Blog Article

Future Ready Talent: Preparing Energy Experts for the AI Era

The digital transformation of the energy industry is lauded publicly for delivering gigantic leaps in performance across organizations. Yet we hear less about the skills gap that challenges the fulfilment of the industry’s digital ambitions: talent acquisition and retention. In the market for digital profiles, demand exceeds supply, and the energy industry faces intense competition from every other industry in attracting the AI-skilled professionals it needs.

Conversely, the industry’s lifeblood, the petrotechnical domain experts whose constant innovation has always driven the industry forward, are evaluating their positions for fear of their skills losing relevance in the AI era.

SLB sees training petrotechnical experts in AI as a ‘quick-win’ solution to both of these issues. Our strategy has a two-step approach:

• Upskilling all petrotechnical experts in our digital division as data science practitioners. They become translators between domain (subsurface, drilling, production, etc) and AI workflows, with competence in developing low-code and no-code AI solutions.
   
• Launching the Domain Data Scientist program. A selection of petrotechnical experts are upskilled with deep data science knowledge. Domain Data Scientists bridge the gap between domain problems and data science solutions, with competence in developing high-code AI solutions, with MLOps practices.

The Domain Data Scientist program is full-time and intensive classroom training over six-months. The comprehensive data science skills it teaches include decision science, machine learning using Python, and deep learning. To ensure the highest standards, we’ve partnered with industry-recognized subject matter experts and task our cohorts to work independently to develop a ‘real-world’ AI solution for customers.

Training petrotechnical experts in AI has multiplied their value and put them firmly back in the spotlight. Armed with a deep understanding of industry-specific knowledge and advanced data science techniques, domain data scientists are key facilitators in driving data-driven decision-making; they analyze complex datasets and use their petrotechnical expertise to extract valuable insights before proposing innovative solutions.

While playing a huge role in solving the digital talent challenge for energy, combining domain knowledge with data science expertise has another important purpose. Access to AI-trained petrotechnical experts and domain data scientists will enable customers to enhance the value and impact of their asset investments using highly customized and targeted AI solutions. It is the natural next step in driving meaningful innovation through digital transformation of the energy industry.