'Global oil, gas firms spend on digital tech sees an uptick'

Global upstream oil and gas firms are increasingly spending on digital technologies to drive value and reduce costs amid downturn and they are likely to maintain or increase their investments in this space over the next 3-5 years, says a survey by Accenture and Microsoft.
According to the survey, over the next three to five years, 80 per cent of upstream oil and gas companies plan to spend the same, more, or significantly more on digital technologies as they do now.
"In the current challenging environment, the upstream oil and gas industry is focusing digital technologies on areas that help them work smarter and deliver significant efficiencies and savings in the short term while enabling them to make better decisions faster," Accenture's Energy industry group global head of Digital Rich Holsman said.

This continued investment in digital is due to respondents' confidence that digital technologies can continue to help them drive leaner, smarter organisations.
More than half of respondents said digital is already adding high to significant value to their businesses. Some of the benefits of digital technologies include, cost reduction and making faster and better decisions.
"So, in the short-term we expect these firms will continue to invest in areas that help lower operations costs through technologies like increased worker productivity with mobility, lower infrastructure costs through the cloud and drive better asset management through analytics," Holsman said.

The survey further noted that the use of cloud, has shifted from being used primarily for infrastructure to an enabler of mobile tools.

This trend is expected to increase in the next to five years, as companies keep using the cloud to get faster and more value from other digital technologies.
"You can see this trend gaining traction from connected wells and intelligent pipelines to highly- efficient digital refineries," Craig Hodges, general manager of the Gulf Coast District at Microsoft said.
The survey sponsored by Accenture and Microsoft and conducted by PennEnergy Research in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal, covered upstream professionals worldwide, including engineers, geologists and mid-level and executive management.