In this edition of The Boardroom, Hatem Nasr, Senior Advisor, Digital Oilfields and Technology Strategy for Kuwait Oil Company dispels some of the myths about the challenges associated with moving to a digital oilfield framework.

Over the past 4 years, Hatem has led the development of the largest digital oilfield projects in the world. These projects have been acknowledged in the industry as the state-of-the-art and set a new benchmark in digital oilfield technology. The projects' involved deployment on hundreds of wells, budget in the hundred of millions of dollars and involved hundred of engineers and scientists. The projects' scope covered the full range of digital oilfield systems that include: reservoir modeling, wellbore subsurface monitoring and control, well surface automation, real-time data acquisition, modeling and optimization, data integration, smart visualization, workflows automation collaboration center, analytics, and change management.

Has been involved in more than 14 Digital Oilfield projects around the world with major oil companies and national oil companies, including: KOC, Shell (Nigeria, Brunei, Venezuela, Gabon and Oman) Chevron, Saudi Aramco, ADCO, PDO and many others.

In the course of this interview, Hatem tocuhes on:

• Clearly defining the priorities of your company with regards the digital oilfields
• The Intangible ROI myth
• How to deal with the legacy environment
• How health and safety optimisation is a natural consequence of digital oilfield integration
• Cyber security: can the digital oilfield ever be bullet-proofed
• Where to begin on the journey to full integration

Tim Haðdar is the Editor In Chief at Oil & Gas IQ. Reach Him At Twitter Or OGIQ

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