Oil, Gas Industry is Embracing its 'Big Data Tsunami'

Oil, Gas Industry is Embracing its 'Big Data Tsunami'
The industry's nervousness about storing data off-site is disappearing as machine learning and volumes of big data make cloud computing an inevitable reality.

John Markus Lervik, Co-founder and CEO of Cognite, believes old anxieties are dissipating faster than most people imagine. “We find companies are slowly realizing that a key plank of the vendors’ business is their pledge to keep data secure. That’s leading many CEOs to question what can their in-house data and cybersecurity teams do better than a vendor – whose sole purpose is to be a data custodian – can’t do. Logic here is to leave it to the experts, more so because it is cheaper and scalable than on-premise storage.”

Imagine the wave of data that is constantly coming from oilfields and refineries that needs to be stored. For that to be done using on premise storage would require the recruitment of new IT teams, support structure, cost and disruption ranging from necessary maintenance to regular hardware upgrades. Instead, cloud companies offer data storage as a service at a fraction of the cost.

With cybersecurity never far away from decision-makers’ thoughts, unless large sums of money are spent to secure every endpoint, Wi-Fi connection and physical access point to create some sort of a Pentagon or MI6-style secure environment, storage space via a cloud starts to make even more sense.  

At the end of the day, an oil and gas company would rather focus on resource maximization instead of operational headaches. It is why most small and medium players have been enthusiastic embracers of off-premise storage, and oil giants appear just as keen these days.

Take for instance Norway’s Equinor, whose SVP and Chief Digital Officer Torbjørn Folgerø loves quipping: ‘The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data’ (an Economist magazine headline from 2017).

“The volume of data is increasing and Equinor is comfortable with storing data off-premise, moving it from datacenters to public cloud, subject to jurisdictional constraints we face as an international operator. We view Big Data as an enabler of our objective of resource maximization,” Folgerø told Rigzone.

“In some ways, the oil and gas business has always been about data. Now with analytics we can leverage even historical data to optimize our business in new ways that could not have been possible as recently as 10 years ago.”

Folgerø also said the industry’s best days when it comes to data analytics lie ahead with only a fraction of the true potential having been realized this far. By that argument, it is about to get a lot more ‘cloudy’ for the oil and gas sector as its Big Data tsunami becomes more and more integral to operational efficiency and resource maximization.

Gaurav Sharma is an independent oil and gas analyst with over 15 years experience. He provides regular market commentary for events, publishers and broadcasters. Follow him on Twitter @The_Oilholic or email at gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com


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