Woodside Petroleum's ‘Project Symphony', which includes major players active across northern Australia - ExxonMobil, Inpex, Shell, Chevron Corporation, ConocoPhillips, BHP Billiton and Quadrant Energy - has made some progress on the collaboration front, and this year's AOG forum in Perth even included a ‘Collaboration' forum in the main auditorium.
However, such high-level collaboration has its sticking points, which is why some of those companies have backed National Energy Resources Australia, which connects them in a more practical way with collaborative efforts within the supply chain, from which some 85% of the world's deployed innovation stems.
Deloitte's latest survey of 96 individuals within Australian oil and gas operators and service companies, which produced the report titled Committed to change: Driving true industry collaboration, revealed supplier-buyer tensions abound.
Deloitte said the importance of the "lack of trust"' factor was an outlier in Australia compared with results from recent surveys conducted in the UK and Netherlands on the more mature North Sea oil and gas industry.
The firm said this could be explained by the limited shared working history operators and service companies have on Australian operational assets, and the negotiation power swing between the recent industry up-and down-cycle.
"The buyer-supplier tension inherent in collaboration will need to be taken seriously in order to increase the chances for collaboration effectiveness," Deloitte Asia Pacific oil and gas consulting lead partner Mike Lynn said.
"The Australian oil and gas supply chain has a significant challenge in moving towards a more collaborative industry, but also a unique opportunity."
With the project to operations transition of the large gas production and LNG facilities, asset management capability across operators and service companies will become key.
The remoteness in the west and distributed CSG production wells in the east also impose a high level of interdependency on the sector and strong collaboration is critical for overall success."
Operators in Deloitte's survey indicated "reducing cost" and "acquiring knowledge" as clear top two attributes they are seeking from collaboration; while service companies were closely aligned and also provided high scores for "filling capability gaps" and "increasing market access".
While "major maintenance" and "turnaround planning" were consistently identified as high priorities by both segments when asked to identify which areas of the business they would prioritise for collaborative activities, "logistics" topped operator responses while "production operations" and "plant maintenance" were identified more often by service companies.
Lynn said the UK's and Netherlands' surveys revealed that more mature collaboration was characterised by having a clear business strategy, which encourages collaboration and is focused on getting the capability in place which provides a more structural foundation for success, making it less dependent on individuals with existing trusted relationships.
"From our Australian survey we see some supporting signs for these structural measures," Lynn said.
"The vast majority of respondents from both operators (94%) and service companies (77%) agreed that many business processes typically considered confidential should be standardised to facilitate industry collaboration."
How to unlock local value
The Australian survey results suggested collaboration ingredients are adopted by companies inconsistently and an effective ecosystem does not just naturally evolve in the market landscape.
"Similar to ecosystems in the natural world, an ecosystem in the business sphere involves multiple layers and stakeholders working together to respond quickly to a situation," Lynn said.
"Ecosystem thinking often comes up as the way forward for collaboration, though the million dollar question remains as to what that actually means and how to make it work in this context. Capturing the full value in a more holistic way, requires a clear purpose and deliberate design."
