The Strategic & Plenary Programme addresses a broad range of organizational and leadership issues influencing the digital transformation of the energy industry. View the list of Roundtable Talks and Panel Discussions for more details.
Interested in speaking opportunities? Send us an email to discuss.
Gabriel Selischi, SVP Development Value Center, OMV
Jarand Rystad, CEO, Rystad Energy
These are extraordinary times for the oil and gas industry. New demands are being placed on companies to balance exploration activity to meet future oil and gas demands while reducing carbon intensity and entering into new energy markets. As companies begin to reconsider their exploration strategies they will need to make careful considerations across technology adoption, automation and ways of working. This panel discussion will bring together exploration leaders to discuss the challenges being faced and how digital transformation can support companies through this disruption while also allowing them to make better decisions.
Many organizations understand digitalization as a tool to save costs through increased efficiencies and project acceleration. This is partly true, it will save costs through less time spent on projects. However, the real strength of Digitalization is to create optionality and opportunities through cutting edge technologies in combination with changed ways of accessing data and doing business. The combination will allow us to make better analyses of our portfolios, make better choices about our investments and, ultimately, make better decisions.
Digitalization has advanced more rapidly than any other innovation in history, enabling us with instant communication, generally enhanced connectivity and accessibility to information to make decisions faster and more accurately. However, not only the technological aspect that drives us today, even more the associated topics of changing business models (eg. energy transition) and leadership styles (eg. virtual teams, democracy of data) require special attention and new ideas.
Machine Learning is becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives. Our Photo applications now automatically detect faces of family and friends; Netflix provides you with movie suggestions via its recommendation engine; your social media news feed is algorithmically generated based on prior likes and interactions; and Spotify uses ML algorithms to offer you a Discover Weekly playlist that fits your music preferences. In this Round Table, participants will discuss how the oil and gas industry is leveraging Machine Learning and how it’s improving our understanding of the subsurface and changing the way we work.
NLP: How we can leverage natural language processing and knowledge graph technologies to extract more info from documents
Building and sharing pre-trained ML models to speed-up Exploration project cycle times
In 2019, Forbes magazine made the claim that “data is the new oil”. The flipside is that the oil industry has a tremendous amount of data. However, making data accessible and useable for the latest and greatest technologies is a huge task. This session will cover how companies are transforming their approach to data, how data management practices are being updated, and how this can result in better insights and a higher ROI.
Today, open-source tools play a critical role in the development of any industry and more and more people understand this. Proprietary software does not allow you to quickly enough respond to the realities of a changing world. It is difficult to effectively use constantly improving computing resources without open-source instruments. Besides, breakthroughs in machine learning wouldn’t be possible without TensorFlow by Google and PyTorch by Facebook which are accessible to all.
Oil and Gas is just on the brink of the changes that will follow the introduction of open-source. Many of the old methods are no longer suitable for the development of modern fields, and the need has arisen for the use of machine learning, which is mainly based on non-proprietary software.
We will discuss why you shouldn’t be afraid to share your work with the world. Companies with experience in open-source development can demonstrate their products and talk about their experience. You also will see examples of such libraries produced by various players in the industry.
Markus Berghofer, SVP Technology and Innovation, OMV
Chris Hanton, Director, Digital Transformation Solutions , Ikon Science
Digitalization initiatives have the ability to provide enormous improvements in cost, efficiency and capabilities. However, investments must be carefully managed to ensure success and ROI. Partnerships provide the ability to benefit from network effects and external information, technology and knowledge. This panel discussion will explore some of the non-traditional collaborations which are enabling rapid technology transformation in oil and gas and energy applications.
There is no lack of digital initiatives or concepts, but the geoscience world is struggling with an industry wide mature implementation, within relatively short time and with limited cost. What does it take to pass the tipping point, and what must we learn from successes in other industries?
Chevron’s Digital Subsurface Journey
Johan Sverdrup Fiber Optics Data pipeline: A journey from concept to full field implementation
Round table to reflect on case studies and in general in the geoscience world on what it takes to scale from idea to value adding mainstream.
Over the last few years, there has been enormous interest in new machine learning technologies across numerous industries. The energy industry and specifically subsurface applications have closely been following the trend and numerous operating and service companies are evaluating the benefits and added value of this new resurgence in machine learning and specifically deep learning. In many cases, these initial investigations have only led to proof of concepts and only a limited number of applications have shown added value and fulfilled the necessary criteria to scale across organizations to enter into the so-called “production mode” or widespread use.
This dedicated session aims to bring together professionals from the energy industry, operators, research, consulting, and service companies to address the challenges involved in scaling successful proof of concepts into scaleable products that leverage these technologies.
Hassane Kassouf, Head WW Innovation Programs – Energy, AWS
Steeve Freeman, Head of Energy Transition, Digital and Integration, Schlumberger
The energy industry is faced with a significant acceleration towards net zero ambitions. The decarbonization of hydrocarbon production and entry into new energy markets requires fundamental changes in policy and business decisions. At the forefront of this transformation is the growing scope and value of geoscience and other data points required to make intelligent decisions across more integrated energy operations. The panel will discuss how companies can harness the value of vast data assets to generate key business value in the shift towards a net zero reality.
The development and acceleration of new technologies and digital tools are inextricably linked to the energy transition. The move to replace traditional energy sources with low-carbon ones is a long process which requires careful considerations across complex interactions between sustainability, cost, reliability and efficiency. Digitalization will play a key role in the success of this transition across all forms of energy and carbon intensive industries. This dedicated session will explore the broad ways in which digital tools are being used to reduce the impacts of energy across a wide range of applications and methodologies.
Speakers will first give brief presentations demonstrating current applications and practical use cases followed by a joint panel discussion on the opportunities for digital tools to help the industry to evaluate multiple options and select the most efficient and sustainable way to explore, develop and produce energy to supply the future demand.