GEC NEWS WIREIndustry must focus on cyber security, integration and analytics to reduce extraction costs and plug systemic skills crisis
Oil and gas companies in the Middle East are being urged to utilize the competitive advantage of big data to create operational efficiencies and increase oil well production by up to eight percent. According to the findings of a white paper released by Booz Allen Hamilton in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) this week, the GCC region’s hydrocarbon industry must develop more sophisticated data strategies as it looks to mitigate an extended period of low oil prices.
Entitled ‘Securing and Enabling Data Driven Oil Fields: A look at the Key Drivers and Critical Success Factors of Operationalizing Digital Oil Fields’ the study – designed to support and inform the transition to data driven model – suggests that rapid advancements in processes have until now supported reliable and complex, if expensive extraction, but in an age of increasingly volatile oil prices the capture and analysis of big data will offer tangible benefits across the value chain. The paper cites Chevron’s i-fields project as successful model for a data driven oil field. The project is set to save the company over USD$1 billion annually.
In addition, the research found that data driven oil fields can help defend the industry from a looming skills gap by automating processes and socializing institutional knowledge through management systems. The paper references a study, which found that 75 percent of international oil companies felt staffing challenges were responsible for project development delays, and 59 percent of companies said the skills gap was a reason for greater industry risk taking.
In the Middle East, 50 percent of the region’s skilled oil and gas professionals are expected to retire within the next five to seven years.
“The oil and gas industry is a pillar of economic development in the Middle East region – particularly the GCC, and a primary source of employment and state spending,” said Atif Kureishy, Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton MENA. “Securing the industry’s viability in a way that is sustainable and resilient to external factors such as falling prices and a shortfall in human capital will rely on technology and analytics.
“Less than one percent of the data currently available on a modern oil rig is currently being captured and analyzed,” continued Kureishy, “meaning extractors and producers are leaving themselves increasingly vulnerable to low oil prices and a skills shortage. It’s important that we are not only capturing as much data as we can, but that the industry is able to identify the people and systems equipped to make sense of that data to inform better decision making.”
Whilst the capture and analysis of data offers tremendous cost and resourcing opportunities to the region’s hydrocarbon industry, digitization does present a growing security challenge – solutions to which must be integrated into a holistic data driven approach to oil field management, says Booz Allen.
The paper describes the oil and gas industry as being ‘particularly at risk to cyber-attack’ given its critical nature to economic and social security, and as companies look to migrate to more integrated, digital systems the attack area ‘increases together with the organization’s vulnerability’.
Dr. Mahir Nayfeh, Senior Vice President – Technology and Analytics at Booz Allen Hamilton MENA, said: “The industry finds itself at the intersection of a crisis in which a glut in global supply and a systemic shortfall in talent have intercepted each other – threatening the short term success of operations. But greater yet, is the sustained and evolving cyber threat from hacktivist criminals motivated by high stakes and low defenses.
“Devising strategies that allow organizations to maximize operations without compromising intellectual property will be about finding a defense in depth cyber security model that balances technology deployment to support data capture, with the analytical intelligence to interpret and understand what the data is telling you,” continued Dr. Nayfeh.
“That is why every data driven oil field must get three key components right – cyber security, integration and analytics – in order to realize its disruptive capabilities.”
