Artificial Intelligence Digitizing Offshore Oil and Gas

By CIOReview | Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Artificial intelligence (AI) is knocking on the doors of offshore oil and gas industry with a promising return on investments (ROI).

FREMONT, CA: Offshore activities occur in waters of more than half the nations in the world. Wells are drilled with the help of a wide range of technologies with newer advancements addressing the challenges of a digital economic landscape. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one such technology that is knocking on the doors of offshore oil and gas industry with a promising return on investments (ROI).

Oil and Gas through the Lens of Data Science, AI and its Subsets

There are two primary applications of AI technology within the oil and gas industry – machine learning (ML) and data science.

In the offshore oil and gas industry, ML enables the companies to analyze complex operations and respond with immediate outputs that human operators may not have noticed. ML also allows the detection of patterns according to a range of inputs. Further, AI helps to test the impacts of innovation or to gauge the environmental risks in the oil and gas industry.

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Data science leverages AI to gain invaluable insights from data while using neural networks to link similar data pieces and creating a larger overall picture. AI can be used to comprehend the complex data sets and also to discover new exploration opportunities while ensuring the efficient utilization of the existing ones.

AI Applications

As of January 2019, BP Ventures invested in Houston startup Belmont Technology that resulted in an AI-based platform nicknamed “Sandy” to notch up the company’s AI capabilities. Sandy enabled to interpret geophysics, geology, and reservoir project.

The AI bridges the gap and links the information together while identifying new connections and workflows, and creates a robust image of BP’s subsurface assets. Using its neural network, the oil company can then consult the data in the knowledge graph.

In another example, the SparkPredict platform utilizes ML algorithms to analyze sensor data that enables the company to recognize suboptimal operations and impending failures in advance.

AI in the Future of Oil and Gas

As stated earlier, AI has already been incorporated by the oil and gas companies across several sectors. With a rapid transformation of the digital landscape, the industry will need cutting-edge advancements to proceed at the same pace. Cognitive environments can provide the decision-makers with a common platform to share insights, enable target analysis and simulation, and assimilation of complex data sets into the system.