Category Archives: Offshore

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Offshore Wind Farms in Japan - JD Supra (press release)

3/7/2017

SAN DONATO MILANESE -- Eni announces that has finalized a farm-in agreement with Total to acquire 50% participating interest of Block 11, offshore Cyprus.

The agreement, by which Total remains the Operator of the block, has been approved by the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus. With this transaction Eni further reinforces its own position in the Country, acquiring the right of exploring an area of 2,215 km2, nearby the super giant Zohr discovery in the Egyptian offshore.

The rights on Block 11 were assigned by the Republic of Cyprus to Total back in 2013 at the conclusion of the second international bid round held by the Country. The exploration well is expected to be drilled in the Block within 2017.

This agreement is part of Enis strategy aimed at increasing its own exploration portfolio in the strategic area of Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Eni has been present in Cyprus since 2013 through its subsidiary Eni Cyprus Ltd and holds exploration rights on Blocks 9, 3, 2 (Eni 80% operator, Kogas 20%) awarded in the second round. Eni has also been chosen, in the third competitive bid round, as selected bidder for Block 6 (Eni 50% operator,Total 50%) and Block 8 (Eni 100% operator).

Excerpt from:

Eni finalizes farm-in agreement with Total, acquiring interest offshore Cyprus - WorldOil (subscription)

The San Luis Obispo Tribune

SLO County supervisors send letter to feds opposing offshore oil development The San Luis Obispo Tribune The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors is sending a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke notifying him that the board opposes offshore oil and gas development. The supervisors voted 4-0 on Tuesday to send the letter. and more »

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SLO County supervisors send letter to feds opposing offshore oil development - The San Luis Obispo Tribune

Cairns analysis and integration of the dataset collected is continuing with initial results in line with expectations and as follows:

The SNE-5 well has been plugged and abandoned and the Stena DrillMAX drillship is moving location to commence operations shortly on the Vega-Regulus (VR-1) well, ~5 km to the west of the SNE-1 discovery.

VR-1 has two objectives; an Aptian exploration target and an appraisal objective in SNE field.

The well will target the Vega-Regulus exploration prospect in the Aptian Carbonates underlying SNE field, which has potential gross mean consolidated prospective resource of more than 100 MMbbl.

In addition, the well will further appraise SNE field targeting potential incremental resources. The results will help narrow the range of SNE field volumes and also allow the JV time to fully integrate the results of SNE-5 prior to moving to appraisal well SNE-6 to complete the planned interference test.

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Cairn releases well results of appraisal well, offshore Senegal - WorldOil (subscription)

Source: Offshore Energy Today - Gulf of Mexico

W&T Offshore, Inc. (NYSE:WTI)

W&T's growth in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico has been significant in recent years. Between 2009 and 2015, average deepwater production has grown nearly 700% and SEC proved reserves are up over 850%. Gross Acres have increased ~200% from 2009 to 2015. We define a deepwater property as one in over 500 feet of water.

From the company [website]

To access the WTI 4Q'16 conference call transcript, please [click here]

Q4 2016 Financial Snapshot (Nine Consecutive Quarters).

Total revenues

in $ million

Total production per day

In kBoe/d

Total production for the Q

in MMBoe

Average price oil eq.

$/Boe

Lease Operating Expenses ("LOE")

in $ million

Net income/loss

in $ million

45.93

G&A

in million

Operating loss/gain

in $ million

Cash and cash equivalent

in $ million

Total debt (long-term + current portion)

in $ million

Net Debt estimated

in $ million

EPS in $/s

(Excluding special item/with) in $/s

0.12

0.06

0.48

(0.24)

(1.58)

(0.47)

(2.49)

(0.95)

(0.68)

(0.44)

(6.29)

(0.82)

(3.43)

(0.54)

(3.36)

(0.96)

(0.44)

(0.54)

Shares outstanding

in million

Adjusted EBITDA (excluding special item)

in $ million

69.6

60%

52.48

49%

40.81

41%

16.55

21%

36.53

35%

59.20

79.67

53%

48.35

38%

Reserves:

The Company's year-end 2016 SEC proved reserves were 74.0 million Boe.

Liquidity:

At December 31, 2016, our total liquidity was $219.7 million consisting of cash balances of $70.2 million and $149.5 million of availability under our $150 million revolving bank credit facility.

Capital expenditures for 2017:

Are currently estimated at $125 million. Plug and abandonment activities for 2017 are currently estimated to total $78.3 million and are expected to be funded with cash on hand and cash flow from operating activities.

Commentary

W&T Offshore released its fourth quarter 2016 results on February 27, 2017. Revenues for Q4'16 were $115.21 million, up 7.5% quarter over quarter. The net Profit was $16.5 million or $0.12 per share.

Comparative data for the last nine Quarters (click graph to enlarge).

M. Tracy Krohn, CEO, said:

We are as enthusiastic as ever about the opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and believe we are in a good position to take advantage of this prolific basin. We are entering 2017 with a lower cost structure and a capital program of profitable projects that should allow us to build cash. We expect to benefit from improved seismic technologies, lower operating costs and less competition in the Gulf. Assuming commodity prices continue to remain steady, our 2017 capital plan allocates approximately $125 million to projects that we believe provide a low-risk and high return in producing fields. These projects should yield moderate production growth in 2017 over 2016.

Three important topics:

1 - Production decline in the GOM well in the early years is much shallower than the unconventional shale plays. M. Krohn said in the conference call:

This shallow decline curve of many of our projects contributed to our ability to maintain steady production on a small capital program. It's one of the things we've always liked about the Gulf of Mexico and which obviously contributed to our value.

The Permian well has a depletion of nearly 70% the first year, while WTI well depletion is only 10% for the first year and 20% for the 5.5 years.

2 - According to SEC rules, the assumed oil price in this year's reserve report is set at $39.25 per barrel for the life of all reserves.

The company believes that the reserves are significantly under-booked on initial production due to the strict SEC guidelines, and therefore, WTI assumed asset value can be considerably understated and not indicative of our true underlying real asset value.

3 - The BOEM withdrew certain orders related to sole liability properties.

4 - Production in 2017 will be 4% above 2016 or approximately 16 MMBOE.

Conclusion:

W&T has improved significantly its balance sheet due to better oil prices. The recent positive momentum of the oil prices should help the stock in 2017 as well, and bring additional revenues that are indispensable for the survival of the business, as it is.

Oil prices are really the name of the game here, and it is still hard to see how they can really trade above $60 per barrel anytime soon with the US Shale booming again? Risk of a downside back to $45 per barrel cannot be brushed away.

Yet, one positive about WTI is that many of the company fields have reservoirs with multiple stacked pays, such as the Mahogany, UM Bank 9-10, Virgo and other stacked pay fields.

On January 6, 2017, I commented about the Ship Shoal 359 A-18 well has logged 149 feet of net oil pay in five zones and extended the size and depth of the Mahogany field.

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W&T Offshore - A Complete Review Of Q4 2016 Results - Seeking Alpha

Over the weekend, the Islamic Republic ofIran test-fired two ballistic missiles into the Gulf of Oman, with one sinking a floating barge approximately 155 miles away, according toFox News.

The first missile was fired on Saturday, but missed the target. A day later, a secondattempt was made successfully.

The two short-range ballistic missiles originatedfrom Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bases in Bandar-e-Jask, Iran.

"It's a concern based on the range and that one of the missiles worked," said a defense official.

Two years ago, Iran held a similar exercisedestroying a large barge designed to look like an American aircraft carrier.

In February,Ali Akbar Velayati, advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made it clear that Iran has no plans of slowing down its nuclear program. The aide to Iran's supreme leader ripped an "inexperienced" President Donald Trump and assured the world that his country would continue ballistic missile testing.

"This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran," Velayati said. "Iran is the strongest power in the region and has a lot of political, economic and military power ... America should be careful about making empty threats to Iran.

"Iran will continue to test its capabilities in ballistic missiles and Iran will not ask any country for permission in defending itself," he said.

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Iran Launches Two Ballistic Missiles, Sinking an Offshore Barge 150 Miles Away - Townhall

Nabawi Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia: moving back to Ireland after 17 years in the country. Photograph: iStock

I am Irish citizen who has worked in Saudi Arabia for the last 17 years. I will return to live in Ireland on December 1st.

I have offshore bank accounts but will close these and send funds to Ireland before I leave Saudi. I also have two overseas properties (in Spain and Italy) which I rent out for maximum of three weeks a year.

Am I liable to the Irish Revenue for rental income while I was outside Ireland? Or will I only be liable for any rental income when I return to Ireland?

I have a bank account in Spain where rental funds are sent. It is my plan to re-enter the Irish workforce part-time in January 2018.

Ms CE, Saudi Arabia

Clearly, news that the Irish Revenue is clamping down on offshore assets held by Irish taxpayers is causing a bit of a stir. Hardly surprising, I guess, when as many as 500,000 letters are being sent to taxpayers on the subject.

The key thing, especially for people in your position, is that Revenues target is assets or income earned and held offshore by people who are tax resident in Ireland ie, they are liable to tax here.

As someone who has been out of the State for 17 years, you will not have been liable to Irish tax at all. Your liability would be to the local Saudi authorities.

Of course, up to now there has been no tax on personal income in the kingdom, although that is changing as the country comes to terms with declining revenue from oil. I gather a nominal annual charge is being introduced this year up to roughly 25 a month although this will scale up to 200 per person a month by 2020.

By European standards these rates may sound laughably low but it is a major step for the Saudis where up to a third of the workforce is expatriate and there is a battle to find a balance between the need to boost exchequer funds and the importance of remaining attractive for prospective expatriate employees.

Anyway, the point is that for the past 17 years, any accounts and/or property you own and any rental income from it has been a matter for the Saudis and of no relevance to the Irish Revenue.

So you have nothing to fear on your return home. It is only once you are back in Ireland that you will become liable to Irish Revenue.

The concern for Revenue, in relation to offshore bank accounts, is where the money in them came from and what income is delivers by way of interest. On property, again they want to be reassured that it was bought with money that was properly taxed and they also want to know about rental income.

In your case, the accounts are funded with money earned in your job in Saudi Arabia which is absolutely valid and not liable to Irish tax. If you keep these accounts open following your return to Ireland, you will need to declare any interest income in an annual tax return.

It is important to note that there is nothing preventing an Irish taxpayer having an offshore bank account as long as it contains money that has already been taxed and, if necessary, declared to Irish Revenue.

As youre closing the Saudi account, thats a moot point but it may be an issue for the account in Spain that receives the rental income on your holiday/investment properties or at least the interest those funds earn. But, importantly, there is no retrospective liability. You will only be liable to income earned after your return to Ireland.

The same is true of your properties in Spain and Italy you will liable to tax on any income earned on them (after allowing for expenses) only from the date you return to Ireland. Any income they yield up to December 1st is of no relevance to Irish Revenue.

Finally, if you receive any further income from Saudi Arabia following your return to Ireland such as a pension it would need to be declared.

Send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dcoyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice.

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Offshore assets and working in Saudi Arabia - Irish Times

Hawaii is one of the most diverse melting pots in the U.S., but as the popular podcast Offshore reveals, the island state also deals with the same cultural issues as the mainland.

Offshore, from Honolulu Civil Beat and PRX, launched its first season last year, promising "stories from Hawaii" that explore the state's unique cultural dynamic. The first season's 10 episodes delved into the killings of two native Hawaiiansone in 1932 by a Navy officer and another in 2011 committed by a federal agent.

Though almost 80 years apart, the killings reflect the racial and ethnic problems that still run rampant through Hawaii today.

"Talking about race is always a sensitive and challenging thing to do," Offshore host and Civil Beat reporter Jessica Terrell said. "And as were were reporting it, we went through another period of police shootings really being an everyday news story."

Terrell, 33, recently talked with us about the challenges of podcasting as a print reporter and the exciting second season coming Thursday, which she calls "one of the most controversial issues Hawaii has faced in recent memory."

Previous coverage: Offshore podcast showcases a Hawaii few tourists get to see

Offshore/Honolulu Civil Beat

What came first, the story for Season one or the podcast?

The podcast idea came about first. We were looking at a bunch of different local stories that we thought had some national relevance and broader societal issues we could address. Civil Beat had actually covered this story when it was happening (in 2011), so a lot of people in the newsroom were familiar with it. It was a good way to launch the podcast series. It had immediacy and relevance and broader issues that felt timely.

What are some of the first steps you took to report the story for the podcast?

Well, we had to learn how to record audio (laughs). You'll probably notice this in other podcasts, the difference in audio quality at the beginning and at the end. I can't just pull out my iPhone and assume I got the audio I wanted.

And it feels totally different to conduct an interview with giant headphones and a microphone. I had to think like "if you haven't recorded audio the interview doesn't exist."

Another challenge was learning how to craft the story and figuring out who to write it in a different way. We thought we were going to take 10 weeks and we worked on it up until the ultimate deadline.

Do you think telling this story as a longform piece would have had as great of an impact?

I think it would've been a totally different story. I think it would've been hard to get people to stick with it for that long. It would've been a small book.

The podcast let people get more engrossed with it, let people connect with the people involved, you're hearing their voices.

There's an exploding trend of podcasts now, I don't know what it'll be like in a few years. People are so into TV shows, you get more time with the characters. Hopefully podcasts will pick up on that.

Were there aspects to telling this story that were harder than expected?

People in Hawaii seem to be a lot more comfortable talking about race. But as a white woman it does feel a little strange to ask someone about their ethnicity.

When you cover a controversial issue, you're a feeling human being, so you're going to feel a lot of concern for the people in the story. Working on a story for that long, you feel a little emotional towards the end.

I think the hardest part was just coming to an understanding of just how much work goes into serialized longform narrative journalism in audio form. We were on crunch time for a long time, but it was fun and exciting.

As reporters we get to do such cool stuff, it's like this crazy backstage pass to life and other people's lives.

Anything you can reveal on season 2?

Well, it's not a crime story. It's about the clash over the construction of a $1.4 billion telescope atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island (the Thirty Meter Telescope). Two years ago, Jason Momoa protested with "We Are Mauna Kea." (His social media posts) went viral.

So we started reporting on the science against culture. Many Hawaiians believe Mauna Kea is the realm of the gods, a place of creation.

But it's also a perfect place for astronomy. Name any discovery in astronomy, and the telescopes (already on the mountain) have been a part of it.

We're taking the story of this conflict and using it as a way to spin out to much broader issuesthe idea of these growing protest movements of indigenous people coming together and making a stand for the planet, and scientists struggling for science and not understanding the ties to the cultures.

(We are) hoping to address the question, is science political? Should it be political? But we are telling these big stories through personal narratives.

I hiked to the farthest part of Mauna Kea for a solstice. It was a privilege that I got to do it, and I'm bringing listeners there with me in the second season.

Contact Chelsea Tatham at ctatham@tampabay.com. Follow @chelseatatham.

Plug in

Offshore

Season one of Offshore, A Killing in Waikiki, is available to stream on iTunes, Stitcher and offshorepodcast.com.

The second season premieres Thursday, March 9.

See more here:

'Offshore' podcast reporter talks exciting Season 2, connecting listeners to Hawaiian culture - Tampabay.com (blog)

His longest non-stop race took more than 48 days, but now Franck Cammas will cross the line in about 22 minutes.

The 44-year-old French skippers route to the Americas Cup is unconventional, but having lapped the planet several times, including once in a giant trimaran, his experience is second to none.

Cammas is from the French school of offshore adventurers, and with a string of big wins and record-breaking ocean passages, he has become one of its most accomplished pupils.

One of his biggest feats was to set a record for sailing around the world, winning the Jules Verne Trophy on the 103ft trimaran Groupama 3 in 48 days 7 hours 44 minutes in 2010, shaving more than two days off the previous mark.

His other globe-spanning victory was as winning skipper of the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race in the monohull Volvo Open 70 Groupama.

Cammas, from Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, scored his first major victory in the Solitaire du Figaro single-handed race around the French coast in 1997 at the age of 24.

The following year he came third in the prestigious Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race from Brittany to Guadeloupe in a new 60ft trimaran called Groupama.

In 2001, Cammas clinched another transatlantic classic, the two-handed Transat Jacques Vabres, from Le Havre in France to Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. He added further wins in 2003, and then in 2007 on Groupama 2.

Now he wanted the big one. The Jules Verne Trophy. But records dont come easy.

Cammas first bid in 2008 ended in disaster when Groupama 3 capsized off New Zealand. A second attempt was scuppered by damage off South Africa the following year. Undeterred, it was third time lucky, though the record now stands at just over 40 days.

Turning to unfinished business, Cammas had Groupama 3 reconfigured for solo sailing and won the Route du Rhum later in 2010 in nine days, 14 hours.

Following his Volvo triumph, Cammas focused more on domestic events. He won the Tour de France a la Voile, and twice won the International C Class catamaran championship.

The Americas Cups evolution towards multihulls had also grabbed his attention.

Cammas had been involved before, as a coach for BMW Oracle Racing when they raced in a 90ft trimaran in 2010. And he coached Italys Luna Rossa for the 2013 Cup in San Francisco.

So in 2013, Cammas helped launch Groupama Team France to target the 35th Americas Cup.

However, his dream at least as a sailor was almost ended in 2015 when his foot was nearly sliced off by the rudder after he fell from his foiling GC32 catamaran off Brittany.

It kept him out of the water for five months, and cost him a shot at the French Olympic team in the Nacra 17 catamaran for Rio 2016.

But Cammas, a maths scholar, spent the time with Groupama Team Frances designers and engineers to arm himself with yet more technical knowledge of foiling cats.

The classically trained pianist is well placed to get a perfect tune out of his ACC boat in Bermuda.

- Photos above courtesy of Ricardo Pinto

#AmericasCup

Category: All, Sports

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Franck Cammas Sails From Offshore To Inshore - Bernews

Systems and Services that Optimize Organizational Results

By Jennifer Delony

The industrial internet of things is transforming the offshore oil and gas sector. One estimate claims that a typical offshore oil platform generates up to 2 terra bytes of data per day thats the equivalent of 1 million digital camera images.

Cisco, in its report A New Reality for Oil and Gas, said that, if oil and gas companies properly leverage the data they produce, they can capture $600 billion of value at stake through 2025. For a $50 billion oil and gas firm, that translates to an 11 percent bottom-line improvement, the report said.

That doesnt mean that offshore companies are all jumping on the big data bandwagon instead, theyre carefully evaluating the possibilities to understand what data, and the analysis of data, can do for their operations.

To get a glimpse into where the offshore sector is headed in terms of data and its applications, and what systems and services it is leveraging to get there, take a look at BP.

At the end of last year, BP announced it is working with GE on the deployment of a new integrated system called Plant Operations Advisor (POA). BP said that it started using POA to manage the performance of one platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and given success there, the company will deploy it to other BP facilities around the world this year.

According to BP, POA will help prevent unplanned downtime and improve facility reliability by helping engineering teams respond quickly to issues as they occur in real time.

The POA tool was built on GEs Predix operating system a software platform that is used to collect and analyze data from industrial machines. This cloud-based platform-as-a-service works at industrial scale for asset performance management (APM) by connecting machines, data and workers.

APM lies at the heart of this next-level digital system. It puts enterprise asset management software together with real-time information from production and data analysis and advanced analytics. In a nutshell, it allows companies to see their assets, make decisions to optimize those assets and optimize organizational results.

ARC Advisory Group, in a report on how APM overcomes challenges in oil and gas, said that currently too much time is dedicated to collecting, aggregating and analyzing available data, rather than converting it to meaningful business decisions. That is due to the application of data to disparate systems with no integration. APM alleviates these issues.

These solutions, based largely on todays increased connectivity, use of open standards, and increasingly more capable platforms for predictive and prescriptive analytics, enable oil and gas companies to move from largely re-active, conventional approaches for managing their critical production and automation assets to todays far more effective proactive and predictive approaches, the report said.

According to BP, the POA system rapidly integrates operational data from producing oil and gas facilities to deliver notifications and analytical reports to engineers so they can identify operational performance issues before they become significant. The system provides simplified access to a variety of live data feeds and includes visualization capabilities including a real-time facility threat display. It also incorporates an extensive case management capability to support learnings from prior operational issues.

GE plans to make this technology available to the entire oil and gas industry.

More Options

Offshore companies have also turned to OSI Softs PI System for collecting, analyzing and visualizing data for real-time management. The PI system allows a company to integrate whatever data they want, and create a customized display of that data.

According to Kevin Walsh, industry principal T&D, for OSI Soft, one of the strengths of PI is that it allows platform managers to perform predictive analytics.

He said that PI has different modules that allow for the input of mini-analytic calculations based on certain attributes or time frames to create an operational band. If operations go outside of that band for example, plus or minus 1 percent for more than three minutes in a row, PI notifies managers that an alarm-level event is immanent. This feature gives managers a visual on possible problems before they happen a huge advancement in data functionality.

Srikanta Mishra, Ph.D., Institute Fellow and chief scientist for energy at nonprofit Battelle, says his organization offers analytics to the oil and gas sector under its Elucidata service.

Offshore companies have been slow to engage with their data at the level offered by Battelle, but Mishra says they are interested.

According to Mishra, the Elucidata service is an umbrella for a process that Battelle provides to integrate data from multiple sources.

The task that Battelle undertakes is intended to bring all of this data into one easy-to-use platform that can then be utilized for knowledge and discovery, he said. The idea here is to learn from the data and then use that to make decisions.

Under the knowledge discovery component of Elucidata, Battelle offers clients a combination of advanced statistical capabilities and in-house subject matter expertise.

In addition, Mishra said that Battelle captures information from the knowledge discovery component in customized software solutions and user interfaces that makes it easy for managers and decision makers and, on the platform, operators, to make decisions that are based on what has happened in the past, and from which robust insights can be derived.

In the offshore environment you might say that there are two discriminating factors one is the situation with respect to automation; a very high level of automation is becoming more and more commonplace, Mishra said. The second is the data that we get from offshore environments is really big data in the sense that we get lots of data we get very frequently sampled data so the challenge is how do you process this information in real time, as opposed to doing it offline, and make decisions with respect to the behavior of your system in the near future?

He said that, for example, a company might monitor pressure and temperatures and flow rates, and seek to understand, given the kind of conditions, what the pressure is going to be in the next hour, the next 24 hours, and whether its going to trigger some danger threshold that needs to be mitigated.

In terms of predictive maintenance, Mishra said, the organization can look at the past history of failures and near failures and correlate them with other indicators of the system, with respect to pressure or temperature, for example. With that information, its possible to establish a trigger system, so that if the system crosses X value of pressure and Y value of temperature, certain equipment is likely to undergo failure because it has failed in the past under these kinds of conditions.

The challenges are really in how do you take this massive amount of data and then process them in a real-time or near real-time environment, he said. And after you go through the knowledge discovery part, having gone through the data acquisition and management part, how do you capture that learning, and those insights, into some sort of a decision support interface that can be used by the operator on the platform or somebody who is sitting in a control room in onshore office?

Whats Next?

ABS Groups Matt Mowrer, director of applied technology and data analytics, says that there are many applications for business analytics coming in the near future.

Mowrer said that the next step beyond predictive analytics is prescriptive analytics.

I really see that working on the risk side, where Im not just providing alarms to operators about anomalous conditions based on multiple data feeds, but actually giving them the recommended action to minimize the time it takes them to make the decision and also hopefully eliminate bad decisions, he said.

Also down the road, Mowrer sees the possibilities for the development of augmented reality for operations and maintenance workers, where they are in the physical environment and they have access to a virtual environment.

He said that, from a wearable technology perspective, such as Google glass, operations and maintenance workers can access maintenance procedures, and have an interface where they interact with equipment to minimize time spent troubleshooting or identifying tools and procedures.

Youre seeing these things on the consumer side, and I think theres some natural industrial applications for them, he said.

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Advancing Data Functionality for Offshore - #OILMANNEWS (blog)