In an exclusive interview with Oil & Gas Middle East, Kevin Dehoff, President and CEO of Honeywell Connected Enterprise and George Bou Mitri, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies, MENA, discuss how the company is leveraging technology in overcoming challenges faced by the energy sector.
Designed to support the sustainability and operational performance objectives of industrial users, Honeywell Forge is a suite of industrial-grade SaaS and on premise applications that unites real-time data across assets, people and processes into a system of record for a 360-degree view that drive intelligent operations.
Oil & Gas Middle East: The energy markets are facing historic disruption. Can you talk to us about the role of technology in navigating challenges in the oil and gas industry?
Dehoff: In speaking with customers in the oil and gas industry, there are three things that I’m hearing. The first is around digitalisation, which is how to drive operational performance improvements.
The second is around sustainability, and in particular, around emissions.
And then the third is around OT cybersecurity. And so, what we’re trying to do with Forge and in Honeywell Connected Enterprise is building outcome-based solutions to help our customers deliver against those three transformational themes.
And whether that’s through plant optimisation or enterprise emissions management and reporting, or whether that’s through plants or enterprise-level OT cybersecurity, we’re bringing the solutions along with the technology to help our customers on those three themes. And that’s how we are positioning Honeywell Forge.
Mitri: From an energy transition perspective, both national and international oil companies are increasingly are looking at their energy mix, margins and supply chain. So there’s quite a bit of transformation as companies are addressing questions like, do I have enough gas supply? Is refining capacity at par with the need? Is the oil production at par with the global requirements?
And we’re seeing more and more focus going toward marginal improvement for supply chain integration versus capacity increase. And as we’re doing that, what’s very important is the other transition in the industry, which is how companies can better manage operations, assets, and people.
Oil & Gas Middle East: With more companies pushing to address climate change and achieve net-zero targets, what is Honeywell’s approach toward sustainability?
Dehoff: Honeywell is making commitments relative to sustainability in particular to achieve carbon neutrality in facilities and operations by 2035. And the other thing is the fact that more than 60% of our investment in new products and new technology have a sustainability dimension to them.
From a software solution perspective, we believe that the real value is going to be in the company being able to measure emissions. We’re investing in an enterprise emissions management solution that allows us not only to monitor, measure and report emissions, but more importantly, optimise operations.
Now, from a from a technology perspective, it’s nothing new for Honeywell to be leading in the sustainability space. A lot of our offerings have been in areas like carbon capture and blue hydrogen for years.
We have the capabilities to leverage the molecules and the processes either upstream or midstream, to be able to generate value for the national oil companies and the international oil companies while also looking more broadly at areas such as energy optimisation and building management.
Oil & Gas Middle East: Can you talk more about Honeywell’s presence in the Middle East, and some of your key regional projects specific to energy in the region
Dehoff: We’ve had about a 70-year presence here in the Middle East. At the core, Honeywell is a controls company. Honeywell is uniquely qualified or distinctive in terms of being able to meet some of these local and regional requirements. It’s the combination of that install base with the fact that we’ve got the domain expertise, we understand the how the processes work, and then we couple that with some of the digitalised enterprise software that I discussed earlier.
For instance, we just recently signed a joint venture agreement with Saudi Aramco for the code development and the commercialisation of our next generation, digital technology. It’s going to be incredibly exciting, and I think going to scale across the entire region.
Mitri: We are highly engaged in terms of some of the major programs in the region, particularly gas expansion and gas production.
Our technology is at the forefront across all these projects. And that goes in two areas — on the automation side where we deploy solutions and the information layer, where we bring all the plants together into a single dashboard to make plant operations easier, more intuitive and more informative.
