Oil and Gas Information Technology Operations Training Course

Course overview

Oil and gas operations depend on reliable, secure information flows across upstream assets, pipelines, terminals, refineries, trading functions and corporate services. IT teams must support field connectivity, production data, maintenance systems, enterprise applications and operational technology interfaces without disrupting safety-critical processes. This course addresses the gap between general IT practice and the realities of hydrocarbon operations: remote sites, intermittent communications, legacy control environments, vendor-managed systems, production-critical data and stringent cyber-security obligations.

Participants learn how to operate and improve IT services in an oil and gas environment using practical service-management, infrastructure, data-governance and cyber-risk methods. The course covers IT/OT boundaries; asset and configuration management; incident, problem and change control; network segmentation; production-data platforms; cloud and edge architecture; disaster recovery; supplier governance; and performance reporting. Participants apply ITIL-aligned workflows, ISA/IEC 62443 concepts, ServiceNow records and AVEVA PI System data use cases to realistic operational scenarios.

Teaching combines instructor-led technical briefings, demonstrations, facilitated incident simulations, group design workshops and structured case work based on an offshore production asset, pipeline control centre and refinery support environment. Each participant develops an Oil and Gas IT Operations Improvement Pack containing a service catalogue, critical-system inventory, incident escalation workflow, OT/IT risk register, change-control template, recovery priorities and 90-day implementation plan for their own organisation.

The course is suited to professionals moving into energy-sector IT, IT personnel supporting operational assets, and technical managers responsible for dependable digital services across geographically distributed facilities.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map IT, OT and business-system dependencies across an oil and gas operating asset
• Build a critical-system inventory using service ownership, asset classification and configuration-item records
• Design an ITIL-aligned incident, major-incident and escalation workflow for production-critical services
• Apply risk-based change-control procedures to infrastructure changes affecting OT-connected environments
• Assess network segmentation and remote-access controls against ISA/IEC 62443 security-zone principles
• Define production-data governance rules for AVEVA PI System tags, ownership, quality and retention
• Create disaster-recovery priorities and recovery objectives for field, pipeline and refinery IT services
• Produce a 90-day IT operations improvement plan with metrics, accountabilities and implementation actions

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Oil and Gas IT Operations Analysts — who coordinate incidents, service requests and infrastructure support for operating assets
• IT Infrastructure Engineers — who maintain networks, servers, cloud services and remote-site connectivity
• OT/IT Integration Specialists — who manage interfaces between enterprise systems, historians and control environments
• IT Service Managers — who need to establish measurable support, change and supplier-management practices
• Cybersecurity Analysts — who assess operational technology exposure and privileged remote-access risks
• Digital Transformation Project Managers — who must deploy data and cloud initiatives without compromising operations

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable with everyday IT concepts such as networks, servers, user access, backups, incidents and business applications. At least six months of experience in IT support, infrastructure, cybersecurity, data systems or an oil and gas operational function is recommended. Familiarity with a ticketing tool, Microsoft Excel and basic network terminology such as IP address, firewall and VPN will help participants work efficiently in the exercises. No programming, cloud certification, SCADA configuration experience or prior knowledge of ITIL, ServiceNow, AVEVA PI System or ISA/IEC 62443 is required. Complete beginners should expect a technically grounded introduction rather than an end-user software course.

Training methodology

The instructor uses oil and gas operating scenarios rather than generic IT examples. Participants examine a simulated offshore asset, pipeline control centre and refinery support landscape; classify systems in a ServiceNow-style configuration register; trace data through AVEVA PI System use cases; and respond to a production-impacting incident. Short technical sessions establish the methods, followed by team workshops on service design, risk assessment, change approval and recovery planning. Facilitated peer review tests each team’s decisions against operational safety, uptime, cyber-security and vendor-management constraints. The final day converts course outputs into an organisation-specific 90-day action plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Oil and gas IT operating context

• Upstream, midstream, downstream and trading technology landscapes
• IT, OT, engineering and business-system boundaries
• Production-critical service dependencies and business impact
• Remote-site connectivity constraints and support models
• Safety, availability and cyber-security operating priorities
• Key stakeholders: operations, maintenance, engineering and vendors
• IT operating-model maturity assessment

Workshop: Participants map the IT and OT services supporting a simulated offshore production facility and identify its highest-consequence dependencies.

Day 2: Service architecture and asset control

• Service catalogue design for operational assets
• Business service, technical service and configuration-item relationships
• Critical-system classification and service ownership
• Configuration management database data fields
• Hardware, software and licence lifecycle controls
• Vendor-managed asset and support-contract records
• Service dependency mapping techniques

Workshop: Participants create a critical-service catalogue and configuration-item relationship map for a pipeline operations environment.

Day 3: Incident and problem management

• Incident categorisation by operational consequence
• Major-incident command structure and communications
• ServiceNow incident record fields and priority logic
• Escalation paths for production, safety and cyber events
• Root-cause analysis using five whys and fault trees
• Known-error records and operational workarounds
• Incident metrics: restoration time, recurrence and backlog

Workshop: Teams manage a simulated loss of production-data visibility, producing an incident timeline, stakeholder update and root-cause record.

Day 4: Change, release and vendor control

• Standard, normal and emergency change categories
• Operational impact assessment for IT and OT-connected changes
• Change advisory board roles and approval evidence
• Maintenance-window planning for remote assets
• Rollback planning and technical validation criteria
• Software patching coordination with control-system vendors
• Supplier service-level and escalation governance

Workshop: Participants prepare a change package for a firewall upgrade affecting a remote terminal, including risk, approvals, rollback and communications.

Day 5: Networks, remote access and resilience

• Field communications architectures and bandwidth constraints
• WAN, satellite, cellular and microwave connectivity options
• Network monitoring baselines and availability measures
• VPN and privileged remote-access control patterns
• Redundancy design for critical communications paths
• Network troubleshooting using latency, packet loss and interface data
• Resilience requirements for unmanned and remote sites

Workshop: Participants diagnose a remote-site connectivity case using monitoring evidence and produce a restoration and resilience recommendation.

Day 6: OT cyber-security and IT/OT boundaries

• ISA/IEC 62443 zones and conduits model
• OT asset discovery and exposure identification
• Industrial DMZ and network segmentation principles
• Identity, privileged access and third-party remote support
• Vulnerability management constraints in control environments
• Security-event escalation between SOC and operations teams
• Cyber-risk register scoring for operational assets

Workshop: Teams assess an IT/OT network diagram, identify control gaps and produce a prioritised cyber-risk register.

Day 7: Production data and digital platforms

• Production-data flows from sensors to enterprise reporting
• AVEVA PI System historian concepts and tag structures
• Data ownership, stewardship and quality rules
• Time-series data validation and missing-data handling
• Integration patterns for maintenance and production applications
• Cloud, edge and hybrid architecture decisions
• Data retention, sovereignty and access-control requirements

Workshop: Participants define governance rules and data-quality checks for a production-data use case involving well and compressor performance.

Day 8: Continuity, disaster recovery and operational readiness

• Business impact analysis for oil and gas IT services
• Recovery time objective and recovery point objective setting
• Backup, replication and restore-validation controls
• Disaster-recovery runbooks for critical applications
• Manual operating procedures during system outages
• Crisis communications and executive decision support
• Tabletop testing and lessons-learned capture

Workshop: Participants build recovery priorities and a tabletop test plan for a refinery outage affecting scheduling, historian access and remote support.

Day 9: Performance, governance and improvement

• Operational KPI design for availability and support quality
• Service-level agreements and operational-level agreements
• Capacity, demand and technology lifecycle planning
• IT operations dashboards for leadership reporting
• Audit evidence for access, change and asset controls
• Continual service improvement backlog management
• Governance forums and decision-rights matrices

Workshop: Participants create an IT operations dashboard specification and governance cadence for a multi-asset operating company.

Day 10: Integrated operations improvement planning

• Review of service, security, data and resilience dependencies
• Prioritisation using risk, value, effort and operational criticality
• 90-day improvement roadmap structure
• Accountability assignment using RACI matrices
• Investment justification and benefit measurement
• Implementation risks and stakeholder engagement plans
• Presentation of IT operations improvement packs

Workshop: Participants finalise and present their Oil and Gas IT Operations Improvement Pack, including a prioritised 90-day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

ServiceNow, AVEVA PI System, Microsoft Azure, ISA/IEC 62443

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30	First session
10:30 – 10:45	Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30	Second session
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00	Third session
15:00 – 15:15	Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30	Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions