The new era of energy: Achieving oil and gas
profitability and sustainability in a volatile market
WHITE PAPER
Authored by:
Joseph McMullen
Senior Portfolio Marketing Manager, Value Chain Optimization, AVEVA
Executive summary:
The energy industry is volatile, and oil and gas companies are under intense pressure
to maintain profitable, sustainable, and safe operations. Achieving these goals while
overcoming market challenges means companies cannot afford to maintain status
quo. Oil and gas operations must use available tools to unlock insights across the value
chain. Only then can they gain the visibility needed to react quickly and effectively
to meet company goals. By focusing on three key areas – agility, sustainability, and
advanced technology – oil and gas companies can usher in the new era of energy.
02The new era of energy: Achieving oil and gas
profitability and sustainability in a volatile market
The pressures of profitability and sustainability
The oil and gas industry rebounded significantly in
2021. In the beginning of 2022, oil prices approached
$100 per barrel. Now, global conflicts are wreaking
havoc on supply chains, causing crude oil prices to
spike to nearly $130 per barrel in some places before
dropping back down towards $100 per barrel. While
conflict and sanctions may be temporary, the oil and
gas industry will always face external pressures and
market volatility.
In spite of global events, the oil and gas recovery is
better than previous projections. According to the IEA,
the market is set to shift to surplus in 2022, despite
increasing demand and the decreased production from
OPEC. This will likely increase volatility and put upward
pressure on prices. Now, oil and gas companies must
balance volatile markets with higher oil prices and
energy transition goals. It’s a new era of energy that
requires new solutions and new ways of thinking.
Higher prices equal higher profitability, giving oil and
gas companies the opportunity to practice capital
discipline, reinvest in operations, and commit to
sustainable initiatives. According to Deloitte, 76%
of oil and gas executives state that oil prices above
$60 per barrel will most likely boost or complement
their transition to sustainable energy in the near term.
The extra capital “enables investment in riskier and
expensive green energy solutions.”
The oil and gas industry is at a crossroads. It can
continue maintaining status quo or embark on a new
journey that ushers in the new era of energy. The
new era of energy is possible, but companies can’t
afford to use legacy systems. Industrial data from
across the value chain, fresh insights, and new tools
can break down data silos to enable teams to make
critical decisions and embrace new methods. By
leveraging operational insights, oil and gas companies
can overcome market volatility, maximize profitability,
and achieve the three pillars of the new era of energy:
agility, sustainability, and advanced technology.
The three critical elements of new era success
Companies must activate the entire oil and gas
value chain to achieve profitability and sustainability
goals. All personnel and departments along the value
chain are equally important, making collaboration
imperative to success. There is no room for data silos.
To seize opportunities in a volatile market, oil and gas
companies should focus on three key areas:
1. Agility: Reacting faster than market changes and
pivoting quickly.
2. Sustainability: Acheiving net-zero commitments.
3. Advanced technology: Using available tools to
continually improve operations.
The oil and gas market is volatile now and will continue
to be so in the future. These ever-changing market
pressures mean that oil and gas companies must
prioritize agility and resiliency. Not only will this allow
teams to capitalize on short-term market changes and
disruptions, it will increase competitive advantage.
In addition, to achieve long-term success, oil and
gas companies must enable an orderly transition to
sustainable energy production that meets net-zero
targets. Executives and employees understand the
urgency and feel the pressure – and technology holds
the keys to enabling short and long-term success.
OPEC basket $130.00
$120.00
$110.00
$100.00
$90.00
16 Feb 22 Feb 28 Feb 4 Mar 10 Mar
03The new era of energy: Achieving oil and gas
profitability and sustainability in a volatile market
Technology is continually pushing the boundary
of what’s possible. However, in the midst of a vast
ecosystem of solutions, it’s often difficult for oil and gas
teams to determine which systems will have the biggest
impact on their unique refinery.
In the new era of energy, any technology solutions
must empower the workforce to make quick, informed
decisions and accelerate the shift to lower-carbon
solutions. Real-time data, artificial intelligence,
and machine learning give users the tools they
need to rapidly analyze refinery information.
Cloud deployment gives teams everywhere
access to the same software and information.
Edge computing reduces time to action. And other
industrial software solutions all pave the way for
companies to meet goals in a volatile industry.
Agility: Moving beyond legacy systems
Companies cannot afford to rely on disparate legacy
systems to achieve profitable, sustainable industrial
operations. Today’s volatile market requires companies
to deploy unified solutions that enable digital twins
and dismantle industrial data silos to increase visibility
across the value chain. As the industry and workforce
change, these systems will continue to enable teams
to make critical decisions quickly and efficiently. Using
real-time, comprehensive insights, teams can quickly
adapt to meet demand, pivot when markets change,
and proactively move towards environmental and
sustainability goals.
Increasing agility requires companies to extend
technology capabilities. By creating a process digital
twin of the entire value chain, companies can gain
access to real-time operational insights. These insights
give users the information they need to make the right
decisions faster than ever before. Faster, more accurate
decisions allow the business to remain competitive in a
volatile market.
Sustainability: Decarbonization and emissions
planning
In March of 2022, the IEA issued a grim warning:
Global efforts “still fall well short of what is needed
to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 °C and
avert the worst effects of climate change.” Oil and
gas companies are often viewed as major offenders
when it comes to emissions and other environmental
factors. While oil and gas companies tend to emit a
lot of greenhouse gasses, there is a huge opportunity
for them to lead the way in decarbonization efforts.
The future of the planet– and business performance –
depends on it.
Given the industry’s considerable scientific, technical,
economic, and financial assets, oil and gas companies
can drive climate action to achieve net-zero goals and
change public perception.
There are many ways to achieve sustainability that
have already been proven in the industry, including:
“Success today requires the agility and drive
to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and
reinvent.”
–
Bill Gates
Digital twins enable tangible benefits
Idemitsu Kosan developed digital twins
with robust, multi-refinery models. These
models evaluate complex profit scenarios
to maximize economic opportunities for
its integrated multi-plant business. The
process digital twins enabled the team
to optimize the entire value chain, which
increased margins between $0.01-0.03
per barrel. The cloud-based deployment
also simplified business processes and
ensured data integrity, traceability, and
business continuity.
Net-zero is “achieving a balance between the
carbon released into the atmosphere, and the
carbon removed from it.”
–
Scottish Development International
04The new era of energy: Achieving oil and gas
profitability and sustainability in a volatile market
Carbon-aware planning
A company must understand its carbon footprint in
order to reach sustainability goals. Carbon-aware
planning gives oil and gas teams the tools they
need to analyze the impact of altering feedstock or
intermediaries during processing, examine the carbon
footprint of products such as chemical feedstock,
bitumen, and lubricants, and begin to evaluate the
impact of alternative feedstock such as renewables,
synthetic feedstocks, or simple biofuels to blend with
the final product.
Process digital twin energy and emissions
management
Process digital twins are saving capital project teams
hundreds of thousands of dollars during green and
brownfield engineering initiatives. Now, the solution is
being adapted to enable oil and gas teams to calculate
their carbon reduction potential and identify where the
greatest gains can be achieved.
Unified production and emissions accounting
Sustainability requires unified systems. A typical
production accounting system calculates fuel and loss,
but unified production and emissions accounting goes
a step further. These systems break down combustion
and total physical loss into process emissions, solid and
fluid effluence, and unaccounted loss. This data can
then be used to benchmark emissions against industry
standards to identify at a granular level mitigation
measures.
New tools and technologies can enable oil and gas
companies to track and manage all carbon emissions.
With real-time insights, operators can quickly see the
carbon intensity of various feedstock as well as the
emissions information pertaining to various operating
conditions. This information allows operators to
select the feedstock that helps the company achieve
sustainability goals.
To reach net-zero goals, a european multinational oil
and gas company set up CO₂ emissions tracking for
its refinery operations. The company implemented an
improved, easy-to-use planning tool to standardize
global CO₂ modeling across the network of refineries.
Now, the team can quickly model many different
scenarios to make informed decisions and uncover new
ways to improve margins.
Advanced technology: End-to-end
optimization
End-to-end value chain optimization that helps you to
redefine your processes, enable deeper collaboration,
reduce value leaks, sustain productivity and innovation,
and ultimately make better and more robust decisions
quicker across your operations lifecycle. There are
several key technologies are important in enabling end-
to-end value chain optimization including:
y Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI helps augments the
human decision-making process by analyzing
tremendous amount of data and present acceptable
alternatives to the operator. For example, Idemitsu
Kosan deployed AI at its Hokkaido Refinery to
increase agility and enhance decision making.
Analytics automatically generate and evaluate
multiple schedules and anticipated events within the
complete supply chain, which allows the company to
accomplish a days’ work in mere seconds.
y Cloud Computing: Cloud computing provide on-
demand availability of computer resources via the
internet. These resources, like computing power, are
scalable. Utilizing scalable computing power allows
problems to be solved my faster. BP used cloud
computing to improve the models they use to make
crude purchasing decisions. Thanks to the cloud, BP
can run analyses in four minutes instead of seven hours.
Strategic insights equal massive savings
No stranger to global market volatility, oil and gas
producers are using a mixture of Industrial IoT,
big data, advanced visualization, and artificial
intelligence to connect the entire operations
across value chains and maximize return on
investment. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
(ADNOC) is the state-owned oil company of Abu
Dhabi and one of the world’s leading energy
producers. The oil and gas companies developed
its Panorama Digital Command Centre, which
is a fully integrated, real-time data visualization
center that empowers ADNOC’s sharpest minds to
gain insights, unlock efficiencies, and identify new
ways to optimize operations. Thanks to insights
from the Unified Operations Centre, ADNOC saved
between $60-100 million.
05The new era of energy: Achieving oil and gas
profitability and sustainability in a volatile market
The path towards optimization
Creative thinking and innovation are imperative for oil
and gas companies to solve key challenges in today’s
volatile market. Organizations must be unafraid of
change and continue to push towards operational
efficiency. When oil and gas companies commit to
business transformation, they become smarter, more
agile, resilient, and competitive – no matter what the
market does.
Getting on the path towards optimization requires
companies to establish a clear vision. Here are four
steps to optimize your operations to build agile,
sustainable operations.
1. Unify your supply chain: Optimizing supply chain
operations requires a unified supply chain. Deploying
a single, end-to-end enterprise application across
all supply chain activities increases visibility,
collaboration, and knowledge-sharing, which results
in better, faster, and more accurate decision making.
2. Focus on operational efficiency: Better efficiency
improves sustainability. Oil and gas can optimize
every part of the value chain by using a single
solution for order and movement management
and blending optimization. This will enable greater
efficiencies and performance by order, movement,
inventory management, blend optimization, online
control, and yield accounting.
3. Optimize your process: Digital twins are imperative
for real-time process and utilities optimization.
Given the profitability benefits, this level of real-time
economic and rigorous process modeling is fast
becoming standard technology in refining.
4. Think holistically: Becoming more a more agile
operation and reaching sustainability goals
requires a holistic approach. Look at the entire
value chain and tie everything together. Unify
your supply chain, find new ways to increase
operational efficiencies and optimize processes,
and then promote these endeavors to everyone in
the organization. No one has done this better than
ADNOC Panorama Digital Command Centre. ADNOC
offers a prime example of a holistic approach.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step”
–
Chinese Proverb
Holistic Approach
Unified Supply Chain
Trader tools
Planning
Scheduling
Planning model
tracking
Feedstock
management
Multi site network
optimization
Operations
Mobile and workflow
extensions
Production
accounting
Offsites management
and blending
Operations
management
Optimization
Real time
optimization
Reactor
modelling
Utilities
optimization
Performance
management
AVEVA Value Chain Optimization toolset creates end-to-end visibility, enabling teams to make rapid, accurate decision across the value chain.
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Conclusion
Societal, technological, and political trends are reshaping the environment in which oil and gas companies operate.
As the world transitions, the oil and gas industry must evolve and adapt. By becoming more agile, choosing to lead
the way in sustainable operations, and deploying innovative technologies, oil and gas companies can uncover new
efficiencies and opportunities that enable a new era of energy.
AVEVA offers innovative technology solutions that can help oil and gas companies improve operations and optimize
the entire value chain. With AVEVA Value Chain Optimization solutions, oil and gas companies can seize valuable
opportunities to improve agility and sustainability, which are enabled by advanced technology.
Market volatility is certain. Agile oil and gas companies can react faster than the competition in a dynamic market
to stay ahead of the curve.
Societal, technological, and political trends are reshaping the environment in which oil and gas companies operate.
Sustainable organizations will be ready to tackle new goals or regulatory requirements.
Technological advances are reshaping every business and industrial process in oil and gas. With new tools from
advanced technologies, companies can continually improve operations to build an agile, sustainable future.
About AVEVA
AVEVA is a global leader in industrial software, driving
digital transformation and sustainability.
By connecting the power of information and artificial
intelligence with human insight, AVEVA enables teams
to use their data to unlock new value. We call this
Performance Intelligence.
AVEVA’s comprehensive portfolio enables more than
20,000 industrial enterprises to engineer smarter,
operate better and drive sustainable efficiency.
AVEVA supports customers through a trusted
ecosystem that includes 5,500 partners and 5,700
certified developers around the world. The company
is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with over 6,500
employees and 90 offices in over 40 countries. Learn
more at www.aveva.com.
About the author
Joseph McMullen has been a part of the
AVEVA team since 2001. He’s held a variety of
positions, including technical support, product
management, and other marketing leadership
roles. He is passionate about technology, the digital
transformation of industry, IIoT, SaaS, marketing,
and solving customer problems. He holds a Bachelor
of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a
Masters in Business Administration from Villanova
University. Between his chemical engineering
degree and experience in the industry, Joe has
a unique perspective that allows him to uncover
and understand customer pain points and present
comprehensive solutions.