2019 Tech Trends for The Oil & Gas Industry

Oil and gas companies across the globe are facing widespread change. Specifically, the significant price volatility as shifting geopolitical dynamics see the supply-and-demand equations diverge in various geographies. Oil and gas companies now must also comply with the increasing environmental regulation designed to support de-carbonisation. In turn, this is pushing the industry’s growth imperative towards expanding the natural gas and renewable energy businesses. Another rising trend this year is the collaboration between oil and gas companies. By creating key partnerships and collaborative arrangements, companies are capitalising on emerging opportunities in areas like: Supply chain integration Logistics Trading Payments As companies operating within the industry navigate through the fast-evolving environment, they are also continuing their digital transformation journeys. This is with a view to drive growth, productivity, efficiency and safety across their operations, while also maintaining their efforts to explore and forge new business models. Key Technology Trends Four key technology trends are playing a big role in determining companies’ strategies for delivering growth amid today’s universal change: The Rise of the “Cloud-First” Strategy Oil and gas companies are beginning to move to cloud-based platforms where they can host their business applications related to areas like sub-surface, land and production systems. With companies expecting greater control and self-service to be provided by applications using analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), the trend is heading towards 100% cloudification of all new applications within a couple of years. Operationalising Digital Representations of Physical Assets Asset performance management (APM) and “digital twin” initiatives are set to unite, driving the development of new solutions for managing critical assets. In addition, asset management has become more concerned with risk and reliability. Long-term programs and initiatives are being launched to source, manage and also understand asset operational data and performance KPIs in real time. Augmented/virtual reality technologies are also playing a significant role alongside the APM tools and applications. Furthermore, real-time asset and worker tracking solutions are becoming more common, as worker safety and productivity are taken more seriously. Higher Adoption of IoT Devices and Edge Computing Continuing to increase adoption of sophisticated sensors, companies are collecting more data from edge computing devices. New interoperability and data interface protocols will be created to enable the data from the legacy arrangement to be shared on the IoT platforms. IT will play a growing role in managing the device connectivity, data processing and application workloads both on the edge IoT platforms and the cloud. Renewed and Holistic Focus on Data and Data Technologies Business analytics and AI systems are progressing rapidly, enabling an increase of historical labelled data for model training and testing. Within a few years, assets will be deployed with self-diagnosing and healing capabilities. Asset maintenance decisions will be made by AI bots/operators with minimal to no human involvement. All these developments and trends are leading to an array of challenges for companies as they seek to manage an increasingly complex data landscape. Many issues may significantly obstruct a successful digital transformation, such as: Data veracity concerns Bias in models Data security threats Lack of metadata management Additionally, applications using blockchain technology are gaining momentum in oil and gas companies, especially in areas like: Supply chain Logistics Trading Joint ventures Production accounting This development is redefining the role of data governance that IT is supposed to administer. Summary The tech trends described will help to influence innovations in many areas of the business, with the relative timing and costs of these innovations varying widely. As the industry’s adoption of these technologies continues to advance, the resulting benefits flow into the business. Business growth and technology innovation complement each other, going hand-in-hand. Goudsmit UK The Goudsmit UK team has extensive training, certifications, and also experience designing and building complex precision components and magnetic assemblies. Every product is also optimised for quality, performance and cost. Goudsmit UK’s magnets withstand challenging environments and demanding applications. Our extensive knowledge and resources coupled with continuous innovation have made us a preferred industrial magnet manufacturer for oil and gas operations. Contact us today for more information at info@goudsmit.co.uk. Or you can also speak to a member of our team on +44 (0) 2890 271 001. For more information on manufacturing capabilities for the oil and gas industry visit our webpage. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.

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