Bits, Bytes, and Barrels

Book excerpt: The oil and gas industry is at a crossroads. Recent low prices, rapidly growing alternative fuels like renewables, the permanent swing from peak oil to super abundance, shifting consumer preferences, and global pressures to decarbonize suggest a challenged industry for the foreseeable future. Digital advances offer ways to lower costs of production, improve productivity, reduce carbon emissions, and regain public confidence. A wait-and-see attitude to digital innovation has failed many industries already, and the leaders of oil and gas urgently need guidance on how digital both disrupts and enhances their industry. Written by the world's leading experts on the intersection of digital technologies and the oil and gas industry, Bits, Bytes, and Barrels sets out the reasons why adoption is slow, describes the size and scale of both the opportunity and the threat from digital, identifies the key digital technologies and the role that they play in a digital future, and recommends a set of actions for leaders to take to accelerate the adoption of digital in the business. Providing an independent and expert perspective, Bits, Bytes, and Barrels addresses the impacts of digital across the breadth of the industry--from onshore to offshore, from upstream to midstream to integrated--and outlines a roadmap to help the decision-makers at all levels of the industry take meaningful action toward promising and rewarding digital adoption.