The Oil and Gas (O&G) industry has long dealt with market volatility and price downturns. In the quest to discover what lies below the surface, the sector has learnt to deal with large volumes of data by leveraging information technology (IT). However, the ever-evolving technology landscape and COVID-19 led disruptions have put pressure on the energy industry to induce automation and embark on a journey to digital transformation at all levels of the operation cycle.
While regions like North America and Europe are already leading the pack, the countries of Asia-Pacific (APAC) are fast catching up to leverage innovative technologies for achieving business goals. This is opening up new doors of opportunities to the Indian oil and gas industry as well.
In the recent years, the O&G industry has adopted advanced machinery aimed at increasing yields. It also has been using information technology applications for managing and organizing data being generated from the front-end operations. At present, some of the leading industry players are even implementing new-age technologies to re-imagine business processes and drive actionable insights from the available data pool.
Yet there is a dearth of data mapping, analysis and real-time decision-making between the layers of IT applications and machines, as well as the systems used for actual operations. It is this gap the O&G industry is looking to bridge by integrating the processes of information technology and operational technology (OT).
Factors pushing for OT & IT convergence
IT/OT convergence is the integration of information technology systems – use for data-centric computing – with operational technology systems, which is used to monitor events, processes and devices. It is also used to bring necessary adjustments in enterprise and industrial operations. In order to address operational issues in real-time, the IT operations in a firm must be equally competent.
The industry is aware and accepts the fact that the application of new-age technologies, such as AI, IoT and Big Data analytics, leads to faster and more accurate operational decision making. The adoption of advanced IT applications is set to play a key role in bridging the gap between upstream, midstream and downstream processes in the O&G industry using historical data analyses in real-time.
Hence, there arises the need for IT & OT convergence – the catalyst driving digital transformation in the O&G industry.
IT enablers have been instrumental in bringing about automation in the oil industry, prompting the need for this IT-OT sync up with the disruption in demand-supply and prices. There are several factors which prompted the need for automation. Some of the accountable factors include changing customer experiences, practices and expectations, rapid advances in technology and disruption in demand-supply as well as commodity prices.
