Ovum’s Oil & Gas Technology research stream focuses primarily on the industry’s exploration and production (“upstream”) segment and the ways in which IT can be put to better use to enhance exploration technologies, improve operational visibility, optimize well production, link production data to trading systems, and more.
Click here to view our 2012 Oil & Gas research portfolio.
Key research themes
Creating the “smart” oilfield
There are significant opportunities to use technology to improve oilfield operations. A fundamental challenge for IT vendors is to adopt the best strategy to compete or cooperate with the oilfield’s many entrenched incumbents. However, by bridging the “culture gap” between IT and oil & gas, exploration and production companies can start to achieve greater business insight by embracing next-generation analytics, asset, and product management solutions, integrating siloed data and applications, and implementing solutions for oilfield safety and environmental management.
Oilfield communications poised for change
After years of pursuing separate standards initiatives, the exploration and production industry has launched a new initiative to harmonize standards for managing and sharing well information, production data, reservoir characteristics, and more; addressing latency and bandwidth limitations in oilfield communications that have come to the fore with the rise of cloud computing, Big Data, and realtime analytics.
IT investment in the oil & gas industry
Exploration and production companies are cash rich. Which IT solutions are front of mind as they look to invest: production management; operations management; asset management; safety/environmental management? Industry surveys will reveal the priorities for decision-makers, along with adoption trends and the principal pain points in oil & gas IT.
IT meets tough environments, unconventional fuels
All the “easy” oil and gas reserves have been found. E&P companies face tougher, more exacting, higher-risk environments and conditions – narrower oil- and gas-bearing strata, high-precision drilling and fracking, deep water, extreme weather, etc. How can IT help address these challenges? So-called “unconventional” sources such as shale gas, coal gas, and tar sands can help meet growing demand, but they are inherently complex and increasingly controversial. They will be subject to strict permit processes and close long-term monitoring requirements that won’t be possible without IT automation.
