One of the business benefits associated with the use of industry defined standards and interoperability is management of risks and costs for activities where oil and gas companies would otherwise need to bear the total risks and costs. Life-cycle management of the key technical and engineering-oriented information is an area where the entire oil and gas industry has a vested interest in collaboration for the mutual benefit of both owner/operators and suppliers through cost and risk reductions along with quality improvements.
ISO Technical Committee 184 has formed Working Group 6 in order to develop the official ISO Technical Specification (TS) for Oil and Gas Interoperability (OGI). The TS is not developing new standards, but documenting how to use a portfolio of existing standards (which will be incorporated by reference) to accomplish a well-defined purpose, which is defined by the scoping language. The scoping language establishes the use of a combination of OpenO&M and POSC Caesar Association (PCA) use cases addressing key aspects of system of systems interoperability. It also prescribes the use of industry-owned compliance test data sets and an industry-owned OGI Pilot to complete the scoping and proofing of the solution.
The OGI Pilot (which is being jointly managed by MIMOSA and POSC Caesar Association, in collaboration with Fiatech) was established in 2011 in order to provide a substantial proof for the combined methods, standards, specifications and data sets to be incorporated in the ISO OGI TS. Rather than being run as a demonstration, it is being run like a true project, with EPCs developing and version managing the compliance data sets on behalf of the industry. The TS will then be able to document what is proven to work correctly in the OGI Pilot. This approach insures the business value of the TS and provides a major level of risk management for owner/operators, EPC firms and participating solution suppliers, who wish to incorporate compliant Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) solutions in their own projects.
The OGI Pilot is also closely associated with the Joint MIMOSA-PCA Special Interest Groups for Operations and Maintenance and for IT Architecture. Subject matter experts interested in participating in the ISO OGI TS are encouraged to contact the ISO TC 184/WG 6 team and/or contact MIMOSA or PCA for more information.
