Executives say AI will lead to cheaper and faster oil production.
Executives at the CERAWeek Conference in Houston explained that artificial intelligence has accelerated oil and gas drilling, and is prompting companies take a second glance at areas they previously deemed too expensive or difficult to develop.
AI was a major topic in several sessions of the largest energy conference. Oil producers are looking for ways to stay profitable amid a plummeting price of oil and concerns that U.S. president Donald Trump's tariffs may slow down global energy demand.
Ann Davies, BP’s senior vice-president of wells, revealed that the UK oil giant BP uses AI to predict problems and steer drill bits before they occur.
She said, "We can drill more wells each year and we have better capital allocation."
BP announced that it would increase its annual spending on oil production and gas as part of a major strategic shift to improve investor trust.
Trey Lowe, chief technology officer at Devon Energy in the United States, told an interview that AI had helped Devon Energy drill into areas previously unfeasible.
He said that the company could, for example, gather information on a fault within a formation and then drill the opposite side to avoid the fault.
Chevron uses AI-powered drones to fly over its shale oil and gas operations in Texas, Colorado and Wyoming. The drones are used to monitor and detect potential problems such as emissions leaks remotely and alert workers on the ground.
Russell Robinson, deputy program manager for facilities and operations, Chevron, told an interviewer on the sidelines at the conference that in three months, the company had reduced the time it took to shut down production due to repairs or maintenance.
He said drones allowed workers to spend less time performing routine inspections in the shale fields.
"We have continued to run more assets for longer periods of time. This is just producing more gas or oil," he added, adding that Chevron is currently evaluating whether it should expand the use of drones in monitoring its refineries.
Lowe, Devon Energy's CEO, said that machine learning models monitor each of the oil rigs in the U.S. The company has also seen a 25% increase in the life expectancy of its gas and oil wells.
AI also speeds up offshore drilling. BP uses AI to evaluate vast amounts of data in the Gulf of Mexico, compared to the six to twelve months it took before. A spokesperson explained that this helps geoscientists to determine where to drill wells and predict problems.
The oil and gas sector has been using AI for many years. However, recent advancements like large-language modeling are revolutionizing the industry. Chicheng Xu is the founder of OpenPetro AI a company that builds AI tools for energy companies and a former petrophysicist with Aramco.
He said that it would take humans a long time to create three-dimensional visualisations of deep-sea features.
AI can search through data to find features that you are interested in and then visualize them for you. "That's the difference," Xu said.
Gaining a competitive edge means cutting time and costs.
Lowe, from Devon, said that companies who don't use AI will be left behind. (Arathy S. Somasekhar contributed additional reporting from Houston, and Simon Webb and David Gregorio edited the story).
(source: Reuters)
