What comes to mind when you think where does oil and gas come from?

Some companies with big machines drilling under the ocean and land, might be the first thing that comes to mind. Well these companies come in the “Upstream” category of the oil and gas industry. In this category, exploration and production takes place as stage one of the journey of oil and gas. 

Second stage being “Midstream”, is the stage where processing, storing and transporting of raw crude oil and natural gas liquids takes place. Whereas, in the third stage, the refining of crude oil into petrol, diesel, jet and other fuels takes place; with distribution and retail process for selling to end users. This is the final stage known as “Downstream”.

In the current era, all companies are compelled to cut down the efforts on finding and producing oil. With decades of improving technologies and advanced analytics, oil and gas industries started reaping multiple benefits, which has not only reduced the cost of all the processes from drilling for crude oil to selling finished products but also smoothed the journey a long way.

Top Benefits of Adapting Data Analytics in the Oil & Gas Industry

1.IMPROVED ACCURACY IN OIL EXPLORATION AND DRILLING METHODS: Advanced data analytics is helping organizations in developing tools and devices that help them in cutting time while simultaneously deriving crude oil. It also scans the area surrounding oil wells to determine if there is another source nearby and in which direction.

2. BETTER DECISION MAKING: Consider all possibilities, geographical area, conditions and resources to identify questions like if to proceed? how to proceed? when to proceed? etc. In this industry, data is critical, but not all data is crucial for every decision. So, data is broken down in order to identify every relevant piece of contributing data and quickly come up with the most apt decision.

3. EFFICIENT USAGE OF MACHINERY: It is very crucial to keep a perfect tab on whether or not fuller utilization of all the resources and machinery is being done or not, as high or unplanned usage will cost money as well as time. Whereas advanced data analytics helps fulfill the tasks of machinery with the least amount of bottlenecks.

4. FORECASTING SUPPLY AND DEMAND: Forecasting through advanced data analytics and operational analytics ensures minimal wastage of either resources or time improving efficiency. Make daily operational data relevant to reduce operating costs and improve recovery rate.

The emergence of business analytics has become even more prominent in the last 2 decades being rising price of crude oil as a crucial reason and in order to fight this inflation in oil sector, technology is helping as much as it can by saving millions of dollars of crude oil players in the industry right now. Data analytics is helping all three, upstream, midstream and downstream in the best way possible

The processes of exploring crude oil and gases, their production & transportation generate huge amount of data. The data volume keeps on growing day after day. With new data acquisition, processing and storage solutions & evolution of new devices to track a wider geographical array of reservoir, machinery and personnel performance, current data storage usage is expected to get doubled in the next few years.

Additional crucial problems, companies like IntelliCompute are solving to make processes smoother:

  • DIFFICULT TO LOCATE: Sitting as deep as 35,000 ft below the surface of the earth, oil here is quite hard to find as it is hidden between layers of stones. The data collected from wells has higher resolution but is accurate for only a small area (10 feet) around the well. 
  • ENVIRONMENT SAFETY: Finding and producing oil involves many environmental hazards and human safety concerns which are to be addressed seriously. It is mandatory to do all the analysis and complete the procedure with technical and humanitarian discipline.
  • COSTLY PRODUCTION: Oil is an expensive resource to produce, a lot of machinery, man power, technology and money is required to produce oil and it is important that the process must be done while keeping a strong string on profit margin and expenses taking cost, quantity and market supply into account.

Tapping in oil & gas industry is not a cakewalk for analysts, but the need and potential for reaping rewards are great. Out of the top 10 organizations in Fortune’s Global 500, 9 are oil & gas companies. More than 20,000 companies are linked with oil and gas businesses, and all of them are relying on advanced data analytics as well as operational analytics.

The oil & gas industry has immense opportunities now to capitalize on advanced data analytics, with rapid increase in data volume, modern solutions and up to date real time reports are required even more than ever in order to utilize the data in smarter, faster and efficient ways with lower costs.