This years conference is over and the videos from the sessions in IO12 are now availible at the IO12 conference web!

Our next year IO13 Science and Practice Conference is scheduled for 24-25 September 2013!

We congratulate Richard W. Rwechungura who on Tuesday 11th Dec 2012, successfully defended his PhD!

Rwechungura's supervisors during his research period were Prof. Jon Kleppe, NTNU IPT and Prof. Bjarne Foss, NTNU IKT. The Committee included Prof Mary Wheeler- University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Nan Cheng - Statoil and Prof. Ole Torsater.

The abstract of the PhD thesis is avalible for download: Fast Reservoir Characterization and Development of a Field Case Study with Real Production and 4D Seismic Data.

The Evaluation Committe from left : Prof. Jon Kleppe, Prof. Ole Torsater, Prof. Mary Wheeler- University of Texas at Austin, Richard Rwechungura, Senior Researcher Dr. Nan Cheng-Statoil, and Prof Bjarne Foss

PhD Rwechungura will stay in Norway and has commited to Statoil in addition to continue his work at the Norne- project at NTNU, Department of Petroleum Engineering.

PhD student Bjarne Grimstad and PhD student Brage Knudsen, under guidance of Prof. Bjarne Foss, each received a prestigious scholarship from the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program!

Bjarne Grimstad and Brage Knudsen

Read more (Norwegian link)

60 delegates from industry partners and IO Center staff met for a 1 ½ day Technical Committee (TC) meeting at Vaernes Airport, Trondheim on May 22nd-23rd.
Highlights from Phase I results were presented, and status for the Phase II projects was discussed. The feedback from the TC is that the Phase II projects are on right track. Many projects have started case studies and pilot activities, and the industry is looking forward to see the results from the research.

The concept “Holistic IO Research” was also discussed. The meeting concluded that there is a need for a common terminology and an aggregated model for Integrated Operations.

The IO-center and Petrobras organized a Workshop on Produciton Optimization in Rio on May 14-15. The aim was to disseminate results and strengthen ties with Brazil.
There were contributions from Stanford University, IBM Research, UFSC, Petrobras, TNO/TU Delft and the IO center (NTNU and SINTEF). Further, there were two panel discussions.

Conference Agenda

There were about 60 participants. The majority were from Petrobras research and operating unitd.

We congratulate Ph.D Eka Suwartadi who has defended his PhD Thesis Gradient-based Methods for Production Optimization of Oil Reservoirs
Professor Bjarne Foss and Dr. Stein Krogstad, SINTEF were his supervisors. Eka gave his trial lecture in NTNU's mainbuilding in “Rådsalen”, and the lecture was titled Ensemble-based methods for computing gradients in optimization algorithms.

The Evaluation Committee's members were Professor John Bagterp Jørgensen, Danish Technical University, Professor Ana Isabel Pereira, the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal and Professor Tor Arne Johansen, NTNU. The committee assessment was very favourable.

They stated: “The candidate made a good presentation of his results, and demonstrated ability to engage in a scientific discussion. He answered all questions in a convincing manner and demonstrated academic maturity in discussing advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches” and “The thesis is of a high standard, and compares well to a thesis from Portugal and Denmark.”.

Eka will stay in Norway and start working in the area of reservoir optimization.

Stig Ole Johnsen will be defending his thesis on Thursday May 10th in the Total room at NTNU's main building.

Stig Ole Johnsen is Siv.Ing and has a Master degree in Technology and management from the Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, at the Department of Computer and Information Science. He will be defending the thesis:
«An Investigation of Resilience in Complex Socio-Technical Systems to Improve Safety and Continuity in Integrated Operations».

Opponents to the lecture are Professor Martha Grabowski NY & Le Moyne College, Syracuse, USA, * Professor José María Sarriegi, University of Navarra, Gipuzkoa, Spain and Associate ProfessorTorgeir Dingsøyr, IDI, NTNU

Associate Professor Torgeir Dingsøyr, Department of Computer and Information Science has been administrator for the committee and will be chairing the trial lecture and dispute.

The IO PhD school is a forum in which PhD students and their advisors come together for technical discussions across programs to promote an IO perspective on the PhD projects sponsored by the IO center. The workshop is open to all IO center researchers and sponsors. The first workshop was organized by professor Bjarne Foss at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics - NTNU. A summary is given here


The next workshop will be held on 3 Oct 2012 and will be organized by professor Stein Haugen at Department of Production and Quality Engineering – NTNU.

During the three days from Tuesday 27 to Thursday 29 March the international network of Integrated Operations in the O&G industry, met.

This is the major meeting place of the oil and gas industry in this area and a great source of inspiration. The IO center was relatively visible with several contributions in many of the technical sessions. Several of the IO Center industry partners were also visible and contributed in technical as well as plenary sessions. The SPE Intelligent Energy conferences gives opportunities to learn and get inspirations and meet the network.

Read more about the IO Centers participation at the SPE conference here

We congratulate Ph.D Silvya Dewi Rahmawati who has defended her PhD Thesis “Integrated modeling and Optimization” successfully. Professor Bjarne Foss and Curtis H. Whitson were her supervisors. Silvya gave her trial lecture in NTNU's mainbuilding in “Rådsalen”, and the lecture was titled ”Derivative Free Optimization – Concepts and Applications”.

The Evaluation Committee's members were Professor Ridha Gharbi, Kuwait University, Jan–Erik Nordtvedt, PhD and CEO of Epsis, Senior researcher Berit Floor Lund,SINTEF with Professor Morten Hovd, NTNU as administrator. The committee assessment was very favourable and concluded “The work is of high quality and is clearly worth a PhD”.

Silvya will after some time return to Indonesia and continue work within Integrated Operations.

We congratulate Ph.D Aleksander Juell who defended his PhD Thesis Production Optimization of Remotely Operated Gas Wells.
Professor Curtis H. Whitson was his supervisor, during his research.

Aleksander had his trial lecture in NTNU's mainbuilding in “Rådsalen”, and the lecture titled ”Modeling Adsorption in Shale Reservoir Simulation” was performed with excellence.

The Evaluation Committee's members were Professor Christopher R. Clarkson, University of Calgary, Senior researcher Bamshad Nazarian, Statoil, and Professor Michael Golan, NTNU.

Aleksander Juell will continue in IO Center as researcher in the programme IO4, Production and Performance Optimization.

The Norwegian technical magazine, ”Teknisk Ukeblad”, has printed an article about the IO Center, focusing on the recent memberships from Petrobras and BP.

Download article
(Text in Norwegian)

Read the article at TU.no

The IO Center Board meeting was held in Trondheim, Norway on November 17th -18th to discuss

• Transfer of project results and knowledge from Phase I (2007-2011) to the industry and to the academia
• Plans for R&D activities in Phase II (2012-2014)

BP was welcomed as a new member in Phase II, and was represented in the meeting by Paul Hiocking, BP Norge AS and Steve Roberts, Field of the Future TM Flagship.

The Board has representatives from the 14 industry partners and the 3 research partners in the IO Center.

Nov. 29 and 30. 2011

About 20 SKF specialists within R&D, Engineering and Sales from the global organization of SKF Service Division participated in a two day workshop with the technical management team of the IO Center in Utrecht, November 29th-30th. The workshop identified focus areas for collaboration between SKF and the IO Center, through discussions of business and technology development initiatives in SKF Services and corresponding R&D activities in the IO Center.
SKF Service has a focus on condition monitoring and reliability engineering support for safe and efficient operations, which is very closely related to several of the projects in the IO Center.

We are looking forward to start working with SKF and the other industrial partners on these issues!

The workshop Participants in front of SKFs R&D Center in Utrecht.

Read more about SKF Service Division:

Program manager Tor Stein Ølberg and his research team had invited to an industry meeting on IO3 (Proactive management of safety and environment) and T1 (IO Aspects for safe and efficient drilling).
The meeting was organized at ConocoPhillips with Mike Herbert and Ole Klingsheim as hosts. Gregar Haugen (ENI), Tove Løberg (Statoil), Jon Stærkeby and Kaare Finbak (IBM), Erik Østby (DNV) and Arild Løver (Kongsberg Group) participated was represented.

Read more about the Industrial Meeting here

BP Norway has recently decided to join the IO Center as a member from 2012. BP has a long and broad experience with integrated operations through the Flagship project “Field of the Future”, and we are pleased to have them as a member and are looking forward to working with them on tomorrow’s solutions for IO.
The formal membership is through the Norwegian branch of the company, and the cooperation with the IO Center will include also people working globally in the Field of the Future project.

Oct. 20-21 2011

About 50 representatives from the industrial partners and research scientists met to conclude the phase 1 of the IO Center, and to give their recommendations on further research In the IO Center's Phase 2, discussing potential value and proposed changes to the project plan for the next four years.

Go to IO Center News Archive