Can you please share some insights into how digitalisation and advanced technologies transformed the energy sector?
Digital technologies have changed the energy sector from being focused purely on energy to being focused on data.
Advanced software solutions and data insights have enabled organisations to become more efficient. Digital solutions are already helping to integrate the usage of renewables to keep the scale of production, while becoming more sustainable. With the pressure coming from investors, employees, media and NGOs, industry players will have to accelerate the energy transition.
We see a new business model emerging – energy is no longer “one product”, it is diversified, and it comes with a lot of data, and data itself becomes a product.
A second change are unmanned and remote operations. With a slow but visible adoption we start to implement VR, drone, robotics, and machine learning to increase the capability to run systems and operations remotely within oil and gas industry.
For example, our EcoStruxure Autonomous Production Advisor which is an edge analytics platform, uses Machine Learning Models to help oil & gas companies operate remote wells while minimising the need for human intervention.
What specific challenges in the energy sector can AI and automation address?
The area where we see the highest value of implementing AI is in putting data to work in support of decision-making. Today, many industry players are already collecting data from the whole value chain, the next step is to organise better and accurate data flows and be able to turn into a valuable insight. This is where AI support making smarter business decisions and allows continuous improvements through agile decision-making based on reliable, dynamic information.
How can oil and gas firms leverage AI and data to ensure operational efficiency and agility?
The key to succeeding in implementing AI based solutions is having the right data model. Today, less than half of an organisation’s structured data is used in making decisions.
When oil and gas companies gain a deeper understanding of how their facilities function and how to operate more efficiently, AI can become an integral part of their future success. Their ability to provide reliable data and make data-based decisions with a help of AI can become a source of operational agility and resiliency.
The last decade provided us with data. The next decade is about learning to use data wisely.
Will the increased use of AI and automation technologies displace jobs in the energy sector? What skills will be in most demand?
We observe a major shortage of manpower in Oil & Gas, and many experts are at the end of their professional careers. On the one hand, AI can help automate processes and free up energy of employees from repetitive tasks, it can also support human-AI mutual feedback and learning.
The time gained through automation of manual tasks can be spent on other value-added activities that require a combination of human and technology enablers.
For example, by implementing our full EcoStruxure Power & Process solution, integrating process automation, power distribution, and energy management at Hubei Sanning Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. we helped them achieve up to 30% improvement in workforce efficiency.
On the other hand, the challenge is to attract talents who would drive the adoption of digital technologies.
Among younger generations, the digital and sustainability plays a role of attractors. Hopefully when they see the challenge of Oil & Gas energy transition, to make it more sustainable, they will take up the gauntlet.
How is Schneider Electric supporting enterprises in the energy sector to successfully take advantage of AI?
As a provider of energy and automation digital solutions for efficiency and sustainability Schneider Electric offers dedicated automation solutions for oil and gas systems to achieve operational excellence.
We provide organisations capabilities and technologies such as digital twin and data analytics. For example, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the world’s leading energy producers, successfully created a digital twin of their entire operation, using Schneider Electric and AVEVA software as their technology backbone. With a system implemented in under eight weeks, we help ADNOC maximise value from their operations by collecting and interpreting their data and providing actionable insights that drive real world efficiencies. To achieve their digitisation goals, we helped them to allocate, centralise and integrate all their data into a single platform.
We also help customers achieve energy efficiency. Hubei Sanning Chemical Industry achieved with us 5% reduction in energy consumption. North American Biodiesel Refinery achieved smaller eHouse footprint and lowered the fuel carbon lifecycle enough to meet the most stringent low-carbon fuel standards. Formosa Petrochemical Corp. is gaining $4.2 million a year in throughput improvements & energy savings thanks to our solutions.
Finally, we enable organisations to achieve shorter commissioning time. We are helping one of the world’s largest liquified natural gas facilities in the Middle East achieve a significant reduction in commissioning time. Thanks to our EcoStruxure solutions all systems were online and fully operational two months ahead of schedule, while ensuring secure, reliable, and efficient operations.
How can digital technologies enable energy firms achieve sustainability?
New technologies are catalyst for greater efficiency, productivity and sustainability.
We see tremendous opportunity to use the data and insights generated by organisations today to drive both operational benefits and sustainability. The data generated by operations, combined with the expertise of our global team, can significantly enhance how companies approach sustainability.
At Schneider, we have experts in sustainability and digital solutions, we can help cover the expertise gap by offering our sustainability and industrial automation services and share experience in monitoring ESG goals in the past 20 years.
We partner with Oil & Gas customers in their digital transformation and energy transition to achieve sustainability goals, make their processes more energy efficient and protect the environment by making these processes more reliable and secure.
How would you define a future-ready energy company?
The past 18 months have taught us a lot about business resiliency. Digital maturity has become a factor that can make or break an organisation in a crisis like COVID-19.
Technology will help the digital transformation accelerate, but no technology alone will become a source of a lasting competitive advantage and success. What matters is the business transformation that puts digital first – from customer experience, product design and process automation to partnerships and the way the organisation operates every day.
Partnerships are crucial for these new opportunities. By opening door to solutions from other industries, we can unlock unprecedented opportunities and co-innovate together.
Future-ready energy company will successfully combine technology, human capabilities and partnerships to be part of the solution to the greatest challenge – climate change.
