Industry Leaders Convene at Future Oil & Gas Conference in Aberdeen

The Future Oil & Gas 2024 conference, themed "The Era of AI," drew hundreds of industry experts to Aberdeen, Scotland on June 25-26, 2024.

Organised by Cavendish Group International, the seventh instalment of this event was hosted at Robert Gordon University and explored the transformative impact of digitalisation, disruption, and innovation on the upstream oil and gas sector.

The conference brought together a diverse array of stakeholders, including operators, service providers, EPCs, energy institutes, drilling companies, exploration firms, integration specialists, academics, and technology innovators.

Attendees delved into the key challenges and opportunities facing the industry, with a focus on leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as AI, energy transition, cybersecurity, organisational change, the industrial metaverse, and more.

High on the agenda were discussions around the smooth integration of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, as well as the importance of improved data sharing through collaboration. The growing prominence of digital twins for workflow and work progress management also emerged as a prominent theme.

"It is clear that AI is coming at us fast, and the energy industry is undergoing a profound transformation driven by digital innovation," said Merce Vintro Ricart, Manager of Natural Language Processing and Digital Innovation at Shell.

"These technologies, including AI, are helping us optimise operations, enhance safety, and reduce environmental impact."

A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical object that spans the object's lifecycle. It uses real-time data from sensors to simulate the object accurately. Digital twins are digital representations of physical objects, systems, or processes fed with continuous streams of real-time data. This concept is evolving and gaining attention in various industries including Oil & Gas.

“A very exciting trend has been the integration of digital twins, these are virtual replicas of our physical assets, which allow for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance. Although, among all these technologies AI really stands out as a game changer,” she continued.

The conference featured insights from industry leaders such as Zeeshan Rasheed of bp, and Equinor’s Ashild Hanne Larsen, who discussed the importance of embracing AI, addressing regulatory challenges, and driving diversity and inclusion in the sector's digital transformation.

Opening the event Adam Soroka, Cavendish Group CEO, greeted the delegates by saying: “It is clear that AI is coming at us fast. We are impacted as consumers to the access and availability of applications like Chat GPT and as our strapline suggests, like it or not we are in the era of AI. Common misconstructions on social media have heightened this but all too often they are making unsubstantiated claims about the value of AI and the possibility of AI applications.”

Haavard Oestensen, EVP & Chief Commercial Officer of Kongsberg Digital, the event’s main sponsor, discussed the benefits of using low-value AI applications to boost performance.

Low-value AI can often drive the highest performance by optimising processes efficiently. Despite its perceived simplicity, low-value AI applications can streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance productivity significantly. This approach focuses on achieving incremental improvements that cumulatively lead to substantial performance gains.

“I really encourage moving towards a high frequency, low value environment where AI can interpret the data patterns and help you go from pattern to action to outcome,” he said.

Speakers agreed that collaboration was vital as it became clearer that despite the accelerated speed of change, there’s still a resistance towards ramping up the application of AI within the workplace. Whether that be cost, trust, loss of personnel, or countless other challenges, many who took to the stage presented their case on why it will be worth people’s time investing in the technology right now.

Here’s what some of the other contributors at Future Oil & Gas 2024 in Aberdeen had to say:

Zeeshan Rasheed, Procurement Director, Global Engineering, Brownfields Projects & New Energy Start-Up at bp, indicated that people must embrace and trust AI while highlighting why the need for using manual Excel spreadsheets to track a simple task is no longer there.

 “That’s the biggest inefficiency that we are observing in today’s world. When I consider my EPC contractors, I ask: How much can you streamline your manual processes using digital tools and systems to eliminate those costs that are no longer sustainable in today’s environment?

“We have to think differently and that’s when the digital transformation and AI makes a big impact. We can't afford to work as just oil and gas companies or technology companies. We have to work as a single supply chain focusing on a product. We have to change the way that we’ve worked in the past,” he said.

Ashild Hanne Larsen, VP Subsurface, Excellence & Digital at Equinor joined the panel to discuss diversity and inclusion whilst succeeding in change management. She drew attention to the fact there’s still a lack of females driving the digital transformation and articulated what her company is doing to make a difference.

“Equinor feel a strong social responsibility when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Given the fact the technology area and oil and gas have a clear underrepresentation of women, we have to address that and we have to address that early,” she insisted.

Dr. Edmary Altamiranda, Business Transformational Technology and R&D Lead, Controls & Systems Engineering at Aker BP elaborated on how large language models can help drive the digital transformation within the oil and gas industry.

“I think you can use tools like large language models to enhance the machine to human interaction with a digital twin. It helps to find data and information fast but again, we need to qualify the use for the specific application to see the benefits,” she said.

Glenn Sondak, Digitalisation Lead, LNG Portfolio, (AME) at Shell took the viewpoint that AI is merely an enabling solution for oil and gas companies, rather than a transformative technology at this stage. The perspective is that AI is being used to optimise existing processes and extract more resources, rather than driving fundamental change in the industry.

“I see AI still as an enabler, just like any other digital solution,” he said.

Taoufik Ait-Ettajer, Subsurface Manager, Technology, E&P, Low Carbon at Repsol highlighted the improvements on developing a cleaner energy value chain and dismissed the notion that we tend to overplay the benefits of a safe hydrogen future.

“There has been a lot of innovation and work done in this area. With AI and all the technologies that we have now, we have a lot of ways to simulate and to see what’s going to happen before really going into tier four and five, then going into six or seven. There has been lots of new technology in the last couple of years and things are moving really fast,” he said.