Collaborative Operating Environments in the Offshore Petroleum Sector: Solutions for Added Value in B2B Relationships

Abstract

Collaborative operating environments (COE) are a new concept for the offshore petroleum sector and have been introduced as a part of integrated operations as a solution to mitigate risks and to capitalize on value creating potentials. To some extent, military, aviation, and aerospace industries have used COE with encouraging success, yet still left with some notable challenges concerning modern developments in social, economical, technological, and political terms. To reflect on the developments in the Norwegian petroleum sector, the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF) published a report in 2007 on the value potential for integrated operations, which concluded that a value of as much as 350 billion NOK could be realized by the offshore petroleum sector in Norway. However, realizing this value potential does not solely rely on pure technological innovations, but various other parameters that contribute to boost performance. This particularly involves relations and interactions between stakeholders of producing assets in COE—operational centers used in integrated operations. In a project conducted recently within the offshore petroleum sector, it was revealed that, regarding today’s implementation status of COE, there exist a number of performance gaps and challenges, particularly in the business relationships between operators and service companies. The findings from this project have been elaborated in another paper. As a continuing action, this paper tries to propose improvement solutions to capitalize on these performance gaps, create the right win–win scenario for all stakeholders, and present factors affecting performance in business-to-business (B2B) relationships.