim, Instruments and Control Maintenance Section Head, Egyptian Projects Operation and Maintenance (EPROM), Egypt, addressed “Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) data integration while mitigating cybersecurity risks”.
Ibrahim insisted on the importance of cybersecurity by saying that “These cybersecurity attacks are usually aimed at accessing, changing or destroying sensitive information such as extorting money from users or interrupting normal business processes. Implementing effective cybersecurity measures is particularly challenging today because there are more devices than people, and attackers are becoming more innovative.”
He concluded his presentation by saying that the IIoT has many advantageous features in the oil and gas industrial sector. These included, but were not limited to, ease of deployment, scalability, quick decision-making processes and big data compilation monitoring and analysis.
The second presentation addressed “Transforming Digital Twins Through Innovation”. The speaker was Emad Gebesy, Senior Solution Consultant MENA at Aspentech in Qatar.
Gebesy started off by introducing operational excellence with performance engineering through case studies.
Additionally, Gebesy noted that offline digital twins have some benefits such as identifying targets to achieve maximum energy recovery, reducing energy consumption through heat integration, optimising the performance of new and existing heat exchanger networks and improving sustainability and reduction in the overall carbon footprint.
He concluded by saying that “The end-user in the offline digital twins may have no offline digital experience or technical experience, such as technicians or non-engineers, however, for the online digital twins requires technical experience and a trained background as it needs visualisation.”
Ben Oudman, Director and Regional Manager, DNV GL, CEMEIA concluded the session with a presentation on “Creating trust and value from digital twins”.
He introduced his idea about digital twins by providing his interpretation of a digital twin saying that, “a digital twin is a virtual representation of a system or asset that calculates system states and makes system information available, through integrated models and data with the purpose of providing decision support over its lifecycle.”
