IBM and Repsol launch first cognitive technologies collaboration for oil industry applications

1 November 2014

Scientists at IBM and global energy company Repsol S.A. announced the first research collaboration to leverage cognitive technologies to support the oil and gas industry. IBM and Repsol are jointly developing two prototype cognitive applications specifically designed to augment Repsol’s strategic decision making in the optimization of oil reservoir production and in the acquisition of new oil fields.

<!——>

The oil and gas industry boasts some of the most advanced geological, geophysical and chemical science in the world. However, with the explosion of big data and emerging science, the discovery, mining, integration and interpretation of this data, together with critical geopolitical, economic and other global news, require a whole new approach to computing that can speed access to business insights, enhance strategic decision-making and drive productivity.

Using the capabilities of IBM’s Cognitive Environments Laboratory (CEL), Repsol and IBM researchers will work together to develop and to apply new prototype cognitive tools for real-world use cases in the oil and gas industry. Cognitive computing software agents and technologies will be designed to collaborate with human experts in more natural ways, learn through interaction, and enable individuals and teams to make better decisions by overcoming cognitive limitations posed by big data.

The CEL is a research infrastructure where IBM develops and refines the building blocks of Cognitive Environments. The CEL allows IBM to explore real-world use cases through experimentation and innovation with clients such as Repsol.

Scientists in the CEL will also be able to experiment with a combination of traditional and new interfaces based upon spoken dialog, gesture, robotics and advanced visualization and navigation techniques. Through these modalities, they will be able to learn and leverage sophisticated models of human characteristics, preferences and biases that may be present in the decision-making process.

Repsol Technology EP Scientist Rubén Rodriguez (left) works with IBM Researcher Jeff Kephart (right) in IBM’s Cognitive Environments Lab on new cognitive software agents called “cogs” that will help energy company Repsol make better decisions around acquiring new oil fields and optimizing its strategy for current oil production.
Credit: Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for IBM. Click to enlarge.

For example, an engineer evaluating what new oil fields to acquire will typically have to read manually through an enormous set of journal papers and baseline reports with seismic imaging data and models of reservoir, well, facilities, production and export. Cognitive technologies can quickly help by analyzing hundreds of thousands of papers and reports, prioritize and link that data to the specific decision at hand, and introduce new real-time factors to be considered such as current news events around economic instability, political unrest and natural disasters.

Using the research tools in the CEL, the engineer along with key stakeholders can more fluidly build conceptual and geological models, highlight the impact of the potential risks and uncertainty, visualize trade-offs, and explore what-if scenarios to ensure the best decision is made.

The two prototype applications that will be jointly developed by IBM and Repsol will leverage cognitive computing capabilities specifically to help Repsol reduce the risk and uncertainty of future oil field acquisitions and maximize the yield of existing oil fields—both of which can have a significant impact on the efficiency and efficacy of the global operations of Repsol and all oil and gas companies.

Global energy demand is expected to grow by more than 53% by 2035, with more than half of that energy being supplied by oil and gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). To maintain a continuing energy supply, companies are constantly making high-stakes decisions in the face of uncertainty and risks, while the volume of complex data is growing exponentially.

Decision making doesn’t happen only in one place and often it requires people to regroup with more information or new stakeholders to be involved before arriving at an outcome. As people work and move across many physical environments, it is important for people to have access to cognitive capabilities in a seamless computing experience whether it’s at the office, at home or in the field.

Such a fluid cognitive computing experience will be possible with a cognitive environment infrastructure that provides a new class of cognitive software agents and services designed specifically to interact with people across various devices and physical spaces. As users move from strategic cognitive rooms to their offices and even homes, a society of cognitive agents will move seamlessly with them across these environments and different modes of interaction and computation will scale appropriately to each.

Cognitive environments can look and feel very different (from board rooms in the workplace, to cars, to homes, to mobile devices), but by being connected to one another they will enable human-computer collaboration at “the speed of thought”, leading to more informed and robust decision-making, IBM said.

In the field of oil and gas, a deeply interactive and significantly more collaborative cognitive environment enables geologists, geophysicists, petrochemical engineers, economists, planners, and developers to come together in a single environment that leverages their individual and unique skills, tools and applications. Cognitive environments can enhance the collective intelligence of the group and influence the direction of strategic decisions for better outcomes, which for Repsol will be optimizing reservoir production or enhancing the decision-making process for the acquisition of new oil fields.

Repsol is a Spanish integrated oil and gas company present in over thirty countries, employing 24,000 people. The company is the market-leader in refining and marketing in Spain and has a worldwide daily production of 346,000 barrels of oil equivalent.
During the last decade Repsol has reinvented itself from being specialized in refining by growing a large exploration and production business, which since 2004 has posted more than 50 discoveries, eight of which are amongst the world’s largest.

The Repsol Technology Centre is one of the largest technological investigation centres in Europe, with a myriad of projects to boost exploration and production activity by applying ground-breaking technology. Its award-winning Kaleidoscope seismic imaging project, developed together with IBM, proved to be a breakthrough in mapping pre-salt oil formations, and the company’s multiple technological initiatives in oilfield mapping and modelling have improved safety, efficiency and profitability in its operations.