Kaveh Pourteymour, Founder & CEO, CIO Global Solutions

Kaveh Pourteymour is the founder and CEO of CIO Global Solutions. He has held CIO roles with Neptune Energy, Seadrill and BP, as well as, having been an adjunct professor with Imperial college and consultant with KPMG and Oracle. His area of expertise is Digital Strategy and transformation in highly complex environments.

Congratulations on the launch of CIO Global Solutions – tell us a bit more about the organisations mission and it’s plans for collaborating with the Oil and Gas sector.

The pressures on Oil and Gas (O&G) operators are intensifying ranging from increased regulations, attracting investments, recruitment of talents and the need to play a credible part as part of the energy transition. Digital technologies provide opportunities to make E&P companies safer, more efficient and more sustainable. Many companies across O&G sectors have realised the importance of digitalisation and are at different stages of their digital transformation agenda. Almost all have hit challenges along the way.

Having completed a number of Digital Transformation programmes in a multitude of companies across the O&G sector, I have setup CIO Global Solutions from the lens of a CIO to help executives navigate the challenges associated with their Digital Transformation agendas and to help them deliver their business outcomes faster and with better results. CIO Global solutions brings experience and tried and tested methodologies to equip organisations to succeed with their digital transformations.

In the age of the energy transition exploration and production companies continue to assess ways in which digital technologies can support in lowering the carbon intensity of their operations and ultimately reduce emissions – what steps should be taken here as to deliver a coherent plan of action that enhances operational performance and also enables a pivot towards new energies such as CCUS and hydrogen?

There are many opportunities for application of digital technologies to drive efficiencies and reduce emissions in all the 3 scopes of ESG. For example, application of digital technologies to ensure the optimum operation of equipment and energy consumption, enable production to be optimised, drilling to be consistent, exploration activities to be successful, supply chains to be efficient with no waste, reduce travel and therefore reduce CO2 footprint. So the first step would be to identify the digital initiatives of interest and to prioritise them based on value enablement and their complexity of implementation.

From this, the company can derive their digital implementation roadmaps and determine the human and financial capital needs. An efficient Oil and Gas operation not only reduces its’ CO2 intensity but it also generates the investments needed towards new energies such as CCUS and hydrogen. As companies also think about new energy businesses, it provides an opportunity to rethink and reimagine the business model and the associated technologies that are needed for the life of those new energy assets. For example, can an offshore energy platform be operated fully without the need for a human being to travel offshore?

The Energy Council partners with organisations like Kongsberg Digital and we are increasingly seeing industry perform complex offshore projects remotely through the adoption of digital twin technologies – however this is just one use case, how else can the E&P community unleash benefit from the technology?

Digital twins provide tremendous opportunities in engineering, maintenance and operations activities of offshore assets. Much of the work that typically were carried out offshore can increasingly be carried onshore, leading to cost savings and CO2 reductions. However, to get the maximum value of digital twins, other technologies are needed to underpin these digital twins to make them more intelligent and useful. For example, Internet Of Things (IOT) are needed to capture operational data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability can be applied to the operational data to predict a range of areas of interest such as the rate of corrosion. AI enabled Condition Based Maintenance on equipment not only allows improvement to equipment reliability but also in ensuring the equipment and therefore the asset are operated at optimum levels of efficiency.

Some of the themes to have come out of recent Energy Council gatherings have been the role of data in building a comprehensive digital roadmap – how is data being captured, interpreted and actioned upon as to drive positive change across industry at present?

In the asset intensive industries of O&G, tapping into silos of data to generate insights about safety, efficiency and sustainability is key. With IOT, AI and edge computing, more data can be collected and interpreted, enabling critical decisions to be made in a timely manner close to the asset. For example, if a piece of equipment is operating outside of its designed parameters, timely decisions are needed to enable actions to be taken quickly.

However, with advancements in the speed of communications, cloud computing and advanced analytics, data from the assets can be collected and interpreted to spot trends and predictions to enable continuous improvement of the assets.

Finally, how should the oil and gas industry prepare for the energy transition when it comes to digitalisation? For example, in a volatile industry with constant commodity price fluctuations and with increasing ESG headwinds / consumer and investor pressure – how can technology be used to help navigate through?

As the famous saying goes, it is best to fix the roof when it is not raining. With higher commodity prices this is the time to continue investments in digital technologies to not only make the organisation more efficient and sustainable but also to make them more agile and resilient to withstand the future turmoil that no doubt will continue to come the industry’s way. It is important that organisations ensure their digitalisation strategies consider not only the current business priorities of the organisation but also address the risks and opportunities that face the organisation in the longer horizon. During the formulation or revaluation of the digital strategies, it is not only important to address which new capabilities the organisation wishes to have, but equally to determine how it deals with its legacy systems.

While Digital Technologies provide great opportunities for the O&G industries, they also create challenges that the industry needs to navigate through. Access to digital talent, threat of Cyber Security and driving cultural change need careful consideration.

Our world needs hydrocarbon for the next few decades and digitalisation provides a great lever to make organisations more sustainable and a credible party in the energy transition.

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