Managing Data and Transformation in Oil & Gas

We recently had the pleasure of sharing our thoughts on a webinar hosted by Oil and Gas IQ. As the world of technology continues to rapidly evolve, we took the opportunity to share our view on:

• Emerging data trends for oil and gas organizations
• Subsequent available and emerging technology being leveraged
• Use cases for technology that can impact the performance of an Oil and Gas operation
• Building a technology ecosystem to support today and tomorrow

An on-demand recording can be accessed below, but we understand that for many of you readers time is a precious commodity—so you can get the short version here. But first let’s frame up the role that GE Digital, part of GE Vernova’s portfolio of businesses, is playing by providing modernized software solutions embedded with subject matter expertise.

As we move into 2024, you the readers, and the broader market, will begin to hear about “One Vernova.” More so, you will begin to see our beloved blue brand transform into green to continue to tell the GE story and the role we play supporting organizations in the energy transition—both with hardware and software.

By unifying the Energy businesses in Vernova, GE Digital becomes 1 of 12 businesses that spans: Digital, Energy Financial Services, Gas Power, Grid, Hybrids, Hydro, Wind, Power Conversion, Steam Power, and others. In fact, many of the hardware parts of the business are also Asset Performance Management users that provide, not only critical feedback on our software, but also generate insights that makes our software smarter. Under the new entity, GE Vernova will be providing more than 1/3 of the world’s energy with:

• 7,000 gas and 52,000 wind turbines installed
• Operations in 180 countries with more than 70,000 employees to support you
• 300+ APM customers providing Billions of data points that results in millions of analytics ran per day

Ultimately, this alignment brings our software closer to the organizations that we support and enables an increase of innovation to support any generation type due to our modernized approach with containerized and composable architecture.

In early 2023, GE conducted research in collaboration with Reuters. According to the study, it became apparent that energy organizations are “in” on Digital Transformation—specifically to help support energy transition efforts. Out of the polled executives across the energy industry, 44% noted that software and transformation is “Very Important’. With 33% stating it was “Extremely Important”. This leaves 10% of respondents who were less positive on Digital Transformation to meet their needs. Coincidingly, 64% of respondents noted that delivering on energy transition would not be possible without digitally transforming.

For oil and gas organizations, balancing peak performance while navigating to a possible more “green” future will seem like an endless journey—so it is important to chart milestones along the way to help everyone see progress. At GE as we work with our customers across the globe, we understand that each organization is at a different level of maturity when it comes to digital transformation. For some, they are just beginning to move out of “homegrown technology” like continuing to use general office tools like Excel, into industry best practice systems like Asset Performance Management. Then, we see organizations that have invested heavily in digital and are now moving on to the next frontier, whether that means autonomous facility operations, carbon capture solutions, or overall carbon management processes.

Now that the stage is set, let’s get into some of the software trends that will ultimately be making an impact on an oil and gas organization. It is important to remember in this context, that emerging technologies are just that—emerging—and require operational and business rigor to achieve full value. Let’s break a few down:

Big Data and Cloud Computing

Organizations are dealing with more data than ever and have more access to make decisions. However, is there a 'dark side' to having too much data? Does Cloud Computing make harnessing Big Data easier?

The term “Big Data” shouldn’t be a term that creates fear or anxiety for an organization. The idea of Big Data is the general concept that you are bringing in various types of data from different sources to make business decisions, which for oil and gas organizations, can help decrease risk of downtime, and production losses and show areas if further business efficiencies.

Although technically two different elements of transformation, using Big Data can benefit from the power of cloud computing. For everyone keeping score, these are two LARGE digital transformation initiatives that are becoming commonplace. As cybersecurity practices become more robust, organizations with confidential / critical data are beginning to make the shift to cloud in to give their enterprise the best opportunity to harness the power of data.

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML)

The issue with AI/ML today is that everyone seems to be an expert. Between vendors, in-house solutions, open-source technology and more, it is extremely difficult to understand what AI/ML principles will work best for you organization. For us, AI/ML falls under the umbrella of Transformation—but also Big Data and Cloud Computing. But, how do you know where to leverage AI/ML and what parts of AI/ML will really work?

With the increase of data across oil and gas organizations, it is important to remember that leveraging AI/ML is not a one-time change. AI/ML, inherently, becomes smarter with the more clean data that you run through the technology. However, we have seen organizations attempt to do widespread AI/ML but gloss over the importance of defined data classification practices. In the coming years, we will see organizations leverage AI/ML for more pointed use cases, like business scenario planning, simulation of asset health events, and finding connections in data that is not obvious.

Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics

Another trend across all energy verticals is predictive and prescriptive analytics. Along with AI/ML, these analytics require clean and accurate data. Technology like Generative AI to produce prescriptive analytics is now being pushed by nearly every software vendor on the planet—but just how much impact can it have for your organization, and more importantly are you ready to adopt it?

With the push to leverage these analytics, techniques like Descriptive and Diagnostic analytics are becoming forgotten, but they shouldn’t be. If your organization is continuing a digital transformation journey, starting with Descriptive and Diagnostic analytics on a specific use case can provide just as much value. How, you ask? To bring this back to data, often when using new technologies, organizations do not have a consistent data hierarchy practice. Across systems and siloes this could lead to bad data being used in models. By starting with, or simultaneously using Descriptive or Diagnostic analytics, organizations can tease out any data concerns before making the promise of an “Artificially Intelligent” enterprise.

We understand that the scope of an oil and gas business is immense. From Exploration to Trading and Operations to Development, oil and gas organizations are churning up new data every millisecond. When you think about the scale, and the required IT side of transformation, it is conceivable that across your business lines there are 10s, 100s or more applications being run for different purposes. At GE, our Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions excel in the development, operations, and refining areas across Upstream, Downstream, and Midstream parts of the business.

As a composable APM solution, GE has connector technologies to streamline data ingestion from EAM, CMMS, ERP, PI, and timeseries. By bringing in this data to a single location, built on a microservice-based back-end in our Cloud solution, Oil and gas organizations can create a single system of truth for Maintenance, Asset Reliability, Mechanical Integrity, and Operator Round programs. This standardization can then enable an oil and gas organization to leverage technologies such as AI/ML, cloud computing, and analytics on specific clean data that is directly related to a specific outcome. By doing so, organizations can increase the adoption of this technology, scale the program, and make the use of emerging technology more digestible for teams in the field.

Ultimately, as a technology and energy transition partner, GE provides a solution for any organization that is focused on digitally transforming—while also helping our customers to take the right steps on leverage such advanced technologies to reach the next level of business efficiencies with expectations of decarbonization goals.