Big data ‘new gold dust for oil and gas’

RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business

Like almost all the industries, oil and gas sector deals with big data on a daily basis. Amid the speculations about fluctuations in the sector, regional experts are advising energy firms to sharpen their technology skills and invest in data management strategies to improve production and efficiency.
Such is the importance of big data for this sector that experts are calling it ‘the new gold dust for the oil and gas industry’, if it is handled wisely.
Talking to Emirates Business, Fadi Kanafani – Regional Director Middle East and Africa (MEA) for NetApp — a multinational storage and data management company — said, “Today, the oil and gas industries are facing major challenges as the price of oil is exhibiting a downward trend and the costs of extraction are rising. It is a fact that oil and gas companies across the globe deal with large quantities of data, on a daily basis. This makes it important for the energy companies to handle the big data very efficiently.”
Apparently, over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of energy companies that are investing in technologies like visualization, seismic software and data management tools with an aim to improve production and efficiency.
“Oil and gas companies have the potential to tap into different forms of data and use it to generate insights that can empower decision-makers. The data can come from various sources including equipment monitoring, maintenance records, seismic inputs, weather patterns, and production information,” he advised. It is notable that usable data generated in the oil and gas industry will grow from 52 Exabyte to 888 Exabyte in 2020, according to official reports.
“On a business level, big data and advanced analytics can assist companies in exploring new resources. They enable the identification
of unnoticed yet potentially productive seismic trace signatures
which can then be explored. The data makes it a lot easier to locate new hydrocarbon deposits,” said Kanafani.
As per McKinsey Global Institute report, “In 2015, an estimated amount of $168 billion was spent on enterprise mobility solutions, with $8 billion spent on oil and gas mobile apps. The investment has been positive for oil and gas companies as they saw a 63 percent increase in cost savings and a 51 percent increase in productivity.”
However, big data adoption in the Middle East region is lower than Europe and North America but industry leaders expect that growth drift is positive and awareness is rising as companies strive to maintain their competitive gain.