Digital Capabilities Critical To Managing Oil Assets – Experts

Experts in the Nigerian oil and gas industry have stressed on the need for operators to promote digital capabilities among workforce in order to remain competitive in the global oil market.

Speaking at the IDSL/NNPC Asset Management Operational Exchange Webinar Series on Thursday, the experts noted that the present reality occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a drastic scale up of the human resource skills and the use of technology.

The Chief Operating Officer, Corporate Services, NNPC, Mohammed Abubakar in his presentation said that ensuring effective management of available skill is critical to attaining efficiency in any organisation.

He said, “There is need to migrate from the norm to the digital knowledge, we need to upscale what we have, and doing that requires a lot of diligence, work and research in order to meet up with the demand of the present need in the industry.”

He explained that many organisations have started replacing men with machines, thereby reducing the staff strength and focusing on the use of machines to deliver on projects.

“The disruption in terms of technical innovation has led to discrepancy in the way we run organisations which is seeing the role of human beings shifting to machines.”

“We can effectively succeed in the this trend when we have a competitive advantage to devise an effective way of combining technology, flexibility, adaptability and comprehensive experience of the human resource.

“What we have seen is monumental, the successes are on the high side, and this call for the need to promote the digital culture, it must be encouraged to be imbibed by the employees.

“We have to work outside the regular box that we are used to, look for solutions and implement, encourage creativity, develop confidence in workforce, encourage collaborations.”

While noting that human resource management accounts for 50 per cent of the unit operating cost in the industry, Abubakar said that embracing digital technology will serve as a means of reducing cost and improve revenue generation.

Adokiye Tombomieye, Chief Operating Officer, upstream ,NNPC in his address said that the goal of the webinar is aligned to the NNPC agenda with focus on attaining excellence in performance in the oil and gas activities.

He explained that organisations across the exploration and production value chain are currently optimising subsisting processes through the adoption of artificial intelligence in order to make them more efficient.

“We cannot do that without the digital culture, we have seen in the recent month during the covid-19 pandemic how machines substituted human in terms of doing the job.

“We must encourage our employees to embrace technology, analyse the data and help management to make effective decisions”.

Elohor Aiboni, Asset Manager, Bonga FSPO in her remark, said that investing in digitalisation should be a priority for operators as it is essential to achieving ambition, cost efficiency, improved productivity, reliability and excellence performance of activities.

According to her, a successful digital transformation is not just about the technologies but about data and its sources.

“Digitalization enables right sizing inventory to optimise service levels and deliver on time maintenance execution to maximise asset uptime.

“Data is an asset and technology is essential, however without the relevant capabilities, the success of digitalization is at risk,” she added.