Australia is set to become the world’s largest gas exporter by 2020, yet the industry faces the ever-increasing threat of consistently low crude oil prices, ageing infrastructure, machinery and equipment, and rising bottom-line pressures. The need to rapidly drive down costs and increase operational efficiencies is crucial.
There has never been a timelier moment for oil and gas industry leaders to come together and harness the power of intelligent technologies to respond to and navigate the challenges presented to the oil and gas industry, and thereby seamlessly digitise their operational capability.
Branching out from the largest IoT Oil and Gas event in North America, Energy Conference Network is hosting the first and only IoT and Machine Learning in Oil and Gas Australia and Blockchain in Oil and Gas Australia events to hit Australian soil on 3-5 December 2019 in Perth, Australia.
The events are set to be the meeting place for oil and gas executives to strategise and debate how digitalisation will revolutionise the oil and gas industry, and enable greater efficiencies and insights in reporting, analytics and large-scale business decisions.
During the pre-event planning and production process, the Energy Conference Network team conducted in-depth research with oil and gas operators, producers and associated oil services companies to really drill down into the challenges and opportunities facing the oil and gas industry.
While engaging with numerous industry leaders, the team had the great opportunity to pick the brains of Francis Norman, General Manager Innovation and Strategy with National Energy Resources Australia (NERA).
In his role, Mr Norman works to identify and support collaborative opportunities between all participants in the energy resources sector, bringing together the owners and operators of production facilities with large and small technology and service providers, researchers and innovators, focusing on supporting the growth and development of future opportunities across the whole of Australia’s energy resources sector and value chain.
Below, an excerpt of the conversation withMr Norman:
Does your organisation see IoT or Machine Learning as a competitive advantage?
Yes. We see IoT and machine learning as offering significant potential advantage across industry. For operators it can provide them with additional data sources that may otherwise be either hard to acquire or prohibitively expensive, and combined with machine learning, it can provide them with greater insights to their operations than current deployed technology. For the supply side it is an emerging industry where Australian businesses have an opportunity to become leaders.
What benefit of IoT or Machine Learning are you most excited about?
Predictive maintenance. Improving predictive and prescriptive maintenance has enormous potential to support both the reliability of operations but also to enhance productivity.
Artificial intelligence tools will increase production and reduce the number of people working in the oilfield – do you agree?
Highly likely – Yes. It will move many roles from the front line to the control room or other locations. Our expectations are that it will potentially lead to a net increase in roles across the industry, but they will be in different skill sets.
To hear more about Francis’s thoughts on IoT & Machine Learning in the Australian oil and gas industry, click here to register for the event.
Be in the front seat at this strategic platform and hear the latest thought leadership on IoT, Machine Learning & Blockchain in the Oil & Gas industry.
This Partner Content was brought to you by Energy Conference Network. For more information, visit www.energyconferencenetwork.com/energy-events/
