OpeOluwani Akintayo
with agency report
24 January 2018, Sweetcrude, Lagos — Major oil companies are meeting today to expand their list of standardised kit to 40 from the initial four items at the start of their collaboration in 2016.
The move according to Bloomberg, is to widen a two-year effort to standardise the kit for pumping oil and gas to save costs.
The initiative includes big oils like Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Total SA, BP, Saudi Arabian Oil Co., Statoil ASA, Repsol SA, and Chevron Corp.
Initially, the project included giant valves, electrical transformers, and two pieces of submerged oil well equipment.
However, the companies believe they can reach a technical consensus with their suppliers on a new list including equipment from across the entire industry.
The closed-door meeting holds at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Standardisation could save the oil and gas industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year,” Bob Dudley, the chief executive officer of BP Plc, said in an interview in Davos.
According to Dudley, BP plans spendings on the assumption that oil will stay in a $55 to $60 range.
By the end of this decade, the company aims to have driven project costs as low as $40 a barrel, he said.
Due to slide in prices of oil which started in 2014, the industry has already achieved significant savings by cutting spending on big projects.
BP cut the price tag for the second phase of its Mad Dog field in the Gulf of Mexico to $9 billion in 2016, 60 percent lower than the design three years earlier.
Statoil also reduced the budget for the Johan Castberg oil project offshore Norway to about 49 billion kroner ($6 billion) from an initial forecast of more than 100 billion kroner.
