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It has become possible today to bring oil to the surface even at increasing depths or in very complex geological settings through the experience and knowledge gathered and the continuous development and application of advanced technologies in oil exploration and production processes over the years (Gould, 2006; Liyanage, 2005). As the price of oil reached the heights recently, more and more oil and gas (O&G) producers started to believe that future oil prices will further increase following economic developments and based on long-term trends in the emerging markets. This moved their focus towards other assets that have not been so economically attractive to explore before due to economic risks (Johnston, 2003). The improved economic situation also contributed to generating more business activities around existing assets seeking to improve the possibilities for production extension (Liyanage and Kumar, 2003). In contrast, some of the offshore assets that were developed at much early stages of the oil age in the North Sea have shown clear signs of production maturity/decline. In addition, another principal observation was that the production costs have been increasing gradually due to various operational challenges of mature assets (Shihab-Eldin, 2006). Obviously, the life cycle of the O&G production and exploration process can be seen in general as a long-term complex activity involving various processes that include drilling, well operation, logistics, maintenance, reservoir, etc. The traditional practices of managing these core processes today are often seen meeting unprecedented challenges with a constant need to improve cost-effectiveness to reduce economic risks (Shihab-Eldin, 2006; Wireman, 2005). Some of the common challenges that became very obvious during the last few years, for instance, include:

• lack of linkage between critical information flow and decision-making chain between technical systems, onshore-offshore operational groups, and between business partners

• ineffective work management process, where planning plays a major role, involving significant challenges in terms of work priority setting, resource allocation, logistics planning, etc., introducing internal conflicts
• lack of streamlined processes to effectively utilise technical equipment and systems to capitalise on available production capacity.

At some point in time, the whole industry was ambiguous about the future of oil production when declining oil production as well as increasing operating costs became obvious facts. While there was a clear need to develop solutions to improve the production capacity, the complex work process and traditional organisational and technical interfaces were known to be having difficulties coping with the emerging future (Gould, 2006; Niebel, 1994; Tam et al., 2000). Thus, the big oil producers had no choice but to focus on new solutions to improve the efficiency of internal processes and asset performance to reduce the forthcoming risks. This resulted in the development and implementation of a new operational concept termed integrated operations (IO) in the

North Sea from the early 2000s, introducing a principal reengineering process within the petroleum industry to rejuvenate the investments and activities.

2 Study methodology