Digital strategies will fuel oil and gas recovery

Digital strategies will fuel oil and gas recovery

The economic demand destruction triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic should propel the Middle East energy industry to accelerate its adoption of the 4th Industrial Revolution digital toolbox and embed greater operational efficiencies, a group of industry technology experts agreed in a new study by the energy think tank Gulf Intelligence.

The global energy sector, and the Middle East in particular, have been slow adopters of digital transformation strategies, which offer a new chapter in human development, enabled by extraordinary technology advances that commensurate with those of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The speed, breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing all industries to rethink how organizations create value.

"It's a tipping point for the industry for a variety of reasons,“ Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a member of the Board of Saudi Aramco and the former Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell PLC, said in the GIQ Study. "This is a point where oil transforms into a normal commodity, like iron, nickel and copper, where low-cost producers dominate in market share and the higher-cost producers fill in the tail end - this has been coming for some time, but Covid-19 accelerated it,“ Sir Mark said.

Global investment in the energy sector is