The growing role of data and digitalization in the oil and gas sector
According to Paula Henderson, Director, Marketing & Applications at Kemira, the oil and gas industry has seen a significant movement towards digitalization over the past decade. “The drive for improvements in operational and finacial efficiencies have pushed companies to seek out digital solutions that can help them use data to work smarter and faster, optimizing resources and costs.” This shift is occurring thanks to the power of data to effectively predict and monitor operations, helping users to make informed decisions and adjust accordingly. “Data has the power to improve so many areas of the industry – from logistics and transportation to well production and all the way through to emissions monitoring – and it helps everyone, including chemical manufacturers like ourselves, operators, and legislators,” says Paula.
KemConnect Flow helps oil and gas operators to be more efficient
To get the most out of data, one needs to find the right way to use it, as Paula explains: “Over the last 15 years or so Kemira has built up an incredible amount of data on our polymeric friction reducers, showing how they work in different frac fluids and in different lab and field conditions. But we weren’t using that data as effectively as we could – instead we were frequently rerunning datasets and spending unnecessary time and resources in the lab to make the same product or dose recomendation. To address this we’ve developed KemConnect Flow, which takes the data we’ve gathered historically and, with the help of some smart algorithms, predicts the friction reduction and viscosity building performance of all our polymers.”
KemConnect Flow has helped Kemira’s commercial team make faster product recommendations for customers, with the results constantly improving and the system learning as more data is added. “After seeing KemConnect Flow’s benefits for our internal team we opened it up for our oil and gas customers to use directly,” explains Paula. “Speed of response is important in our industry, and clients can now access their own data in the online platform without needing to ask us for it. Then they can enter their own field-specific conditions and see which of our products offer the best performance for their applications.”
In the oil and gas industry you often expect one set of conditions but then end up with another when you get to the field – the KemConnect Flow database allows customers to see really quickly whether, for example, a change in water composition will have an impact on the selected polymer and if they should use a different one or change the dose rate of the one they’re using. “This allows our customers to make the best decisions based on the actual field conditions – with quick answers on the likely impact of any unexpected changes – saving both time, resources and potentially impacting the perfomrnace of the well.”
Kemira’s commitment to digitalization in the oil and gas industry
As part of Kemira’s ever-expanding digital offering, KemConnect Flow is part of our drive to be more than simply a chemical supplier, supporting our oil and gas customers more broadly as a provider of all-encompassing chemical and technological solutions. “By expanding our offering with digital solutions we can work more closely with our customers to benefit both partties. Using customer field data we can compare and evaluate different friction reducers – including variability in temperatures, salinities, and reservoir conditions, for instance – and then feeding that data back into our system, we can develop new products with more specific performance goals or ones that are more tailored for specific applications.”
KemConnect Flow is one tool that is supporting our customers in hydraulic fracturing, but our commitment to developing digital solutions extends into all areas where Kemira participate in the oil and gas industry. We’re working with our customers in chemical enhanced oil recovery, oil sands and production applications where our polymers are adding value to their operations.