View

Poi

nt

Oil & Gas Industry

www.infosys.com

- Aditya Penjarla, Satyanarayana Varanasi, Nishanth Raj

Upstream Data – Analyze to Realize

Increasing demand, scarcity of talent, growth in data volumes, stringent environmental and public policies are few issues that oil and gas industry is today grappling with. Technology promises to bring a paradigm shift in addressing these challenges. The focus is on being proactive in detecting obscure and concealed problems and finding the right approach. The need of the hour for oil and gas companies is to do soul (data) searching and analysis, which, admittedly, will become new frontiers to differentiate in this competitive world.

2 | Infosys

Prepare for Black SwanThe cumulative effect of addressing these issues with traditional IT/ERP systems and strategies has led to ineffective real time decision making, increase in non-productive time and limited use of real time operating centers.

In order to overcome most of the challenges, upstream companies will have to look beyond their current technology investments and consider more advanced IT solutions. The investments have to be in areas of asset management coupled with strong analytical capabilities and big data.

Analytics

Cutting edge analytical capability can help uncover the realities that lie behind data and understand underlying causes of seemingly disparate incidents. It can also make organization/business unit/engineers ready for change (e.g. change of a drill bit), promote productivity (e.g. impact of not changing a drill bit), and provide financial visibility to top management (e.g. increase in bottom line).

Big Data

With ever increasing exploration and drilling activities, large volumes of new and archived seismic, geological, petro-physical, drilling, weather and equipment data are generated at tremendous rate. Data streaming from various sources has to be analyzed in an integrated manner. With regular technology upgrades, it becomes all the more important to comprehend historical data and predict near real time outcomes.

Upstream companies have tons of such data and find it extremely difficult to separate noise from relevant information. There is a need to have a solution which can address the challenges and add significant value, precisely in this area.

The Albert Einstein’s quote perfectly fits into our topic. The principal issue to manage the exponential growth of data along with real time analysis leads us towards embracing high performance computing and advanced analytical technologies. Upstream companies operating large in-house data centers are, therefore, seeking to upgrade their capabilities to cope up with the growing demand for larger data volumes and faster processing speeds.

Upstream Oil & Gas Industry: Challenges & OpportunitiesIncreasing global demand for oil and gas and declining discoveries of new oil fields have created a strong pressure on upstream oil and gas companies to augment their production capacity, besides enhancing their operational efficiency. Upstream companies are getting squashed between searching for oil in deep, harsh waters in remote and even hostile environments on one side and increasing logistics costs and responsibility towards preserving the environment on the other. With no major discoveries, upstream companies need to embrace a new technology - intelligent oil field that can help optimize production and reduce non-productive time (NPT) during drill and production activities.NPT is caused by mechanical failures of drilling rig equipment and problems associated with tools that run into weather and logistical issues. It leads to millions of dollars in incremental costs every year and is also one of the major contributors to the overall cost of drilling. One of the key variables which define non-productive time is asset integrity, which itself is one of the most debated topics from boardroom to basin. A tab on non-productive time not only reduces operating costs but also helps prevent major catastrophes.Real time monitoring of tools and equipment and predicting their reliability can significantly contribute in mitigating, if not eliminating, unnecessary trips, fishing, sidetracking or plugging the well, which, further, can reduce the overhead cost and minimize safety hazards.

“One of nature’s biggest forces is

exponential growth”Albert Einstein

Infosys | 3

Creating the Sweet SpotInfosys has been working extensively to address the challenges faced by upstream oil and gas companies. Infosys has the high performance data management (HPDM) solution that can help these companies by creating real time asset awareness, sending early warnings and alerts along with proactive recommendations. The solution processes, stores and analyzes real time drilling data, well-site information transfer standard markup language (WITSML), production data, production markup language (PRODML) from rig site aggregator systems and historians along with the historical real time data to review trends and patterns. It is extremely advantageous in extracting drilling and production performance information from real time data and enables operators to act faster, hence resulting in enhanced safety, meticulous and micro-level planning with reduced non-productive time.

The Infosys HPDM solution is scalable and leverages existing systems, data warehouse/ BI and has low processing latencies, advanced analytics and visualization tools. The advanced capabilities of the solution utilize standard workflows and provide automatic responses to real-time data changes. It’s superior predictive modeling, forecasting and simulation capabilities result in reliable automation support to free up skilled resources to engage in high value analysis and possibly generate labor related cost savings. The key value of the solution lies in being able to analyze patterns and trends embedded in massive volumes of real time data along with historical data, with no slump in performance, and hence ensuring availability and accessibility to actionable data and high-value, critical and meaningful insights.

You can also read more about the Infosys HPDM solution at http://www.infosys.com/Oracle/Documents/high-performance-data-management.pdf

TakeawayThe foundation of any organization rests on four key pillars - processes, economic performance, asset intelligence and people intelligence. The Infosys HPDM solution helps optimize activities across the four pillars and create a platform in the most effective manner which educates executives with thoughts like – “do you rifle through bulky reports and manuals to determine the nature of failures?”, “can you automate the what, when, and how of the failure?”, “do you face non-productive downtime because of multiple trips?”, “can you minimize downtime with a proactive, optimized maintenance program based on predictive analysis?”

© 2013 Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document.

About Infosys

Infosys partners with global enterprises to drive their innovation-led growth. That's why Forbes ranked Infosys #19 among the top 100 most innovative companies. As a leading provider of next-generation consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions, Infosys helps clients in more than 30 countries realize their goals. Visit www.infosys.com and see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with its 150,000+ people, is Building Tomorrow's Enterprise® today.

For more information, contact askus@infosys.com www.infosys.com

Authors

Aditya Penjarla Senior Consultant - Energy, Utilities, Communications and Services vertical, Consulting & Systems Integration unit, Infosys

Aditya has experience of working in projects for clients in energy & utilities industry & pre-sales. He holds a master’s in natural gas engineering.

Satyanarayana Varanasi Principal Consultant - Energy, Utilities, Communications and Services vertical, Consulting & Systems Integration unit, Infosys

Satyanarayana has extensive experience working with clients in oil and gas industry in various technical, subject matter expert (SME) and management roles. He is an engineering graduate from IIT Chennai and is also a PMP from PMI institute.

Nishanth RajSenior Principal Consultant - Energy, Utilities, Communications and Services vertical, Consulting & Systems Integration unit, Infosys

Nishanth is an expert in enterprise information management along with expertise in the areas of business process optimization, systems integration, ERP, logistics and supply chain management. He holds a master from Texas A&M and is a certified PMP, Sig Sigma, BPM specialist.