Page 27 - Impiantistica Industriale

This present paper is the second part of a wider to increase plant efficiency and align to
research, for which we published the first part in stringent environmental norms, in deve-
a previous Industrial Plant issue. Part I was entit- loping countries investments are focusing
led “Italian Oil & Gas contractors: how to restore on brownfield development. Upstream
competitiveness in a context of increasing market investments have returned to positive
complexity?” and was focused on understanding (+3÷5% in 2017 capex vs. previous year
the root causes of the deep changes of the O&G globally), with a tripling in new offshore
industry following the oil price collapse and the projects sanctioned so far this year com-
consequent level of competitiveness of Italian O&G pared with 2016; the number of active
players today . rigs has increased (+83% in September
2017 vs. September 2016 for US rigs and
+60% for Canadian rigs in the same pe-
The industry is facing a new equilibrium riod).
with new forces at work, that is going to b. The O&G industry has nevertheless
persist in the medium term entered a new era, where market fun-
damentals have changed: O&G play-
ers have indeed reacted to the crisis
implementing structural actions (op-
The second part of the research aims at defining erational efficiency and standardiza-
a clear agenda of actions for the O&G Italian play- tion; streamlined processes and digi-
ers in order to restore and sustain competitiveness talization; portfolio rationalization,
in the new context. Such agenda may be tailored ….) that have created a new equilib-
to the specific characteristics of each player but rium in the industry
should in all cases be structured around 4 priori- As a reaction to the 2014 drop in oil pri-
ty pillars that from our research appear to be the ces, OilCo’s have implemented structural
most relevant challenges and areas of change. The actions to improve their cost position.
four pillars are: exploring ways to ease access to fi- They have reduced headcount, rene-
nancing; developing a culture and tools to enhance gotiated with suppliers and developed
contract, claims and risk management within the new structural approaches to their core
company; investing in technology and digital en- operations. Indeed, they have developed
ablers; structuring a value proposition to support new approaches to exploration & deve-
local content requirements. lopment such as the “near field” explo-
ration, the “fast track development”, the
1. The Oil & Gas market has recently shown multi packaging approach or the data dri-
signals of improving conditions, and yet ven imaging aimed at cost reduction and
it has not gone back to the situation prior asset monetization, process streamlining
to the crisis. The industry is facing a new through lean and digital solutions aimed
equilibrium with new forces at work, that at reducing time-to-oil. Finally, they have
is going to persist in the medium term accelerated the standardization process,
a. In the last months we have witnessed also through the development of partner-
an improvement in few key indicators ships among different players.
that sustain O&G market trends. In Therefore, investments have recovered
downstream, while mature European and and yet the investors (the Oil Compa-
American market focus on investments nies) are different: they value innova-
tive solutions also developed through
partnership with suppliers involved at
early stages and they explore new fron-
tiers such as digital or renewables in
a search for cost reduction and risk di-
versification. The Oil Companies’ have
shaped a new equilibrium that presents
signs of both complexity and uncertain-
ty that need to be understood from the
suppliers point of view (both contractors
and service / component manufacturers).

2. The new market equilibrium calls for an
in-depth analysis of the forces at stake
in order to define and deploy adequate
initiatives needed to recover competitive-
ness

Impiantistica Italiana - Settembre-Ottobre 2017 25