Yes! It is a big deal, more and more so every day. Especially in energy services. Industries and companies of all sorts are producing vast amounts of data, more than ever before, and our industry is no exception. Number of wells drilled, the amount and cost of materials and labor hours utilized on projects…the amount of data available to us as well as the raw data we produce is seemingly limitless. But if you don’t do anything with it, this big data is nothing but a big waste. As this article points out, you have to seize the opportunities this information offers in order to solve problems, enhance productivity, and ultimately, make money. The message is one that applies across industries – “carpe datam” – sieze the data!
Are we doing a good job of this in the energy services industry? We have long been accused of being slow to adopt technology and innovation, but that reputation has been challenged in recent years with the adoption of hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling, as well as other technologies that have helped us get oil out of the ground quicker, safer and more profitably. Nonetheless, according to Alberta Oil, we are dragging our feet when it comes to big data analytics, failing to grasp its necessity and more critically, failing to use it to our advantage. It’s not about collecting it and even just storing it. The different systems that we have for each type of data we collect, have to be able to speak to each other, in order to properly analyze the data and allow us to draw insights from it that we can put to use everyday.
Read more about the energy services resistance and even suspicion to big data, and why we have to move beyond that now in order to de-risk projects, make better decisions, and in the end, be more profitable.
