Costs in the subsea industry has doubled over the past ten years, but the quality has not kept pace.
– Looking at our own cost base, we can see that costs have doubled over the past ten years. For a few specific subsea production systems, they have even tripled, says Anders Opedal, Senior Vice President Project Management & Control at Statoil.
Calls for heightened quality
The problem is that the subsea industry does not show an equivalent increase in quality for the same period.
– When you buy a more expensive car, you expect better quality. This is not necessarily the case in the subsea industry. Quality has not improved in line with the costs, says Opedal.
Consequently, he calls for heightened quality in deliveries to the company.
– It is, however, important to emphasise that it all starts with us. For example, we have to become far better at asking for more standardised solutions, says Opedal.
Down by 20-30%
The company has introduced several measures that collectively may save 20 to 30% on costs when producing the same amount of oil as today.
– Our targets are challenging, and what we have promised the market is a saving of $1.3 billion, says Opedal.
This involves standardisation as well as simplification in areas such as documentation.
– The number of hours we spend on documentation has increased by 300% over the past few years. It has been out of control, but now we have the opportunity to do something about it, says Opedal.
70% returned
One of the problems is that suppliers do not deliver documents in accordance with the requirements.
– Far too often we receive engineering documents, which form the very basis for commencement of any construction work, that are not of the quality we need. For one specific project, we had to return 70% of these documents due to inadequacy. Multiply this by all projects on the continental shelf, not only ours, and it becomes clear that billions of NOK are wasted on poor quality. Huge improvements are required in the industry to ensure that we get it right the first time, says Opedal.