How is digital asset management necessary for the oil and gas industry?
There are two different aspects. There is this new interest for us in management after the digitisation trend. For our company, asset management is something that we have been doing for a long time, considering the key assets that we are manufacturing. Even when you consider new connectivity and cloud solutions, we had already been providing our customers with similar solutions, supporting the different types of asset performances on the electrical side. That is mainly because any failure like an outage in a refinery or other big assets or electrical element could turn into a disaster. Now with connectivity, big data, and analytics, there is even more interest to extend this type of services.
Why do you think digital asset management is growing in importance for the upstream industry?
Today, companies are trying to increase the performance of their existing assets. The interest today in the availability of the data is growing. So you find today that there is connectivity on all the assets offering a large data, which can be used to improve production. So the increased interest for asset management is coming from the availability of the data against the backdrop of cost reduction.
How will the digital concept help the regional industry ‘do more with less’ given the current low oil prices?
Definitely there is a CapEx reduction in the region. Digitisation is helping as a technology as well as a business model. This is what we call ‘digitalisation’, which is more on the business side. From one side, you provide the solution today not as a CapEx investment but as a service. On the other side, this type of solution is able to provide optimisation of OpEx, going by service factor and by ‘pay as you use’, reducing the cost for the customer. This ‘evolution’ has generated interest from the customer. I call this an ‘evolution’ and not a ‘revolution’ because this technology has been around.
What are some of the products or services that you have within this domain?
Our portfolio is very wide, covering significant activities as well as playing a big role in IOT and building smart cities. When it comes to asset management in oil and gas specifically, we look at it from a different perspective. Typically, assets tend to be associated exclusively with machinery, pumps, compressors, turbines, or other single equipment. However, for us an asset is a site, a plant or a unit, as we believe in changing the scale. So we are also looking to asset performance as a unit, where there is large data and analytics that can improve the performance of the asset.
We offer a hybrid model whereby we collect information from the site and analyse the performance periodically. This feedback is then converted in the form of a report that can be given to the customers.
Give me an idea of the clientele that you work with in the region and how you help them digitalise their operations?
We are working with the big players in the region. However, these types of solutions are not just limited to the major customers. So, we are also trying to penetrate the market to reach the smaller players. Some of the IOCs that we are working with in the region include KOC and Aramco. For example with Aramco, we are focussing on the approach of having a better understanding of assets through 2D and 3D augmented reality technology.
