How to Start the Digitization Process of Oil & Gas Records
The oil and gas industry is increasingly adopting digitization. In an era of volatile oil prices, oil companies are focused on keeping costs under control and driving operational efficiencies.
Upstream oil and gas companies have started leveraging digitization in some ways, including cloud computing, data analytics, and AI/ML applications. Since upstream facilities are generally in remote and environmentally sensitive areas, they face many challenges. Equipment uptimes and system reliability are the main concerns as any offshore maintenance work is costly. The strategic business value of data-based technology is immense, especially in unmanned oil and gas installations in offshore locations.
Oil and gas companies worldwide are adopting automation and are firmly on the path toward digital transformation.
For example, BP has created a vast data repository of over a million gigabytes where billions of data records from global operations are captured and made available to all their engineers.
But there are also smaller exploration and production companies that are starting to explore how best to adopt digital technologies and identify the critical transformative capabilities they need to develop.
The impact of digitization in upstream oil and gas operations
Production volumes are very high at offshore production platforms. At these levels, even marginal efficiency improvements have a significant financial impact. Enhanced efficiency increases production and translates into more revenue.
Research by McKinsey indicates that some of the high-impact digitization opportunities in upstream lie in production operations. For example, equipment monitoring, maintenance, supply chain processes, and day-to-day operations are high-value candidates for automation.
The basic premise to enable automation in oil & gas operations is to digitize all records and store them in a centralized repository, making them remotely accessible to people and processes at offshore locations. Digitized data can then be routed to various specialized applications to enhance production efficiency and enable preventive maintenance.
Challenges to digitization in the oil & gas upstream industry
Digitization in the oil and gas sector is complex—a digitally-enabled oilfield has sensor-based equipment, data-based systems and thousands of components generating big data. For example, a study by McKinsey indicates that an offshore production platform has a complex data set of over 40,000 data tags that may not all be connected or used. Oil and gas companies need new, well-designed data management capabilities to make this data actionable and use it for better business and operating decisions.
Geographically remote operations: Upstream companies operate in remote locations and sometimes hostile environments. High production volumes and the complexity of operations in arctic areas or deepwater platforms require reliable, automated or semi-automated processes and a logistics chain optimized for efficiency.
Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) concerns: HSE incidents impact profitability, but more importantly, they also damage the company's reputation as a safe and reliable operator. Automated production control, proactive equipment monitoring, and predictive shutdown systems are essential to prevent or mitigate catastrophic events. This requires documentation like equipment dossiers and maintenance and safety work order SOPs to be easily accessible in remote locations and to a distributed workforce.
Data management capabilities: It is not enough to have access to data such as production logs, equipment information, product datasheets, specifications, and SOPs. Oil companies must evaluate if they have the tools and skills to process and manage the data. Sometimes, maintaining data quality or consistency across different IT systems or networks is a challenge. Some companies don't have the requisite skills to aggregate and analyze data to make it actionable. It is crucial to identify shortfalls in capturing or processing data from their processes or systems. Addressing these shortfalls will improve the impact of digitization.
Oil companies can produce quite a significant impact by investing in digitization. According to a McKinsey report, improving production efficiency by just ten percentage points can yield a bottom-line impact of up to $220 million to $260 million on a single brownfield asset.
Digitization of oil and gas records: How RDS helps you get started
Data is the fuel that enables a company to advance by leaps and bounds on its digital journey.
Revolution Data Systems offers automation tools to digitize oil and gas records, optimize workflows, and streamline operational processes:
Document scanning: Operations in remote locations (like arctic areas or deepwater platforms) demand equipment documentation, production logs and process SOPs to be digitized and made accessible to end-users. RDS offers professional bulk scanning services which can be executed onsite or at our scanning bureaus across the US. Catch up on digitizing legacy documents for all remote assets and continue digitizing new documents produced daily with our digital mailroom service.
Document Management Software connects employees, clients, and partners with content they need in any process. It easily integrates with your existing applications to capture, store, retrieve, and manage documents.
Intelligent Capture Software automates data extraction from digitized documents to derive analytical insights, support maintenance processes, and reduce equipment downtime. We scan millions of records every month using OpenText Intelligent Capture, transforming documents like production logs and as-built equipment datasheets into actionable data as it enters your organization.
Business process management: Our consultants help your company improve business processes with our in-depth knowledge of workflow automation. We apply business rules, workflow management tools, and our application development experience to enhance the effectiveness of your business operations. We meet with your key team members to document the processes and build a go-forward strategy that leads to continuous process improvement.
RDS is the ideal partner for oil and gas enterprises to manage structured and unstructured content, digitize legacy and day-to-day documentation, and make it seamlessly available for remote operations in upstream processes.
Get in touch with our digitization expert consultant today. We are here to answer any questions you may have.