CREDIT: SLB
TECH & AI
Oil and gas fields are among the most industrially productive entities in human history. Take Saudi Aramco’ s Ghawar Field, for instance. This one oil field is capable of producing almost four million barrels of oil every single day.
But despite their prolific output, oil and gas fields can be very inefficient. In fact, the IEA suggests that typically only 30 % of oil in a reservoir is successfully recovered after standard operations, leaving roughly 70 % in the ground. As such, small efficiency gains scaled across an entire field can translate into a huge uptick in output.
For many large energy companies, technology holds the key to improving efficiency. British supermajor bp is one such firm. According to the company’ s reports, technology has helped to increase production by around 2 % every year for the last five years. That equates to roughly 20,000 extra barrels of oil equivalent a day.
The company also says its tools have helped protect, on average, around 4 % more production from going offline. So, what kind of technology is bp using to deliver these gains?
Seeing underground more clearly AI, advanced analytics and robotics are all helping bp to squeeze more value out of its resources and its infrastructure. One particularly useful application has been in seismic imaging – the art of understanding what lies beneath the earth’ s surface. In recent years,
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