Upstream companies expect shorter time to produce oil and gas due to digital technology investments, says research

Faster and better decision-making and shorter time to first oil and gas top the list of expected benefits that digital technologies can drive for upstream oil and gas companies, a new survey from Accenture and Microsoft Corp. reports.

Respondents to the "Accenture and Microsoft 2017 Upstream Oil and Gas Digital Trends Survey" also estimated the monetary value of digital technologies and noted the next wave's potential to further transform their business, despite ongoing low oil prices.

Asked to identify the top ways digital benefits their companies, faster and better decision-making (30 percent) remained foremost, as in the 2016 edition of the survey. Faster time to produce oil and gas, however, jumped to second place from fifth last year (19 percent). Reduced risk enabled by real-time decision support was the third most important (12 percent).

Now in its sixth edition, the global survey showed the upstream areas most expected to benefit today from digital are production (28 percent), geological and geophysical (27 percent), and drilling and completion (19 percent).

"Digital technologies like IoT and predictive analytics can have a significant impact on the upstream oil and gas companies operations," said managing director and lead for Accenture's resources group in India, Sandeep Dutta.

Adding to this he said that IoT and analytics can help analyze diverse sets of operational data like drilling parameters and cross disciplinary data (geological models) and provide incisive operational insights.

"Predictive analytics can also reduce downtime, spare parts inventory and boost production in conventional as well as non-operational asset classes. Additionally, by using digital technologies at large, upstream companies can reduce finding, development and maintenance costs; material costs can also be optimized through the right digital interventions," added Dutta.

Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of the more than 300 professionals surveyed perceive business value from digital technologies, with 27 percent totaling it at USD 50 million to USD 100 million or more for their companies.

However, 14 percent of upstream respondents don't know how much monetary value digital is delivering, 20 percent don't measure it, and four percent believe digital is adding no value to their businesses today.

Most of the respondents expect their companies to realize value from digital technologies and 73 percent said most of their oil and gas fields will become fully automated using these technologies in three to five years.

On the other hand, 39 percent of respondents said the greatest risk from a lack of digital investment is becoming uncompetitive; more than double the next group at 19 percent who cited the inability to transition to a new energy landscape. Surprisingly, despite the rise of connected devices on oilfields further exposing upstream companies to cyber-security risks, the fear of increased cyberattacks came in at a distant third (18 percent).

Digital technologies that upstream companies are investing in today include mobile devices (56 percent), cloud (45 percent), big data and analytics (43 percent) and IoT (42 percent). Priority investment areas for these technologies are asset management and maintenance, capital project management and production optimization.

"It's not always about petabytes of data. It's about a set of solutions and technologies that could not have been achieved even five years ago," said Egbert Schroeer, Worldwide Managing Director, Process Manufacturing, Microsoft Corp.

"Digital is doing more than helping reduce operational costs through increased worker productivity with mobility. The cloud, better asset management and remote monitoring through analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are driving operational excellence and subsurface data management for the oil and gas industry. However, it will be essential for upstream companies to quickly develop in-house capabilities and add external talent for data analytics and other leading technologies, to stay ahead in the digital revolution," added Schroeer.

Upstream companies are also now adding digital workforce challenges to their ongoing talent concerns.

Recruitment is their biggest challenge in this regard, especially skill-building for contingent labor, freelancers and on-boarding new hires. Most said it will take three to five years to build the necessary digital skill base.

For example, the great majority of respondents (85 percent) felt their companies lacked fully mature analytics capabilities. While they plan to develop that area, the expected three-to-five-year time frame in which they aim to do that might be too extended - competitively speaking - as technologies advance rapidly.

This is especially relevant, as an Accenture Strategy study, The Talent Well Has Run Dry, notes the oil and gas industry could experience a shortage of 10,000 to 40,000 petro-technical professionals by 2025.