AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability, highlighted how the acceleration of digital is transforming the energy industry in a post-pandemic landscape. AVEVA CEO Craig Hayman, who spoke at CERAWeek 2021, is championing the rapid digital evolution of the energy sector to drive transformative change. As workers have been forced to adapt new digital tools for remote work, the status quo has clearly been disrupted.
Digital innovation through the use of predictive analytics to better anticipate the future, data to better inform current decisions in the here and now, and digitization and automation to deliver cost efficiencies and speed is driving renewed growth energy organizations globally. Organizations that have pivoted to digital successfully, are already generating up to 2 and 10 percent improvement in expanded production and up to 30 percent savings in cost.
PwC’s “2020 Digital Operations study for energy: Oil and gas” report found that the main barriers of the implementation of changes provided by digitalization are due to limited knowledge sharing (77%), insufficient digital training (74%) and a lack of digital talent (72%). Regarding the lack of digital talent, 2019 data from oil and gas companies, collected by KPMG, found that chief information officers (CIOs) feel there are skills shortages in business analysis (47%), big data/analytics (41%), artificial intelligence (37%), cybersecurity (35%) and enterprise architecture (33%).
A Challenging Macro-Economic Environment Is Creating New Opportunities
Hayman noted that industrial software is, “rapidly enabling and accelerating the energy transition” for diverse industries, as well as supporting the efficiency and viability of the renewables sector. The current pandemic has shown enterprises throughout the world how dependable enterprise operations can be upended almost overnight
“We are about a year into the pandemic. At the outset, many energy majors focused on CAPEX and certainty and as a result, there was never any room for error. On the OPEX side, teams are looking to reduce expenses without increasing the risk,” Hayman said. “We have seen five years’ digital acceleration crammed into the space of just ten months as well as a resurgence around giving people the tools to do their job, by harvesting data and predicting when facilities will fail.” Key to surviving in this pandemic is how organizations use data to make sure the capital projects are delivered reliably.
A Transforming Energy Sector Is Generating New Demands
Hayman says that the energy sector will undergo a ‘wholesale transformation’, where trust, partnership and the human journey will be absolutely key. “As an industry, we’re at the start of the journey – there are more transformative behaviours to come as well as silos that need to be broken down,” he said. “Even in times of rapid change, energy companies’ two most valuable assets remain their people and their data.”
“Integrating human insight and operational information including the way that we design, build and run assets can evolve to be more efficient, intelligent and sustainable. We believe that the future mix will be defined by what we call the three Ds: demand, digitalization and ongoing disruption,” Hayman commented.
Industrial technology is key to realizing a more resource-efficient value chain and will support circularity as well as enable the transition to renewables and low-carbon energy. Digital tools, powered by human insight, can leverage integrated data and analytics to realize the energy company of the future more quickly and efficiently and that is why AVEVA is working with leading EPCs and owner-operators to make efficient, intelligent operations a reality.
According to IDC, a new era of efficiency and profitability is upon the oil and gas industry as the advantage Internet of Things (IoT) provides to the industry is improving the business productivity and reducing cost, which is a game changer as it creates new competitive advantage. IDC predicts that that IoT investments will rise though partnership with technology companies that have proven solutions to deliver improve efficiency and profitability while combating risk and security threats. The critical success factors are now to deliver value to the business and increase return on investments (ROI). Leadership and corporation need to be established between IoT Vendors and Oil & Gas in order to handle adoption that meets organizational goals.
“As markets continue to evolve, the pace of change will also accelerate, and the possible gains are increasing. Combining information and artificial intelligence with human insight is crucial to optimizing engineering and operations to drive performance intelligence, and support the energy transition,” Hayman concluded.
