The Importance of Big Data Analytics in the Oil and Gas Industry

When you stop at a gas station to fill your car’s tank, it would mostly take you 5 – 10 minutes to fill the gas and be on your way. However, the chain of events that have taken place from exploring the oil field and getting the fuel upstream from the reservoir to distributing it downstream to consumers is a colossal process.

Over the years, companies have used a large amount of data to study the earth’s surface, moving from oil fields on land to the setup of oil rigs in water. During this process, the energy exploration and distribution companies compile large amounts of data. Making optimum use of such data is an integral part of their financial performance.

What does big data mean?

Many consumer-centric companies have made efficient use of big amounts of data. They have done this for many years now. The process helps them identify consumer behavior and historical trends. Through performing complex calculations on data, companies are able to focus their resources on areas that make the most difference in the revenue cycle.

This, in turn, generates maximum revenue for the company. Analyzing big data requires advanced hardware and software tools that allow industries to analyze millions of bytes of data in a few seconds.

How big data makes the difference

While drilling for oil, energy companies can make complex calculations on the vast amount of data from seismic properties of the drilling surface to temperature levels. This makes the drilling process more effective in terms of cost and time. As the companies move toward digitizing their energy exploration and distribution process, the amount of data generated on a daily basis is colossal. Energy companies using big data analytics on large amounts of data generate more value during the upstream and downstream supply process.

Other Benefits

One of the most important aspects of the oil drilling process is the use of large and complex data in real time. Big data analytics tools allow the company to visualize the drilling environment on their computer screens by analyzing huge amounts of data in seconds, guiding the tools such as drills in the best direction while improving the production process by 6%-8%.

The entire structure of big data analytics is set up in such a way that it allows storage and retrieval of huge amounts of data more efficiently than traditional database structures which store segments of data in different places, later on combining them from different tables into a single report.

Some of the major benefits companies have acquired through the use of big data include visualizing the drilling map, steering the drill in the most optimal direction, and the best ways to stimulate shale.

Conclusion

Experts suggest that future winners of the competitive oil and gas industry would produce energy at the lowest possible price. Companies have already started digitizing their upstream and downstream infrastructure to reduce costs and create efficiencies in their supply chain. All these changes result in huge amounts of data that need to be stored by energy companies. Analyzing this information using big data analytics gives companies an edge over their peers.