After oil price shocks, declining reserves and responsibility for climate change, the oil and gas industry has a basis to expect that digital transformation will solve this challenge and improve economic efficiency. joint. The following article will analyze the digital transformation initiatives adopted by oil and gas companies around the world, at the same time point out difficulties and recommend solutions for oil and gas enterprises when implementing the transformation. number.

1 / Benefits of converting numbers

Besides energy transition, digital transformation is an inevitable trend of the oil and gas industry. Since the 1980s, oil and gas companies have started to apply digital technology to focus on understanding an oil field and its potential for exploitation, improving the health and safety of workers, as well as improving benefits. profits at refineries around the world.

According to analysis by the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum) between 2016 and 2025, digital transformation could generate about $ 1,000 billion for oil and gas companies and contribute about $ 640 billion to society. This includes $ 170 billion in customer savings, $ 10 billion in productivity improvements, $ 30 billion from reduced water use, and $ 430 billion from reducing emissions. The environmental benefits include reducing emissions by approximately 1,300 million tons of CO2, saving approximately 800 million gallons of water and avoiding oil spills equivalent to 230,000 barrels of oil.

Digital transformation is a breakthrough and strategic change, rationally using digital technologies to improve processes, optimize business models and improve business performance. While digital transformation is not the “panacea” for every challenge facing the oil and gas industry, it can certainly help drive significant growth.

First: Opening up new business opportunities: Digital technologies help businesses have a vision to overcome geographic limitations as well as framed products / services and activities so far, to see opportunities and respond to new needs.

Second: Increasing the profitability of capital: Digital technologies such as advanced computing techniques used in reservoir modeling, 3D seismic imaging (3D seismic imaging) also As progress in drilling has helped producers extract oil from deep water areas … Thus, increasing design standards, processes and equipment along with digital technology is improving production operations. and eliminating inefficiencies in the oil and gas industry’s value chains.

Third: Improving operational efficiency: Energy companies can improve margins and reduce costs through the use of smart technology, specifically for predictive asset management. smart maintenance, workflow automation, real-time monitoring, and talent utilization. These technologies have a direct impact on promoting business performance.

Fourth: Aging workforce management: The digitization of knowledge, processes and experiences helps to store employee knowledge and reduce dependence on human memory. Furthermore, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) can store projects’ activity data. In this way, the next generation will have knowledge drawn from the previous generation’s experience to guide future activities.

Fifth: Reduce safety costs: Digital technology allows the use of robots and drones instead of labor to inspect and detect problems in remote, dangerous and inaccessible areas . Letting robots perform repetitive tasks like continuous monitoring will be much more accurate and efficient than humans. In addition, using IoT sensors can provide timely warnings when something goes wrong and help track the location of employees.

Sixth: Responding to market volatility: Agility and flexibility are at the heart of digital transformation. The digital tools not only help shorten incident response times, but also effectively plan and respond to market changes [1].

2 / Digital transformation trend in the oil and gas industry

Investing in digital transformation:

A survey of 255 upstream leaders in 47 countries by Accenture PLC showed that in 2019, nearly 72% (compared to 71% in 2017) leaders plan to increase investment in digital technology. At the same time, 47% of leaders (up from 39% in 2017) confirmed that businesses will face great risks (lack of competitive advantage) if they do not invest in digital technology. Figure 1 shows the results of a survey of oil and gas companies that have invested in digital technology over the next five years.

Figure 1 shows oil and gas companies investing the most in mobile devices in 2016 (57%), while in the next 5 years big data / analytics is the trend that will be most invested (38%). . Mobile devices enable data monitoring through specialized software, and have a positive impact on health, safety and the environment (HSE). Big data is of great interest in the coming time because it is cheaper and more computable. Modern offshore rigs have about 80,000 sensors that can generate 15 million gigabytes of data to improve drilling performance, improve oil recovery ratio (EOR)… [1].

Initiatives for digital transformation:

According to the World Economic Forum, digital transformation initiatives play an important role in the development of the oil and gas industry in the period 2016 – 2025 (Figure 2) [1].

Digital project lifecycle management:

In the future, the entire project lifecycle can be tracked digitally, from design to performance; data collection and analysis at each step; Lessons learned for later designs. The following three initiatives are identified as the focus of digital transformation in the oil and gas industry over the next decade.

1 / The new era of automation: The era of using robots, drones, the development of automatic and remote operations. Industry 4.0 (IIoT) is the standout technology that connects end-to-end activities throughout the life of a project.

For example, at the upstream stage, the connected sensors can measure the filling of oil and gas tanks, activate the automatic drain valve and suggest the optimal route of automatic liquid transport in the most optimal route. Along with that are the remote control centers for operational control and decision making. Automation helps reduce manual work and poses a danger to people. This helps to reduce risks as well as reduce HSE incidents, reduce production costs, improve accuracy, efficiency in operation … BP has cooperated with Silicon Microgravity (UK) to develop super-inductors. to optimize the output of oil fields, help improve the extraction capacity of oil fields by up to 2%.

2 / Analysis and modeling: This technology allows the quick and automatic production of analytical models (such as mine models, drilling plans, production profiles) with fast accuracy and timing. even with very large amounts of data. Machine learning helps discover new sources of energy, predict sensor failures in refineries, and optimize parameters of low-stock oil wells to make production more efficient. and cost savings.

In early 2020, Pertamina (Indonesia) cooperated with Halliburton to deploy all oil and gas engineering applications on the Landmark iEnergy cloud technology platform – designed on demand to manage operations and exploration operations. waterfall. With this contract, Halliburton will deploy artificial intelligence technology, machine learning, data analysis and other digital services to support Pertmina’s digital transformation, helping to improve the process. exploration and exploitation, improve drilling efficiency, increase decision-making ability and increase exploitation output [2].

3 / Workers are connected: Workers are provided with data connection equipment to perform their jobs in the safest and most effective manner. It is forecast that by 2025, workers connected upstream and downstream will be 15% more productive than unconnected workers. This initiative could generate 40 billion USD downstream but also lead to the replacement of 44,000 jobs at this stage.

Schlumberger cooperated with Parsable (USA) to create smart glasses that provide real-time information for workers about the indicators to be measured (wind, rainfall, tides …), checklists, inventory, step-by-step process video.