Artificial Intelligence Applications in the Oil & Gas Industry
AI is becoming a leading investment in many different industries like the auto, banking, and healthcare industry among other . But one where it still has yet to be thoroughly applied to is the petroleum industry.
Source: Aramco
The fact that AI has not yet been applied to the oil & gas industry is surprising – as the petroleum industry is one of the most profitable industries with Saudi Aramco battling with Apple for the world's most profitable business, according to Business Insider, with Sinopec and Royal Dutch Shell being quite close in profit.
How can AI be used in the petroleum industry?
AI could be used in numerous different ways to enhance the petroleum industry. Two potential applications of AI to the petroleum industry could be estimating the size of oil and gas reserves, or using AI to make approximations of where the oil and gas reserves would be. The model would be able to do this by using data from other oil and gas sources in order to build a clear picture of the set conditions that oil and gas could be found in. This would massively enhance the company as they would be able to find many oil and gas reserves quickly and efficiently.
AI could also be used to assess defects in oil and gas pipelines. These pipelines are the best and most efficient way to transport oil and gas across land. But they need to be regularly assessed for any faults or leaks as those could cause tremendous losses in not only oil and gas but also capital and nation wide economies who depend on the sale of oil and gas. Since 1986, it is estimated that 3 million gallons of oil and gas per year have been split due to pipeline faults only in the US. Implementation of AI would enable this number to drastically decrease which is certainly an advantage for all.
AI could also be used in the detection of oil and gas in the deep sea. In the deep, it is quite difficult to detect these sources due to the depth and limited visibility. AI could be used to not only work for longer periods of time but also more efficiently to understand where these sources could be.
Do some companies already use AI in petroleum engineering?
In March of 2019, GOA, a British based oil and gas company used 130 terabytes of information in the form of 8 years of HD movies and used it to train an AI in hopes of the AI being able to use the data to approximate the geographical locations of oil and gas reserves. Around the same time, Aker Solutions with SparkCognition implemented AI onto their oil and gas platforms in order to make it safer for their employees. The AI monitors approximately 30 installations and can alert the company to any impending mishaps before they actually happen. In January of the same year, another British based oil company BP used AI to interpret geological and historical reservoir data and then created workflows of the subsurface assets of BP which they then placed into simulations to interpret the results.
Sources:
https://www.offshore-technology.com/analysis/top-10-highest-earning-oil-gas-companies-2021-2020/
