 "Akshay Sahni")
US oil major Chevron last year invested about $1 billion to start its engineering and innovation excellence centre (ENGINE) in Bengaluru to streamline its operations and use AI to improve accuracy. Akshay Sahni, country head, Chevron India, in an interview with Avik Das, says that AI and energy have a symbiotic relationship as the former is needed more than ever to meet the growing demand for energy globally. Edited excerpts:
What are some of the most impactful works that happened from this facility over the last one year?
As part of the journey of the oil wells, wells have to be plugged and abandoned once they run their useful life. Generating a plug and abandonment program in the past used to take months because the well that was drilled many years ago, everything was hand written and typed. Getting all the information and then developing a programme on how to abandon it, all of that process would take months. Now with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, we can read all these old documents and address the queries we have far more efficiently. Almost 60-70 per cent of such programmes can now be done automatically. For the rest, we have a human in the loop. This entire solution is now being developed out of this technology centre.
When a well is drilled, a big pipe is installed which is termed as casing. Then a small pipe is installed which is called tubing. The small pipe perforates holes in the big pipe through which oil and gas flow. After decades of usage, when this process has to be unwinded, those perforations have to be plugged by injecting cement. With AI solutions, these jobs can be done more safely and efficiently and with disciplined execution.
Besides this, several engineering work orders for our manufacturing facilities are also monitored from here. We have LNG plants globally that chill natural gas to -160 degrees, compress and transport them. Our engineers from here monitor those plans, understand the machinery and work on how to make them more efficient by creating digital twins of those plants.
How is AI allowing Chevron to bring efficiencies in drilling?
AI has greatly helped in our subsurface drilling. We are in a better position to understand the terrain, rocks, temperature, and pressure that exist at levels 30,000 feet below sea level and the type of equipment that can withstand such pressure. A lot of that data analysis is also done here which enhances our ability to understand and interpret sub-surfaces in a big way.
What are some of the new workflows that can come to India?
We have about 100 workflows that are already being executed from here. Anything that is repeatable and scalable can be done from here as the aim is not to build boutique solutions but ones from where we get the maximum impact. ENGINE has the second largest robotics labs for Chevron where we monitor how these robotic dogs are used in manufacturing facilities to collect data of equipment and use algorithms to predict when they need maintenance.
What is the talent that you have hired?
ENGINE marks the single largest investment in Chevron’s history for technology capacity building outside the US. We have talent across STEM categories such as mechanical, chemical, electrical, petroleum civil, and structural engineers. We also have geophysicists. People who work on these complex processing facilities are strong chemical engineers. They are co-located with AI experts.
