A top global ICT infrastructure provider, Huawei, has introduced new ICT solutions for higher safety and efficiency in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. While participating at the Nigeria International Petroleum Summit 2021, Huawei hosted a forum to discuss how to drive data to barrel and set up an exhibition booth to showcase its leading new ICT innovations such as Oil and Gas IoT, Digital Pipeline, HPC & Operations Management, and Smart Distribution.

While introducing Huawei’s innovation to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, who visited the Huawei exhibition booth with other dignitaries like the Group Managing Director of NNPC, Mele Kolo Kyari, and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Bitrus Bako Nabasu, one of Huawei’s Energy Account Directors, Raymond Wang, told the Minister that the solutions introduced by Huawei will make it possible to “speed up oil search and improve oil search accuracy, increase production and reduce costs, monitor oil depot data to reduce oil stealing and oil leakage. With emerging trends like Big Data, IoT, AI, 5G and Cloud, Oil & Gas industry players can improve oil well drilling efficiency and HSE management.”

According to a third-party report, the digital maturity of the oil and gas industry is still far lower than that of heavy asset industries such as transportation, telecommunications, banking, and industrial manufacturing. Unlike these industries, the oil and gas industry has invested only a small amount of available data into the decision-making process. A digital strategy can therefore greatly boost development, specifically. It can also help unlock more promising values such as predictive maintenance, remote operations centers, dynamic energy selection mode, omni-channel retailing, and connected service fields. It is believed that this will improve the social values of the oil and gas industry — values include saving money, higher productivity, lower water resource consumption, and smaller carbon dioxide emissions.

The report also made bold estimates. It states that the digital strategy is projected to create around $1.58 trillion of value for the oil and gas industry between 2016 and 2025. Undoubtedly, we can say that the oil and gas industry is now standing at a crossroads and in urgent need of digital transformation.

“Huawei’s mission is to promote digital transformation and reduce the digital gap across all industries. For the Oil & Gas industry in Nigeria, we have several targets such as; improving production by about five per cent to boost revenue and the GDP; HSE can be greatly improved to reduce accidents for a safer and more secure Oilfield; O&M cost can be reduced each year to 15 Million in total; Visualization, Monitoring and Security Management of Pipeline and Full process of Oil Depot; Curbing of vandalism and Oil leakage for Oil Pipelines by providing innovative solutions which can monitor illegal operations in Oil Depot, thereby significantly reducing oil tampering; Ensure the E&P processing speed will be reduced from the average hourly level to the minute level; Improve E&P processing accuracy, that is, E&P Data processing error rate will be reduced from an average of 10 per cent to two per cent; help E&P companies to find oil more accurately and faster to realize Data to Barrel.” Wang added.

He also mentioned that “in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, Huawei also has its focus on renewable energy technologies to drive green and more environment-friendly energy.”