Data deluge problem for the oil and gas industry

Can too much data be a problem? I believe we all can agree that an abundance of anything, especially data, can become an issue at some point. The oil and gas industry, which is a veteran data generator, is no exception to the issue, and data growth is posing serious questions. However, now that the issue is identified, the next step is to find a way to deal with it as efficiently as possible. Too much data is a matter of perspective, and this challenge can be viewed as an opportunity – an opportunity to explore new avenues of growth.

Long before big data was making headlines in the tech cosmos, huge oil and gas companies were hoarding loads of data, such as: 3D earth models, videos, historical seismic data from deep probes, well log data, temperature registers, chemical analysis reports and sensor data from machines and production data that aid technical decisions and drilling strategy. Technology and cost constraints have enabled the oil and gas industry to have mature business intelligence systems. However, many companies often performed analysis related to business intelligence in isolation on a comparatively smaller set of enterprise data, which limits a company’s ability to come up with meaningful and actionable insights for better business outcomes.

With recent advancements in big data technology, enterprises can build cost effective scalable platforms to process and analyse the ocean of data captured in real time from various sources. Big data and advanced analytics technologies have ample scope in both the upstream and downstream oil and gas sector. Understanding and leveraging the data for upstream, which is exploration and production, has helped uncover new business opportunities and improve performance through fast, agile analytics aimed at modelling and simulating business performance. Similarly, in downstream, big data has improvised planning and forecasted results, maximizing and enhancing maintenance and production.

Oil and gas companies can leverage the broad spectrum of technologies of big data in various aspects in areas such as digital oil field, exploration and production, preventive maintenance and compliance with environmental, health and safety regulations. By analyzing data generated by sensors during oil drilling exploration, production, refining, market and social data oil and gas enterprises gain competitive advantage in many ways:

• Exploration and production of oil reserves. Seismic monitors generate vast amount of data that can potentially identify new oil and gas reserves and also trace signatures previously overlooked. The massive amount of data generated can be analyzed along with different variables such as weather data, soil data and help predict real-time success of drilling operations during explorations of new reserves.
• Preventive maintenance of equipment. Using big data technologies, a variety of data captured by a diverse set of sources and formats, oil and gas enterprises can quickly analyze the safety, environmental anomalies in drilling, well problems, etc., and shut down drilling before it turns risky. Also, sensors at the drill heads can be monitored to collect data about behavior of the equipment and predict when it is going to fail or if it needs maintenance. Combined with historical data and mechanics of equipment, it becomes possible to predict the life of the equipment well in advance.
• Compliance with environmental, health and safety regulations. Big data and oil and gas are a powerful combination that can deliver massive benefits even in the compliance space around environmental, health and safety regulations. Shutting down the drills in case of abnormality, determined through big data analytics, can prevent environmental disasters. In addition, data from smart video cameras can be used to record what is happening in real time and avoid any scenario of security breach at the sites. Data collected from geo-mechanical state of earth models helps in understanding the earth’s subsurface to develop safe and sustainable drilling methodologies.

Currently, the oil and gas industry is at varying stages of big data and analytics adoption. A maturity curve is emerging, and some early adopters are visible. One of the earliest stages in that maturity curve is connecting operating assets, performance monitoring and problem diagnosis. By introducing analytics and more flexible production techniques, the industry can boost productivity by as much as 30 percent.
The bottom line is that the oil and gas industry has an opportunity to re-imagine how it approaches data-driven intelligence. Doing so requires new integrated planning and operations tools to coordinate and refocus resources. The first step is to create and operationalize data science as a way to standardize analytics and data platforms internally. This will enable companies to industrialize their use of analytics.