The oil and gas sector today stands at a turning point.
While global leaders, activists and the world’s brightest minds look for net zero alternatives, the solution to meet this target and the energy demands of tomorrow can be found in the digitization of the industry.
As the world transitions to a low-carbon future, energy companies are looking to implement solutions to better meet the energy demands of today in a more sustainable way. However, with the daily generation of massive data sets in oil and gas exploration and production industries, energy companies are challenged in their ability to extract meaningful insights from the fragmented data that exists in proprietary closed systems.
Opportunities in the Black Sea
The oil and gas sector is no stranger to innovation, if anything, they could be counted among the earliest pioneers who relied on technology for extracting natural gasoline from natural gas by the compression method in 1904.
Romania has a rich history in crude oil production and natural gas exploitation. In fact, it was among the first producing countries and one of the largest oil producers in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. Presently, Romania is considered as a mature producer, ranked as the 59th largest oil and gas provider in the world and the fifth largest oil producer in the EU . The country is a home to established oilfield service companies and holds large legacy oilfields, with a refining capacity of 321,920 barrels/day, larger than required for its domestic market. The recent Black Sea developments are providing positive upside potential for gas and possibly oil.
Data is the new oil
The oil and gas industry produces large amounts of data that offer insights on the state of reservoirs and helps engineers to take the guesswork out of exploration to make quick, informed production decisions. Data gathered through satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and drones, for surface mapping, contaminant and spill detection not only helps troubleshooting and performance efficiency but also mitigates potential risks to the environment.
Data-driven technology enables the oil and gas sector to do a lot more with less. It helps the industry navigate the current transition, yet an IBM survey found that less than half of the oil and gas executives are taking advantage of data to drive that innovation.
IBM is working with many key industry players in the energy industry to tackle these challenges so that companies can fully tap into the power of digital innovation. IBM collaborated with Schlumberger, to build a data management platform that can run across public or private clouds based on open, common, industry standards for oil and gas data. This will allow everyone from operators, to developers, to geo-scientists and engineers to work from together from a single source of truth and derive value a lot faster from the massive amount of data produced by the industry.
Access to timely data is a grievance that is common in the energy sector. Key market data are generally fragmented or siloed and typically takes almost 80% of a data scientist’s time to turn them into real insights. The collaboration between IBM and AWS aims to precisely address this gaping need by accelerating the reduction of data barriers in the industry.
Having the right strategy
Whether that’s the complex seismic data used to decide what is the best location to drill or the 1 terabyte of data generated on average by an oil well each day, simply put, data will be a major performance driver and critical to tackling the industry challenges of tomorrow.
Big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence became part of the exploration industry’s vocabulary.
Energy industry leaders who harness their data and accelerate advanced technologies across their workflows stand to reap big rewards. To successfully tap into these opportunities there’s a need for more leadership initiatives that help organizations to get on board. Collaboration is key and by partnering with industry leaders the sector will be able to overcome barriers and maintain sovereignty over data and sustain longer-term digital innovation.
The companies that can harness data to orchestrate an effective climate strategy will truly transform an industry and build on its legacy for generations to come.
