Petroleum has been used by humans for about 5,000 years, even before we knew how to refine it. The evolution of the gas and oil industry has advanced to the point of global dominance. The majority of the world depends on petroleum to power everything from transportation to heating and electricity. In addition, it is also the raw material for nearly everything we use today, from plastics to synthetics to chemicals.
Contrary to popular belief, there are different stages of manufacturing in the oil industry. The three sectors are divided into upstream, midstream and downstream functionality. Upstream means the actual exploration and production of oil. The midstream stage refers to storing and transporting this oil before it is refined or converted into something else. Downstream is the stage when crude oil gets turned into the many products we are familiar with today.
While it is hard to imagine living in modern society without the fuel industry parameters we have all become familiar with, the truth is that it is a finite resource that is coming from the Earth. The wellspring will eventually one day dry up. That is why so many scientists and industry professionals are working so hard to make the processing of fuel as efficient as possible.
There are plenty of other reasons to embrace the digital revolution as well. There is a need to regulate the pricing structure since it is often contingent upon geopolitical events. There is a large demand worldwide to minimize our carbon footprint as a species, which directly impacts the burning of fossil fuels and pushes natural gas and renewable energy more into the spotlight.
Perhaps the hottest buzzwords right now are focused around data acquisition and analytics. The problem with the gas and oil industry has always been the independent, stand-alone information silos. There is plenty of data but no way to conglomerate it for analysis. Exploration & Production (E&P) software is the largest developer of software for the oil and gas industry and a partner of the oil services tech company Schlumberger. For the first time ever, Big Tech and Big Oil are collaborating with the joint venture of Microsoft and Chevron in order to speed up the development of petrotechnical technologies.
Originally published at https://imadadel.com.
