Al Hirshberg, vice president – deepwater projects, ExxonMobil, spoke to attendees at the GE Oil & Gas annual meeting in Florence, Italy, February 1, about the role of technology collaboration in his company.

Hirshberg explained how Exxon’s separate companies approach project development, emphasizing that the ExxonMobil Upstream Research Co. is involved throughout the entire process of executing a project. He also discussed the value that can be derived from working partnerships like the one Exxon has with GE Oil & Gas.

As an example, Hirshberg talked about the Kizomba Satellite Phase I Project that Exxon is kicking off this year offshore Angola. Individually, the satellite fields do not hold commercial quantities of hydrocarbons, he said, but innovative use of the existing Kizomba A and Kizomba B FPSOs will allow the satellites to be produced profitably. Exxon has partnered with GE Oil & Gas to leverage technology that will extract the maximum value from the assets by developing a subsea loop that will connect the smaller fields to the FPSOs.

Another example of the application of new technology on the Kizomba development is a repair method Exxon developed for the Marimba North field, where a subsea gas lift module was installed to boost production. When the valves on the module failed, Exxon had to determine a way forward. This “reliability issue” was resolved by developing “specialized tooling for ROVs (remotely operated vehicles,” Hirshberg explained. This tooling would allow the subsea system to be repaired in situ, which was an “inexpensive solution made possible through innovative technology.”

A third innovation Hirshberg discussed was the use of the Yastreb land drilling rig to drill the Chayvo field offshore Sakhalin Island. This project required wells to be drilled as far as 6.8 miles (11 km) offshore, he said.

According to Hirshberg, there are many challenges that the industry will have to overcome in the near future, some of which will be solved by individual companies, and many of which will be resolved by collaborative technology development. Among the latter are arctic operations, which present unique conditions. “If you’re going to have a floating production system in the Arctic, it has got to be disconnectable,” he said. And although Exxon has made huge strides in deepwater operations, additional challenges will have to be resolved before Exxon and other operators can bring more deepwater fields into development. This challenge is uppermost at Exxon, where beginning in 2013, the company has a large number of projects on the books for fields that lie in 7,545 ft to 9,500 ft (2,300 m to 2,900 m) water depth.

Although Exxon has a strong track record of technology development, Hirshberg said, to continue to move into the world’s frontier areas, the will have to continue integrating to maximize partnership value.