Petter Grytten Almklov

Dual materiality and knowing in petroleum production

This paper explores the relationship between materiality and knowing through the notion of dual materiality. Dual materiality highlights how digital technology becomes important, as its materiality plays an integral part in creating, not simply representing, the materiality of the physical world. We elaborate upon this insight through a theory on sociomaterial knowing grounded in ethnographic fieldwork within a petroleum company. The main theoretical proposition of this theory is that knowing arises from the emerging patterns of interaction between material phenomena, the material arrangements for knowing about these phenomena, and knowledge practices. We elaborate upon this through three predominant modes of knowing in petroleum production: instrumentation, interpretation, and learning. This paper contributes to the broader discourse on sociomateriality by refining ideas of materiality through the notion of dual materiality. We conclude by encouraging further exploration of different materialities in contemporary work and organizing.

The Commoditization of Societal Safety

New public management has led to major institutional changes in the sectors operating critical infrastructures. The previously integrated utility companies have been dismantled and are now run, regulated and organized more like private entities. This paper proposes two concepts that may aid the analysis of these organizational changes and the consequences they may have on societal safety. Commoditization refers to the process where work is sought transformed into atomistic standardized products to be ordered on a market. Modularization refers to the creation of discrete entities coordinated by market mechanisms and standardized interfaces. We argue that commoditization of work and modularization of organizational entities pose challenges to some of the informal characteristics of high-reliability organizations, with recognized importance especially for crisis management. This is illustrated by examples from Norwegian electricity network operators.

Fish farmers and regulators coping with the wickedness of aquaculture

ABSTRACT Managing and regulating aquaculture is a complicated issue. From the perspective of fish farmers as well as regulators managing aquaculture can be regarded as what political scientists refer to as a “wicked problem.” This is because there is a great extent of uncertainty and lack of firm knowledge with respect to the externalities of aquaculture production; e.g., diseases, environmental impacts, and conflicts with other user interests. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of the aquaculture sector contributes to the uncertainty as new solutions emerge, rendering established knowledge obsolete or irrelevant. Designing appropriate public regulations and policy measures is thus important, but difficult. Based on empirical data from Norway, we investigate what respondents from public agencies and the industry perceive to be challenges in governing aquaculture and what we may infer on the characteristics of a good governance approach. We propose that such an approach needs to focus on building competence, collaboration, and be adaptable. Furthermore, it needs to be flexible and cost efficient.

Between and beyond data: How analogue field experience informs the interpretation of remote data sources in petroleum reservoir geology

This paper explores how experience from field trips to geological analogues informs the interpretation of remote data sources in petroleum reservoir geology. It is based on observations of a group of petroleum geologists on a field trip to an analogue field and descriptions of the typical office work of such professionals in the same company. Special attention is given to representational artefacts and data types employed in the different settings. Field trips are experiences in which the geologists develop skills in handling the relationship between geological and physical structures experienced in the field and conventional representations of them. When trying to make sense of the offshore reservoirs deep beneath the seabed, they have to make do with fragmentary data from remote sensor arrangements. When creating integrated ideas of a reservoir based on sparse remote data sources, petroleum geologists draw analogies to the patterns observed in the field and draw from the skills developed when performing similar extrapolations in the field.

Living in a Sociomaterial World

The Internet of Things (IoT) – the proliferation of networked sensors, gadgets, artefacts and measurement devices – increase the presence, scope and potential importance of mediated information in collaborative work practices. This underscores the material aspects of sociomaterial practices. We study an extreme case where work practices rely heavily, almost entirely, on representations. In line with the research programme on sociomateriality, we acknowledge the performative role of representations. Representations are thus actively embedded in practice rather than passive re-presentation of data. Extending the programme of sociomateriality, we contribute by identifying and discussing three strategies detailing how sociomaterial practices get performed: extrapolate (filling in gaps), harmonise (ironing out inaccuracies) and abduct (coping with anomalies). We draw empirically on a longitudinal (2004-2011) case study of the subsurface community of NorthOil. This community of geologists, geophysicists, reservoir engineers, production engineers and well engineers rely on sensor-based (acoustic, electromagnetic, radioactive, pressure, temperature) data when exploring and producing oil and gas resources several thousand meters below the seabed where direct access to data is difficult and/ or limited.

Reliability Consequences of Liberalization in the Electricity Sector: Existing Research and Remaining Questions

The generation, transmission and distribution of energy are among the most vital prerequisites for the functioning of modern societies. Since the early 1990s, the energy sectors of Western societies have been through a process of institutional restructuring, where large state-owned monopolies have been divided into several independent organizations. Also, the organizations responsible for providing energy, like most other industrial organizations today, have made increasing use of outsourcing strategies. Taken together, these developments represent a significant change in the framework conditions for the energy sector. How this development affects the reliability of energy supply and the capacity for effective crisis management is an important question from both a research perspective as well as from a societal point of view. This article reviews the current literature on these issues, aiming to identify research gaps in the existing literature. Several research gaps are identified.

What can possibly go wrong? Anticipatory work in space operations

This paper explores how different forms of anticipatory work contribute to reliability in high-risk space operations. It is based on ethnographic field work, participant observation and interviews supplemented with video recordings from a control room responsible for operating a microgravity greenhouse at the International Space Station (ISS). Drawing on examples from different stages of a biological experiment on the ISS, we demonstrate how engineers, researchers and technicians work to anticipate and proactively mitigate possible problems. Space research is expensive and risky. The experiments are planned over the course of many years by a globally distributed network of organizations. Owing to the inaccessibility of the ISS, every trivial detail that could possibly cause a problem is subject to scrutiny. We discuss what we label anticipatory work: practices constituted of an entanglement of cognitive, social and technical elements involved in anticipating and proactively mitigating everything that might go wrong. We show how the nature of anticipatory work changes between planning and the operational phases of an experiment. In the planning phase, operators inscribe their anticipation into technology and procedures. In the operational phase, we show how troubleshooting involves the ability to look ahead in the evolving temporal trajectory of the ISS operations and to juggle pre-planned fixes along these trajectories. A key objective of this paper is to illustrate how anticipation is shared between humans and different forms of technology. Moreover, it illustrates the importance of including considerations of temporality in safety and reliability research.

Punctuation and extrapolation: representing a subsurface oil reservoir

This article discusses how data are made to represent subsurface phenomena in petroleum production. Drawing on studies of the subsurface disciplines in an oil company, and the multitude of sensor data employed there, we suggest that sensor data as representational artifacts are punctuated along three axes. We refer to this as spatial, temporal and aspectual punctuation. Whereas, the first two refer to the positioning of data in space and time, the latter refers to the sensors’ response to single aspects of the interaction with a subsurface phenomenon. We show how extrapolation of punctuated data is a crucial element of the work of understanding the subsurface. It is when the punctuated data points are creatively extrapolated along the three axes of punctuation that ideas and models of the subsurface phenomena take shape. Consequently, we argue that the processes of punctuation and extrapolation are the keys to understand how knowledge about the subsurface is created at the onshore office. Punctuation gives mobility whereas extrapolation is necessary to establish reference between the punctuated data and the inaccessible oil reservoir. We specifically discuss the implications this has for reservoir models as representational artifacts.

Organizational Challenges Regarding Risk Management in Critical Infrastructures

Understanding the interconnections between critical infrastructures is a demanding task. This is even more the case when one includes their organizational contexts. In this chapter, we discuss some of the organizational challenges that have to be addressed when analysing and managing risks that involve several infrastructure sectors. The infrastructures of today are often run by networks of private and public entities, rather than single utility companies. Consequently, the number of organizations that need to be involved to map, analyse and manage risks that cross-sectors is increasing. The organizational changes also imply that work is managed and coordinated in ways that imply a stricter focus on efficiency and accountability with regard to core tasks and responsibilities. We argue that cross-sectorial safety management requires other organizational qualities as well. We outline a landscape where technologies become increasingly interconnected at the same time that the organizations managing them become increasingly fragmented. Risk identification and management requires increased transparency between companies that have few incentives to share information or cooperate. We present a set of recommendations and suggestions with relevance for public agencies and for infrastructure owners on how to address the organizational and institutional challenges born out of these processes.

Situated Practice and Safety as Objects of Management

This chapter focuses on the relationship between representations of work (rules, procedures, models, specifications, plans) and work as a situated practice, performed by real people in always unique contexts. Empirically, it is organized around two main examples, the first one being a discussion of the compartmentalization of safety seen in shipping and the railway sector. It shows how safety, as an object of management, has become decoupled from practice, and how current discourses about safety disempower practitioners and subordinate their perspectives to more “theoretical” positions. The second is based on a study of control room operators in a space research operations setting. Here safety in the sense of avoiding harm to people is not the main concern; rather it is the reliability and robustness of an experiment on the International Space Station that is at stake. This example serves as a starting point for discussing how the research and theory on industrial safety should address the different temporalities of different work situations. It also helps to discuss the role of rules and procedures to support safety, reliability and resilience within the field of safety science. Finally, some propositions about the relationship between situated practice and the management of safety are provided: how invisible aspects of situated work might be important for safety yet hard to manage, how procedures and rules might be integrated parts of situated work as much as representations of it and how different temporalities of work situations should be included in the theorizing of safety and resilience.