Jennifer Pallanich, senior technology editor, Hart Energy: I'm Jennifer Pallanich, the senior technology editor with Tech Trends here at CERA Week by S&P Global with ABB’s Johan de Villiers, to discuss how autonomous operations can help reduce offshore emissions.

Johan de Villiers, senior vice president global and strategic accounts, ABB: So when it comes to the offshore sector, 80% of emissions come from power to supply the operations. None of this can operate without advanced automation, but taking that next level by adding digital technology to it, adding the telecommunication interface to shore, adding the cybersecurity and the remote operations center, then makes it possible for people to operate from shore to understand what maintenance needs there are, how to operate the plant, and then stretch the time periods between interventions when you really need to bring people to the facility.

You need the technology, but you need the main expertise. You need people that can really understand customers’ specific operating environment, the specific requirements that they've got, these specific priorities, and then deploy this technology and make things better, solve a problem, reduce the emissions, increase the efficiency. And we find on average between fixed and floating platforms—you could save 320,000 tons of CO2 per facility if you deploy this at an early phase, at the design inception phase.

JP: And that's Hart Energy Live’s Tech Trends with me, Jennifer Pallanich. Every Tuesday, we'll have a new episode drilling into the tech that fuels the oil patch at hartenergy.com/EP.

Offshore