Artificial Intelligence or AI is not being used extensively in varying sectors of society, including the oil and gas industry. AI-related technologies are being deployed by several oil and gas companies today to not only boost production from existing infrastructures but also discover new oil and gas projections. Paul Favret mentions that offshore oil and gas companies ideally use AI with data science to leverage complex data that can make the oil and gas exploration and production processes simpler. These technologies can help companies to discover new exploration prospects and facilitates better usage of existing infrastructures. Paul is an accomplished oil and gas executive. In fact, he previously was CEO and Founder of Resource Energy Partners. His years in the oil and gas industry helped him to gain a good understanding of the emerging technologies in the domain.
AI is providing to be a dependable enabler for oil and gas companies when it comes to carrying out distinguished processes. Applications of AI in the industry range from analyzing seismic and subsurface data faster to ensuring production optimization with computer vision. This technology also helps in reducing downtime for predictive maintenance of equipment, ensures improved modeling for the prediction of oil corrosion risks to reduce maintenance costs, as well as delivers insights for better reservoir understanding.
Unplanned down can cost millions of dollars to oil and gas companies; especially if it is caused due to catastrophic asset failures. To manage such issues, AI can be used to predict the odds of good collapses before they occur, ultimately reducing maintenance hassles, ensuring better operation of well, and even extending their remaining useful life.
Asset management is one of the crucial areas of oil and gas industries where AI-enabled digital technology can be highly useful. This technology can help in asset maintenance, monitoring, project planning, and even lifecycle management. Digital twins allow oil and gas companies to effectively handle discerning challenges and production imbalances caused by unforeseen events like the Covid-19 pandemic, and also make handling equipment reliability issues simpler. To be properly responsive in the ever-evolving commercial landscape, oil and gas firms need systems with real-time visibility like digital twins.
Paul Favret mentions that one of the key challenges faced by oil and gas companies is the detection of defects in fault-susceptible processes or inappropriate threading in pipelines. Defects that are noticed at the end of the production line from upstream processes may incur losses and create a lot of hassles. AI can be used to validate production quality and offer deep insights into defects. AI-powered defect detection solutions can be installed for better outcomes. These solutions are way more cost-effective than fundamental processes. Predictive analytics can be used to alert the operators about the health of equipment so that proactive actions can be taken to steer clear of any major catastrophe.
