Can digital solutions get beyond the pilot phase to deliver at scale?
When we launched the Delfi™ digital platform, back in 2017, we announced that the ‘Future is Digital.’ We presented a vision of connected workflows, automated processes, and seamless collaboration across oil and gas. We said liberated data would become the pulsing lifeblood driving quantum leaps in cost reduction, and productivity increases. Now, almost six years later, I think it’s time to take stock of the pace of digital transformation in the energy industry. Is it on track and is it meeting expectations?
Looking back, it was a bold and ambitious launch. Almost to the degree of being risky. We were in no doubt that there was an appetite for digital transformation; even then, it was widely viewed as inevitable. But we faced a cautious industry that was just emerging from the 2014-2015 downturn—so it was an appetite many would rather satisfy at tomorrow’s suppertime, than today’s breakfast.
Much has changed in the world since that initial announcement. Covid-19 lockdowns caused a rapid clamor for remote working capabilities, driving demand for cloud-based solutions to soar. Pressure on oil supply, as a result of the challenging geopolitical situation globally, has spawned a new era of exploration, after years of decline—but with investors still dubious at long-term prospects, margins are squeezed, and timescales must be shortened. And, of course, the urgency to address climate change; for the world to transition to an energy secure, low carbon future, grows ever more acute.
From proof of concepts in the early years, to more recent global deployments at scale, we’ve proved that the performance and efficiency increases needed by all—the reduced cycle times, rise in monitoring and measuring requirements, and widescale decarbonization, can be delivered by a combination of cloud and edge computing solutions.
I firmly believe, digital transformation will accelerate the energy transition. We’re seeing digital adoption gather pace across all geographies. Everywhere I go, I see evidence of leading-edge technologies making a huge difference: debottlenecking, waterflood recovery, lift performance optimization, drilling beyond the technical limit. Scaling deployments to do all these things in harmony, across a single asset, or an entire operation, is where digital can really drive performance impact. It’s the greatest opportunity—and the greatest challenge.
Deploying digital at scale is not straightforward. It requires deep understanding and experience of the task at hand, workflow integration, seamless connection with data sources and applications, and on top of that, the solution must be robust, secure, and maintainable. Once all of this is in hand, you have to build it—this requires vast software engineering skills and resource, new workflows, and new procedures. The complexity of all this is why many digital projects get stuck at the pilot phase.
From an SLB perspective, we recognized early on that no company could deliver all the facets of digital transformation alone. And we took this to heart, working intimately with customers; Chevron, OMV, Saudi Aramco, PETRONAS, Petrobras and many more. We worked with them to understand their problems and opportunities, and we created the solutions together. We’ve invested in many locations around the globe where our customers do business—to support them hand-in-glove with initiatives like the incredibly successful INNOVATION FACTORI™, and more recently, with AI Academy—a global education program to upskill energy domain experts and university students in data science and digital technology. We focused on delivering in-country value and developing local talent, supported by an immense R&D commitment to digital. We’ve learnt how to become a cloud operations business, rather than simply a software provider. We’ve also nurtured very distinctive partnerships with big tech, Microsoft, AWS, Google, and with emerging tech leaders such as Dataiku and Cognite. And we championed openness from the beginning. This has evolved into a connected global ecosystem of our technology partners and customers.
We’ve put all the digital pieces into place and grown our capability. Today, I can say we have delivered digital transformation at scale to customers in every region of the world, and more join us every day.
The digital transformation of energy is passed the pilot phase, it’s on track and gathering pace, rapidly. AI, machine learning, automation, data analytics, cloud and edge computing, are delivering on customers’ ambitions for faster growth, lower carbon, and lower costs.
Today, our digital vision is digital reality.
