Collaborative operating environments (COE) are a new
concept for the offshore petroleum sector and have been introduced as a part of
integrated operations as a solution to mitigate risks and to capitalize on
value creating potentials. To some extent, military, aviation, and aerospace
industries have used COE with encouraging success, yet still left with some
notable challenges concerning modern developments in social, economical,
technological, and political terms. To reflect on the developments in the Norwegian
petroleum sector, the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF) published a
report in 2007 on the value potential for integrated operations, which
concluded that a value of as much as 350 billion NOK could be realized by
the offshore petroleum sector in Norway. However, realizing this value
potential does not solely rely on pure technological innovations, but various
other parameters that contribute to boost performance. This particularly
involves relations and interactions between stakeholders of producing assets in
COE—operational centers used in integrated operations. In a project conducted
recently within the offshore petroleum sector, it was revealed that, regarding
today’s implementation status of COE, there exist a number of performance gaps
and challenges, particularly in the business relationships between operators
and service companies. The findings from this project have been elaborated in
another paper. As a continuing action, this paper tries to propose improvement
solutions to capitalize on these performance gaps, create the right win–win
scenario for all stakeholders, and present factors affecting performance in
business-to-business (B2B) relationships.