Data is a key component of the oil and gas sector. Most businesses in this industry handle a vast amount of data daily. For example, the size of data that an average rig produces every day can reach up to 6TB. And for major operators, there are dozens of rigs and other plants that produce data, which is transmitted to major data centers where it needs be annotated, sorted and analyzed to ensure that the plants are carrying out their activities efficiently.
Currently, the Holy Grail of oil and gas companies is the ability to handle the increasing volumes of data in an agile, efficient, and controlled manner. Doing so will enable them to optimize today’s production and tomorrow’s discoveries. In fact, there are ample opportunities for oil and gas companies to use big data to get more oil and gas out of hydrocarbon reservoirs, reduce capital and operational expenses, analyze seismic data, increase the speed and accuracy of investment decisions, and improve health and safety while mitigating environmental risks, enable accurate drilling in oil reservoirs, improve extraction processes, and optimize processing workflows.
The following are some of the many applications of big data in the oil and gas industry:
- Analyzing seismic and micro-seismic data
- Improving reservoir characterization and simulation
- Reducing drilling time and increasing drilling safety
- Optimizing the performance of production pumps
- Improving assets and safety management
- Improving petrochemical asset management
- Improving shipping and transportation
- Improving occupational safety
In the industry’s upstream (i.e., the points in production that originate early on in the processes, such as rigs, FPSOs, etc.), activities include exploration, drilling, and extraction. Each rig produces terabytes of data every day. The interpretation of seismic data calls for high-tech processing computers with strong visualization capabilities. This is where big data comes in to analyze the seismic data. Upstream analytics start with gathering seismic data, with sensors placed in the potential location of interest, scanning for petroleum sources.
Next, the data is combined, cleaned, processed, and evaluated to select the ideal drilling location. Seismic data can also be pooled along with other datasets, including the organization’s past data on earlier drilling operations.
To effectively handle these huge amounts of data, the oil and gas industry has invested substantial amounts of money in major control centers. This data is produced by the plant for the purposes of cutting-edge technologies that assist in data annotation, analysis and production of useable data. Such data assists in facilitating the plant’s activities and make it more efficient and cost-effective.
A good example of such an activity is ADNOC’s Panorama Digital Command Center, one of the largest and most impressive digital command centers for an oil and gas company. The goal of this command center is to ensure business continuity by enabling real-time decision-making through secure remote access to data and analysis across ADNOC’s value chain.
ADNOC’s Panorama Digital Command Center
However, as of today, just a small portion of the data is being received in control rooms and analyzed successfully. In order to increase the effectiveness of data analysis, the oil and gas industry’s main challenge is to adopt and develop extraordinary core technologies that will enable the dramatic increase of data analytics processes. Doing so will facilitate activities, make them more efficient, and reduce both costs and environmental impact.