Digital economy. Oil Industry: Digital Reality

Neural networks, digital twins, artificial intelligence. Industry 4.0 technologies will change the oil industry beyond recognition

Architects of the digital age

Information technology and biomedicine are usually considered to be the most technologically advanced. Companies in traditional industries, such as metal rolling or oil production and refining, are treated differently. At first glance, they seem conservative, but many experts call them the main architects of the new digital age.

Industrial giants began to automate production processes back in the mid-30s of the last century. Over the decades, hardware and software complexes have been continuously improved and complicated. Automation of production processes - for example, in oil refining - has advanced far ahead. The operation of a modern refinery is monitored by hundreds of thousands of sensors and instruments, and fuel supplies are monitored in real time by satellite navigation systems. Every day the average Russian refinery produces over 50,000 terabytes of information. For comparison, 3 million books that are stored in the digital storage of the Russian State Library take hundreds of times less - "only" 162 terabytes.

This is the very "big data", or Big Data, - a stream comparable to the information load of the largest sites and social networks. The accumulated data array is a unique resource that can be used in business management. But traditional methods of information analysis are no longer suitable for this. Truly efficient work with such a volume of data is possible only with the help of Industry 4.0 technologies. In the context of a changing economic paradigm, rich production "historical experience" is a significant advantage. Big data is at the heart of artificial intelligence. His ability to learn, understand reality and predict processes directly depends on the amount of loaded knowledge. At the same time, industrial companies have a powerful engineering school, are actively involved in the implementation and improvement of new technologies. This is another circumstance that makes them key players in the "new economy".

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Petr Kaznacheev, Director of the Center for Raw Materials Economy, RANEPA: “Smart management and corporate planning could be considered as a first step towards an“ integrated ”artificial intelligence system in oil and gas. In this case, we could talk about creating an algorithm for digitizing all key information about the company's activities - from a field to a gas station. This information could be fed to a single automated center. Based on this information, using artificial intelligence methods, forecasts and recommendations for optimizing the company's work could be made. "

Leader of digital transformation

Recognizing this trend, industrial leaders in Russia and the world are rebuilding business processes that have developed over decades, introducing Industry 4.0 technologies into production based on the industrial Internet of things, artificial intelligence and Big Data. The most intensive transformation is taking place in the oil and gas industry: the industry is dynamically “digitalizing”, investing in projects that seemed fantastic just yesterday. Plants controlled by artificial intelligence and capable of predicting situations, installations that prompt the operator to the optimal mode of operation - all this is already becoming a reality today.

At the same time, the maximum task is to create a production, logistics, production and sales management system that would unite smart wells, factories and gas stations into a single ecosystem. In an ideal digital model, the moment the consumer presses the lever of the fuel nozzle, the company's analysts in the operations center instantly receive information about what brand of gasoline is being filled into the tank, how much oil needs to be produced, delivered to the refinery and processed to meet the demand in specific region. So far, none of the Russian and foreign companies have managed to build such a model. However, Gazprom Neft has advanced the farthest in solving this problem. Its specialists are currently implementing a number of projects, which ultimately should become the basis for creating a unified platform for processing, logistics and sales management. A platform that no one else in the world has yet.

Digital twins

Today Gazprom Neft's refineries are among the most modern in the industry. However, the fourth industrial revolution opens up qualitatively new opportunities, while simultaneously presenting new requirements for automation. More precisely, it is not so much about automation as about the almost complete digitalization of production.

The basis of the new stage will be the so-called "digital twins" - virtual copies of refinery installations. All processes and relationships that take place in real prototypes are accurately described in 3D models. They are based on the work of artificial intelligence based on neural networks. The "digital twin" can suggest optimal operating modes for equipment, predict its failures, and recommend repair times. Among its other advantages is the ability to constantly learn. The neural network itself finds errors, corrects and remembers them, thereby improving its performance and forecast accuracy.

An array of historical information serves as the basis for training the "digital twin". Modern refinery installations are as complex as the human body. Hundreds of thousands of parts, tens of thousands of sensors. The technical documentation for each installation occupies a room the size of an assembly hall. To create a "digital twin", all this information must first be loaded into a neural network. Then the most difficult stage begins - the stage of teaching artificial intelligence to understand the installation. It includes readings from sensors and instrumentation collected over the past few years of the plant's operation. The operator simulates various situations, makes the neural network answer the question "what will happen if one of the work parameters is changed?" - for example, replacing one of the raw material components or increasing the power supply to the plant. The neural network analyzes the experience of past years and excludes non-optimal modes from the algorithm using the calculation method, and learns to predict the future operation of the installation.

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Gazprom Neft has already fully digitized two industrial complexes involved in the production of automotive fuel - a catalytic cracking gasoline hydrotreater at the Moscow Oil Refinery and a plant operating at the company's oil refinery in Omsk. Tests have shown that artificial intelligence is able to simultaneously take into account a huge number of parameters of their "digital counterparts", make decisions and notify about possible deviations in work even before the moment when the trouble threatens to develop into a serious problem.

At the same time, Gazprom Neft is testing complex solutions that will minimize the impact of the human factor on the scale of the entire production. Similar projects are currently being implemented at the company's bitumen plants in Ryazan and Kazakhstan. Successful empirically found solutions can subsequently be scaled up to the level of large refineries, which ultimately will create an effective digital production management platform.

Nikolay Legkodimov, Head of Advanced Technologies Consulting Group, KPMG in Russia and the CIS:“Solutions that simulate various units, assemblies and systems have been known and used for a long time, including in the oil and gas industry. One can speak of a qualitative leap only when a sufficient breadth of coverage of these models has been achieved. If we succeed in combining these models with each other, combining them into a whole complex chain, then this will really allow solving problems at a completely new level - in particular, simulating the behavior of the system in critical, unprofitable and simply dangerous working conditions. For those areas where retooling and upgrading equipment is very expensive, this will allow preliminary testing of new components. "

Performance management

In the future, the entire value chain in the logistics, refining and sales block of Gazprom Neft will be united by a single technological platform based on artificial intelligence. The “brain” of this organism will be the Performance Management Center, created a year ago in St. Petersburg. It is here that information from the "digital twins" will flow, here it will be analyzed and here, on the basis of the data obtained, management decisions will be made.

Already today, in real time, more than 250 thousand sensors and dozens of systems transmit information to the Center from all the company's assets included in the perimeter of the Gazprom Neft logistics, refining and sales unit. Every second, 180 thousand signals are received here. It would take a person about a week just to view this information. The digital brain of the Center does it instantly: in real time it monitors the quality of products and the quantity of petroleum products along the entire chain - from the exit from the refinery to the end consumer.

The strategic goal of the Center is to radically increase the efficiency of the downstream segment using the technologies and capabilities of Industry 4.0. That is, it is not just to manage processes - this can be done within the framework of traditional systems, but to make these processes the most effective: through predictive analytics and artificial intelligence at every stage of the business, reduce losses, optimize processes and prevent losses.

In the near future, the Center should learn how to solve several key tasks that affect the efficiency of business management. Including predicting the future 60 days ahead: how the market will behave in two months, how much oil will need to be refined to meet the demand for gasoline at the current time, what state the equipment will be in, whether the installations will be able to cope with the upcoming load and whether it is needed repair them. At the same time, in the next two years, the Center should reach 50% capacity and begin to monitor, analyze and predict the amount of reserves of oil products at all oil depots and refueling complexes of the company; automatically monitor more than 90% of production parameters; analyze the reliability of more than 40% of technological equipment and develop measures to prevent the loss of oil products and a decrease in their quality.

By 2020, Gazprom Neft sets a goal to reach 100% of the capabilities of the Performance Management Center. Among the declared indicators - analysis of the reliability of all equipment, prevention of losses in quality and quantity of products, predictive management of technological deviations.

Daria Kozlova, senior consultant at VYGON Consulting:“In general, integrated solutions bring significant economic benefits for the industry. For example, according to Accenture estimates, the economic effect of digitalization could be more than $ 1 trillion. Therefore, when it comes to large vertically integrated companies, the implementation of integrated solutions is highly justified. But it is also justified for small companies, since improving efficiency can free them up additional funds by reducing costs, increasing the efficiency of working capital management, etc. "

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Text: Natalia Petrova, Illustrations: Alexey Stolyarov

To assess the effect of the changes taking place today, it is enough to mentally retreat into the past and remember how we lived, worked and did business 10-15 years ago. Analysts, however, argue that this is just the beginning of the process, and promise the business world dramatic changes in the near future. The upper floors of corporations are well aware of the winds of change: in IBM's regular poll of CEOs of multinational companies, technology came first as a key business driver back in 2012 and has held that position ever since.

Experts note that the danger of the ongoing processes is primarily in their scale and speed. Scientific and technological progress has never passed at such a speed - and this speed continues to increase, leaving less and less time for thinking, forecasting and preparing. The changes themselves have never been so all-encompassing: digitization does not bypass any area of our life and sooner or later numbers will come to every industry and every home. In addition, all previous technological breakthroughs concerned the material world, but now the boundaries between the material world and the virtual space are being erased, mixing together what has always been reliably separated. How should we deal with these changes? What to expect from them and how should the business proceed?

Alexander Dyukov, Chairman of the Management Board, Gazprom Neft: « We live in a special era - the era of the fourth industrial revolution. This era has a very serious impact on the global economy. We clearly see how quickly new industries emerge, how new companies appear and grow. Those players who previously dominated are forced to either accept the challenge of the development of digital technologies and try to actively engage in them, or leave the market. If we talk about the oil industry, then, unlike, for example, the banking business, we are not so dependent and not so sensitive to the digital revolution. Nevertheless, the use of digital technologies can provide certain benefits for companies. We have chosen a course towards global technological leadership, and one of the conditions for this leadership is the effective, rapid use of digital technologies. "

In the general stream

At first glance, it seems that transformations happen haphazardly and unpredictably. The digital ice drift begins here and there - it touches one industry tangentially, turns the other upside down, the recent market leaders go downhill, and companies that no one heard of a year ago come to the fore. So, with the development of the Internet, the print media are slowly but surely leaving the market, giving way to electronic ones. Not only the way of disseminating information is changing, but also the genres and formats of handling the printed word. Market after market is also changing mobile application technologies - trucking, banking, tourism. Next in line are retail, cellular and even B2B markets, where mobile applications have also begun to appear, replacing various service functions. The interaction model proposed at the time by Uber has become a household name today.

A wave of various digital technologies and related transformations rolls over the wave: the Internet, social networks, big data, neural networks ... However, a careful study of events and their driving forces shows that behind external diversity there are common universal features that allow us to say what we have dealing with a single process. This process of change is increasingly referred to as digital transformation.

Educational platform

A striking example of the implementation of a platform solution within a company is the Gazprom Neft Corporate University. This is a new form of educational projects that allows employees not only to be consumers of knowledge, but to actively participate in their creation. The prerequisite for the emergence of the Corporate University was, on the one hand, the need for a large number of employees to improve their qualifications, and on the other hand, a colossal array of knowledge and experience accumulated by the company's experts. The platform format provides both practically unlimited opportunities for interaction due to the total integration of the educational space.

At the same time, the Corporate University is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to ensure the service is of the right quality. The structural basis of this work is the faculties and departments within them. The department is a professional community, which is a key tool for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Bearers of professional experience and knowledge can act in this community in two roles. As experts, they provide high quality training content and monitor the relevance of the content of competency models, profiles, tests and curricula. As internal trainers, they design and deliver training courses. One of the most important tasks of the Corporate University is to involve managers and bearers of expertise in this work and help them strengthen the skills and abilities that are needed to complete it. At the moment, the Corporate University already has 21 departments and it is planned to open another 9. The platform format of the Corporate University makes it possible to involve thousands of experts in its work, who are able to provide the educational process for tens of thousands of managers and employees.

What features are we talking about? First, the growth in the number of connections. The number of connections increases each time some element of the physical world, previously isolated, turns out to be connected to the digital world. Such an element can be the person himself or some of the objects and devices around him. Telephones, cameras, players have become digital - they all turn into auxiliary devices for connecting a person with a network. Refrigerators and washing machines are already embracing wi-fi. We are dealing with the Internet of things. Self-service digital checkout. Digital reception desk. A digital code on a museum piece. In itself, the emergence of compounds is not a new phenomenon, the novelty is in the rapid growth of their number.

Each active connection becomes a source of information for the digital ocean. This information was scattered in the physical world, but with a new connection it merged into the general information array. And the explosive growth of connections is leading to an explosive growth in the amount of information available. In other words, we are accumulating big data.

The available information, in turn, opens up hitherto unknown opportunities for interaction. Today, the strategy of a basketball team's game can be based not on the experience of a coach, but on a machine analysis of shots and behavior on the field of the opponent's players. Using big data, Amazon analyzes the subtle nuances of its customers' preferences and makes them surprisingly accurate offers. Yandex.Traffic jams, interacting with various sources, collect information about the situation on the road and embroider traffic flows.

As a result, the growth of digital density - the number of connections, available information and interactions - is throwing a bridge between the physical and digital world: the digital world more and more accurately reflects the physical and, in turn, begins to transform it. This influence can be straightforward, as in the example of basketball, shop and city navigation, or more indirectly. The increase in digital density at some point develops into qualitative changes in the environment in which people and businesses exist.

Big data

Gazprom Neft is already successfully using the phenomenon of growing digital density to improve business efficiency. Thus, back in 2012, the company launched the ERA (Electronic Asset Development) program aimed at developing automation in exploration and production. Geological information about all fields of the company is accumulated and analyzed in its own information system GeoMate, and in the program "Chessboard and technical mode" information from wells is stored and the technological mode of their operation is formed.

The implementation of various IT solutions immediately yielded results - the company has multiplied the amount of information related to geological exploration, field development, well operation, etc. Today, for efficient processing of seismic data and building hydrodynamic models, Gazprom Neft is already turning to the help of the supercomputer St. -Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great. This capacity is needed to benefit from the vast amount of heterogeneous and semi-structured data obtained from the study of complex reserves.

Konstantin Kravchenko, Head of the Department of Information Technology, Automation and Telecommunications: “It is very important to understand that digital transformation is not a substitution of one technology for another. Digital transformation is, first of all, a change in the business management model, a change in business processes, a restructuring of the model of organization and conduct of business in a company, and in the case of oil and gas companies we are talking about the transformation of all areas of its activities - exploration, production, refining, sales and corporate management. Therefore, in order for such large-scale transformations to be carried out, it is necessary to develop a digital transformation strategy. We must move from separate innovative initiatives and projects to a single step-by-step plan for the transition to the digital economy. And such work is already underway at Gazprom Neft. "

Another example of active practical use of the opportunities that the idea of digital transformation brings with it is the analysis of information using machine learning - artificial intelligence. Large amounts of data are received daily from Gazprom Neft's production assets - production well measurements (fluid flow rate, oil flow rate, water cut, bottomhole pressure values), studies of the physical characteristics of the reservoir and the produced fluid. At the same time, for various reasons, these data may not always be correct or complete, and their analysis can lead to incorrect conclusions about the current state of the wells or the field as a whole and ultimately affect decisions regarding development. Such solutions may include hydraulic fracturing or well workover, sidetracking, or tertiary enhanced oil recovery techniques.

The task of artificial intelligence in this situation is to find errors in the data and to redefine missing values, thereby increasing the quality of information, to identify new, previously unnoticed patterns, and to speed up the analysis process itself. Only a machine can analyze each megabyte of data, integrate heterogeneous data, and take into account various patterns when making forecasts. Today, specialists from the Gazprom Neft Science and Technology Center, together with the MIPT Engineering Center, have begun developing algorithms for teaching machines the appropriate skills. In the future - the creation of a full-fledged intellectual assistant for a specialist developer.

Signs of transformation

Digital transformation has a ton of symptoms that can be roughly grouped into three groups. First, there is a change in the mentality of end consumers, which has already been called consumerization. The meaning of the changes is that specialized IT technologies are increasingly becoming available to the mass user. In turn, users try to use “home” technologies in the office without thinking about their security. Over a decade and a half, the technological focus has significantly shifted from the business segment to the consumer segment: if at the beginning of the millennium the leaders were such technology companies as Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, which worked primarily with business, now Google, Apple, Facebook, targeting the average person at the very end of the chain. People have massively gained first-class digital experiences - and their expectations and behaviors have changed dramatically. A person who yesterday, together with his son, filmed his neighborhood with an iPhone from a quadrocopter, is not satisfied with a mobile banking application with an interface like an ATM, or the old simple scheme "paid - refueled - went" to a gas station - he wants to get something more, something which is in line with the rest of his experience. At the same time, if a person needs to send a large file at work or urgently contact someone, he will not hesitate to use file sharing on the network or messenger. The business must take these trends into account so that the moment does not come when the company will seem antediluvian not only to customers, but also to its own employees.

Performance Management Center

In June 2017, the Gazprom Neft Refinery Efficiency Management Center (CUE) was opened in St. Petersburg. The strategic goal of this project, unique for the industry, is to build a unified digital platform for managing the efficiency of the value added chain - from the flow of oil to refineries to the sale of oil products to the end consumer. The center uses modern data analysis technologies, predictive analytics and big data methods.

The principle of operation of the CUE is based on the integration of various value chain management systems, the organization of free and continuous data exchange between them and the use of predictive analytics methods for such parameters as demand for oil products, equipment reliability, quality of oil products, environmental monitoring, energy efficiency, etc. In real time, 250,000 sensors and dozens of systems transmit information to the ESC from all the company's assets included in the perimeter of the Gazprom Neft logistics, refining and sales unit.

As part of the work of the center, the formation of accurate engineering models of technological installations continues - digital twins of assets, which will allow the transition to proactive management of the reliability, safety and efficiency of enterprises.

Another important sign that digital transformation has already affected one or another industry: the democratic competitive environment, which is achieved by lowering the entry threshold into business and is expressed in an avalanche-like growth in the number of startups. Many start-up founders seek out small niches, where large companies are poorly covering customer needs, but can still generate significant income. They do not necessarily compete with the "dinosaurs" directly, but by their very vivid existence in their chosen niche, they form an environment that creates strong competitive pressure on traditional businesses. In such a conservative industry as oil and gas, startups can find their place by offering companies innovative technologies, IT products, and business management solutions.

At the same time, business democratization translates into a variety of business models used, and this applies not only to start-ups, although they undoubtedly set the tone here. Any company, regardless of size or industry, can expand or change its way of interacting with customers. A striking example of a new approach is platform solutions. Google and Apple were early adopters of this model, followed by hundreds of consumer platforms. Now it's time for industrial companies. In Russia, for example, Mail.ru Group is engaged in the development of platform production systems. The holding has already entered the industrial Internet of things (IIoT) market by launching the Tarantool IIoT platform, which allows collecting data from sensors at enterprises and sending them for analysis to data centers.

Platform-based production systems allow you to rebuild business management, increase production efficiency and optimize the entire value chain. In Gazprom Neft, such a platform has become the recently opened Performance Management Center in the logistics, refining and sales unit (see inset).

At the same time, large industrial companies themselves can take an active part in creating platforms as business models for the interaction of various business representatives - technology creators, service providers. Thus, Gazprom Neft is already actively acting as a customer of innovations, at the same time involving scientific organizations and equipment manufacturers in their creation. In particular, the company is implementing the project “Creation of a complex of domestic technologies and high-tech equipment for the development of reserves of the Bazhenov formation”. This project can be considered a prototype of a platform model of relationships between all market participants. Various research institutes and industrial companies are invited to participate in it. And the systematic development and testing of new domestic technologies is supposed to be carried out on the basis of the TRIZ Production Technology Development Center, which Gazprom Neft is creating on the territory of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug together with the administration of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra.

Sales platform

Digital transformation can provide significant competitive advantages for the Gazprom Neft sales block. Today the company is creating a digital sales platform. It will allow you to finely and accurately customize the product and service offer for each client in any of the sales channels, quickly create and launch new products and services on the market, provide the consumer with instant access to the necessary solution - whether it is a gas station management contract, a fuel supply contract or an order to deliver an order from an online store to a specific station at a specific time.

In other words, the company will secure itself leadership in the end-user market, including in the B2B segment, by using the accumulated knowledge about its client, organizing effective end-to-end logistics and the ability to organically integrate the capabilities of partners from any other industries into its own client offer. IT solutions in these three areas will form the basis of the architecture of the digital sales platform. The specification of competitive areas for the formation of specific IT projects is carried out as part of the development of a digital strategy for the regional sales directorate. By the end of the year, the development of the strategy will be completed and the implementation of the technological component of the platform will begin. At the same time, changes in the organizational model of the Directorate are being worked out, which are necessary for the formation of the business component of the digital sales platform.

The company of the future

With the growth of digital density, the key business competencies are changing, which ensure its very existence - allow you to create value for the client and monetize the created value. The emergence of some and the withering away of other key competencies is not something new: once the appearance of cars devalued horse driving skills, but created a need for driving skills. Nowadays, with the advent of the navigator, the skill of orientation in the city has become less useful, but the value of the skill of handling digital devices has increased. The same thing happens at the level of organizations and industries. However, both individuals and organizations can find it very difficult to give up their polished competencies when they are no longer needed.

Changes in key competencies entail industry restructuring, the emergence of new business models, and organizational changes. Digital business transformation is the development of the ability to create and develop new competencies that make a business successful in an environment of constant and large-scale changes. Media, retailers, IT companies, banks faced the described phenomena in full growth. The industry is off the beaten path, but those who feel safe are deceiving themselves: the first echoes of digital transformation continue to be heard here as well. According to experts, in the digital future for companies from the oil and gas sector, competencies related to innovative development, the development of new products, and the development of new markets will come to the fore. While routine functions will increasingly be left at the mercy of robots, knowledge related to geological exploration, data analysis, management of the reliability and efficiency of the company will remain in demand.

Konstantin Kravchenko, Head of the Department of Information Technologies, Automation and Telecommunications, Gazprom Neft PJSC

The digital era in the oil and gas industry is now a reality. Companies around the world have moved from words to digital technologies: Shell and Total use robots, Chevron and Shell use drones, Statoil uses 3D visualization, Chevron uses video analytics to detect leaks on pipelines, BP is implementing a large-scale project related to the use of industrial Internet of things on mining platforms. Almost all players in the global oil and gas industry are already using artificial intelligence and the capabilities of virtual and augmented reality. Even such technology as blockchain has not been ignored. This year, BP joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, whose activities are aimed, among other things, at the distribution of smart contracts in corporations.
Gazprom Neft does not remain aloof from the unfolding digitalization race. Over the course of the year, virtually all of the company's production units and corporate functions have launched pilot projects or embarked on large-scale digital initiatives.

At the same time, it should be noted that digitalization leads to radical changes in entire industries. Thus, the spread of Internet telephony, instant messengers and virtual operators forced telecommunications companies to completely change their business model. The advent of electronic and self-driving cars, as well as car-sharing services, has changed the face of the transportation industry. These innovations, along with the development of the extraction of shale resources, the increasing use of renewable energy sources, the activities of start-ups offering refueling of the car outside the gas station, also affected the oil and gas sector. But digitalization is not only a shock - it also contains the survival opportunities for traditional industry players.

You just need to be able to use these opportunities correctly. And from the technical point of view, we are ready: a significant amount of production data has been accumulated, computing power has been created for their processing; the cost of introducing innovations is decreasing, and the experience of their successful application is growing. But digitalization is not equal to technology; it also involves a radical change in operating and business models. This is its fundamental difference from traditional automation. New technologies do not work without changing approaches to doing business, and here the digital technological platform plays a key role. It is she who will become a tool for managing disparate processes and functions of companies, and in the future - the basis of the industry ecosystem.

The process of forming end-to-end value chains is underway, which are managed from multifunctional centers. A drilling support center (in the exploration and production block), a center for improving efficiency in oil refining and logistics, a center for optimizing production in offshore projects, and a project management center for capital construction are already operating or are at the stage of creation at Gazprom Neft. In the future, we are considering the creation of flat structures, managed from a single center and uniting the ecosystem of partners.

On this path, we still have to solve many problems. At the company level, it is necessary to create a new corporate culture, a management and decision-making system, and reconsider the role of information technology and the CIO. But there are tasks that need to be addressed at the industry level - standardization, legislative changes and the creation of a common technology platform.

I would like to emphasize that without such a platform, effective progress along the path of digitalization is impossible. Representatives of the largest technology companies and business consultants speak about this, and this is also spelled out in the Digital Economy of the Russian Federation program.

There are now about 300 industrial IoT platforms on the market, but these are mainly Western solutions. Their use in the cloud-based era poses critical risks to our industry. In addition, existing platforms solve only part of the digitalization tasks, not fully responding to the demands of tomorrow.

The main question: where is the player or team that will create a promising Russian cloud platform for digital production? Obviously, such a large-scale task is beyond the power of one company.

The global energy sector is on the verge of technological and structural reform. According to the World Economic Forum, digitalization of the oil and gas industry alone could generate additional income of $ 1.6 trillion by 2026. However, this technological transition can prove to be a very painful transformation for many old industrial enterprises.

In recent years, new terms and concepts have emerged to describe the ongoing digital transformation. The structure of the world, including industrial, is changing the concept of intelligent enterprise (IE) - a set of technological innovations that include artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent automation (IA), deep learning technologies, predictive analytics and cognitive computing.

According to the International Data Corporation, the market for cognitive solutions and artificial intelligence will grow to $ 46 billion by 2020, an increase of 500% over 2016 levels.

Science fiction is becoming a documented reality of rapid changes in socio-economic space: the boundaries of the ongoing transformation are rapidly expanding - from intervention in human genes to the fourth industrial revolution. Accenture believes that increased use of IE solutions will improve labor efficiency and can increase the productivity of national economies by 40% by 2035.

Should we spend money on new technologies?

While the financial sector, real estate and healthcare are rapidly transforming, leading in terms of investment in IE systems, the oil and gas industry has not yet benefited significantly from the new digital order. The oil industry has just gone through its most challenging period in 30 years. The fall in oil prices since 2014, the reduction of 350 thousand headcounts around the world, and the fall in investment in production are a serious crisis that the oil and gas industry has faced in recent years. The result was attempts to optimize the business, the beginning of using the potential of new technologies to increase the efficiency and profitability of companies.

According to a survey conducted by Oil & Gas IQ among representatives of the largest international oil and gas companies, when answering the question "How can intelligent corporate systems affect your business?" 65% were in favor of cost reduction, 45% - process optimization, 44% - business modernization, 42% - saving time, 35% - winning the competition.

But so far, oil companies are seriously lagging behind the changes taking place in other industries at a tremendous speed. According to the latest polls, four out of five oil and gas industry professionals are "excited" about the changes, and three out of four believe that IE systems will help companies save money by reducing capital and operating expenses. Nevertheless, one in three respondents said that his company has not yet started, and some do not even intend to integrate innovative solutions of IE systems into the existing business model.

The digitalization of the oil and gas industry is aimed primarily at the ability to make quick decisions balanced on risk assessment, as well as to increase the productivity and value of the company. BP CEO Robert Dudley, speaking of digital transformation, notes the importance of making operational decisions, as well as changing the way people work. But the oil and gas industry is traditionally conservative, only a few, the most financially secured players show themselves as bright innovators in certain areas.

According to the head of the upstream company Bernard Lowney, big data will lead to a revolution in the oil industry.

"Accept a new era, do not wait for it to be imposed on us",

- calls on the top manager.

During 2017, BP acquired Beyond Limits, an artificial intelligence and cognitive computing start-up that is adapting NASA's deep-space upstream technologies for the sector.

Chevron is actively developing GPUs for seismic data visualization and 3D reservoir modeling. The main goal is to determine the most suitable locations for drilling.

Shell develops seismic exploration machine learning algorithms to automatically detect and classify geologic structures in onshore and offshore oil and gas fields.

The main question that each of the oil and gas companies will have to pose and solve is how wasteful it can be, creating and implementing wonders from the arsenal of the fourth industrial revolution.

For example, Italy's Eni had to cut capital expenditures by 20% due to the huge costs of its award-winning HPC3 hybrid high-performance computer, which was launched in early 2017 for use in the hydrocarbon exploration and production segment. But experts point out that IE elements can be installed on top of existing legacy systems and use data that is already generated by the hardware. This will significantly reduce digitalization costs for oil and gas projects, which is good news for an industry where four out of five megaprojects underway are either on schedule or on budget.

According to surveys, two technologies from the arsenal of IE systems can bring the greatest impact in the oil and gas industry: predictive analytics and intelligent automation systems.

Deep learning technologies are essential for accurate failure analysis in industrial plants and can find their way into the capital-intensive oil and gas industry. Intelligent automation systems allow, through data integration, to switch to the automatic execution of functions traditionally performed by personnel. Experts note that by 2020 there will be a personnel crisis in the oil and gas industries: half of the experienced engineers and geophysicists will reach retirement age. Digitalization can affect the entire value chain in the oil and gas industry. Among the most promising segments for the transition to digital technologies are asset management and infrastructure facilities, field development, geophysical services, pipelines, and processing.

Russian way

In November 2017, Gazprom approved a target program for the development of a unified information space until 2022. The company has set itself the task of introducing automated solutions at all levels of management, based on current trends in the transition to the digital economy.

Gazprom has declared three principles on which the policy in this area is built: innovation, integration and import substitution. Advanced IT solutions are used to ensure maximum integration of information and control systems and a synergistic effect for Gazprom's business. The company is trying to give preference to domestic developments. The strategy of informatization is being implemented, 35 information and control systems have been introduced, which made it possible to automate many important business processes. A data processing center was built with stringent information security requirements.

Gazprom now has a corporate data warehouse with key performance indicators of production processes used in key management decisions. It is planned to comprehensively automate production accounting and planning, create a virtual unified data warehouse, which will receive information from facilities in real time, as well as introduce tools for monitoring, modeling and forecasting the technical state of production assets.

Great hopes are associated with the use of elements of a promising model of enterprise management - the concept of "Industry 4.0" (the fourth technological revolution).

It involves the widespread use of digital technologies and tools for proactive management of production facilities and processes along the entire value chain to maximize business profitability. With the help of powerful computing resources and a software platform for processing large amounts of data, it is planned to create digital models of operating production facilities ("digital twins").

Gazprom Neft also sees great potential for digitalization. The most interesting areas are changes affecting business management, business processes, restructuring of the organization model and doing business in the company. According to Gazprom Neft, digital transformation involves a symbiosis of large-scale technological and organizational transformations aimed at dramatically increasing business efficiency through its complete digitalization at all stages of value creation. According to the head of the oil company, Alexander Dyukov, technologies can be used along the entire value chain, from exploration to the sale of fuel at gas stations, which will improve work efficiency.

Opportunities for localization

The main prospects for digitalization in Russia are associated with energy. There is potential for localization here. So, according to Simon Khuffeto, senior director of the energy industry at Dassault Systèmes, IT solutions that are created for the specific needs of companies in Russia can be used in the future on the global market. In Russia, Dassault Systèmes takes an active part in the business digitalization process, collaborating with key market players. Rosatom Corporation became one of the main partners. Dassault Systèmes actively cooperates with a subsidiary of the corporation - the ASE group of companies.

“We started interaction within the internal processes of design and construction of nuclear reactors. Over time, we realized that the companies have excellent opportunities to bring joint solutions to the energy market, not only in Russia, but also abroad. Based on our developments, ASE has created its own Multi-D platform - a set of tools that runs on our 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which allows us to implement all capital construction projects in terms of organizing technical information, optimizing the sequence of work, and designing civil engineering objects. We are helping ASE develop this technology, but we have other plans for cooperation, ”

- said Khuffeto.

In the oil and gas sector, Dassault Systèmes works with equipment manufacturers, engineering firms that design and provide technical support and maintenance, and operators who operate the facilities. The proposed solutions help to design and build infrastructure facilities, manage capital construction projects, and optimize processes at operating enterprises.

Dassault Systèmes is interested in projects in the field of alternative energy in Russia. The company has optimistic forecasts for the development of this segment.

“In Russia, the share of alternative energy sources is very small. But there is huge potential, especially for remote regions where local power generation is needed. Alternative energy can help the economic development of distant regions, as well as create competitive advantages for the Russian economy in the world market. A good example of cooperation is the project of RUSAL and RusHydro in Krasnoyarsk, where a hydroelectric power plant, an environmentally friendly source of energy, is used to produce aluminum. Another factor is that there are very large cities in Russia, the development and growth of which creates great difficulties for public utilities. Here, Smart Grid technology would help to create sustainable and sustainable urban development. There are many projects and different possibilities, but all of these projects have a challenge - complexity management. How to deal with the increasing complexity of projects? State-of-the-art technology can help in all of these areas, and working in 3D plays a very important role here, ”says Simon Juffeto.

Source: popmech

Neural networks, digital twins, artificial intelligence. Industry 4.0 technologies will change the oil industry beyond recognition

Architects of the digital age

Industrial giants began to automate production processes back in the mid-30s of the last century. Over the decades, hardware and software complexes have been continuously improved and complicated. Automation of production processes - for example, in oil refining - has advanced far ahead. The operation of a modern refinery is monitored by hundreds of thousands of sensors and instruments, and fuel supplies are monitored in real time by satellite navigation systems. Every day the average Russian refinery produces over 50,000 terabytes of information. For comparison, the 3 million books that are stored in the digital storage of the Russian State Library occupy hundreds of times less - "only" 162 terabytes.

This is the very same "big data", or Big Data, - a stream comparable to the information loading of the largest sites and social networks. The accumulated data array is a unique resource that can be used in business management. But traditional methods of information analysis are no longer suitable for this. Truly efficient work with such a volume of data is possible only with the help of Industry 4.0 technologies. In the context of a changing economic paradigm, rich production "historical experience" is a serious advantage. Big data is at the heart of artificial intelligence. His ability to learn, understand reality and predict processes directly depends on the amount of loaded knowledge. At the same time, industrial companies have a powerful engineering school, are actively involved in the implementation and improvement of new technologies. This is another circumstance that makes them key players in the "new economy".

Finally, domestic industrialists know the price of business efficiency. Russia is a country of great distances. Often, production assets are located at a great distance from consumers. Under these conditions, it is very difficult to react quickly to market fluctuations. Traditional technologies allow you to save no more than a tenth of a percent. Meanwhile, digital solutions today allow you to reduce costs by up to 10-15% per month. The fact is obvious: in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, the one who learns the most effective use of new technologies in terms of accumulated experience will be competitive. Petr Kaznacheev, Director of the Center for Raw Materials Economy, RANEPA: “As a first step towards an“ integrated ”artificial intelligence system in oil and gas, one could consider“ smart ”management and corporate planning. information could come to a single automated center. Based on this information, using artificial intelligence methods, forecasts and recommendations for optimizing the company's work could be made. "

Leader of digital transformation

Recognizing this trend, industrial leaders in Russia and the world are rebuilding business processes that have developed over decades, introducing Industry 4.0 technologies into production based on the industrial Internet of things, artificial intelligence and Big Data. The most intensive transformation is taking place in the oil and gas industry: the industry is dynamically "digitalizing", investing in projects that seemed fantastic just yesterday. Plants controlled by artificial intelligence and capable of predicting situations, installations that prompt the operator to the optimal mode of operation - all this is already becoming a reality today.

At the same time, the maximum task is to create a production, logistics, production and sales management system that would unite smart wells, factories and gas stations into a single ecosystem. ideal digital model, at the moment when the consumer presses the lever of the fuel nozzle, the company's analysts in the operations center instantly receive information about what brand of gasoline is being filled into the tank, how much oil needs to be produced, delivered to the refinery and processed to meet the demand in a particular region. So far, none of the Russian and foreign companies have managed to build such a model. However, Gazprom Neft has advanced the farthest in solving this problem. Its specialists are currently implementing a number of projects, which ultimately should become the basis for creating a unified platform for processing, logistics and sales management. A platform that no one else in the world has yet.

Digital twins

The basis of the new stage will be the so-called "digital twins" - virtual copies of refinery installations. 3D models reliably describe all the processes and relationships that take place in real prototypes. they are based on the work of artificial intelligence based on neural networks. The "digital twin" can propose optimal operating modes for equipment, predict its failures, and recommend repair times. Among its other advantages is the ability to constantly learn. The neural network itself finds errors, corrects and remembers them, thereby improving its performance and forecast accuracy.

The basis for training the "digital twin" is an array of historical information. Modern refinery installations are as complex as the human body. Hundreds of thousands of parts, tens of thousands of sensors. The technical documentation for each installation occupies a room the size of an assembly hall. To create a "digital twin", all this information must first be loaded into a neural network. Then the most difficult stage begins - the stage of teaching artificial intelligence to understand the installation. it includes the readings of sensors and instrumentation collected over the past several years of operation of the installation. The operator simulates various situations, makes the neural network answer the question "what will happen if one of the work parameters is changed?" - for example, replacing one of the raw material components or increasing the power supply to the plant. The neural network analyzes the experience of past years and excludes non-optimal modes from the algorithm using the calculation method, and learns to predict the future operation of the installation.

Gazprom Neft has already fully "digitized" two industrial complexes involved in the production of automotive fuel - a catalytic cracking gasoline hydrotreating unit at the Moscow oil refinery and a unit operating at the company's oil refinery in Omsk. Tests have shown that artificial intelligence is able to simultaneously take into account a huge number of parameters of their "digital twins", make decisions and notify about possible deviations in work even before the moment when the trouble threatens to develop into a serious problem.

Nikolay Legkodimov, Head of Advanced Technologies Consulting Group, KPMG in Russia and the CIS:“Solutions that simulate various components, assemblies and systems have been known and applied for a long time, including in the oil and gas industry. We can speak of a qualitative leap only when a sufficient breadth of coverage of these models is achieved. If we can combine these models with each other, to combine them into a whole complex chain, this will really allow solving problems at a completely new level - in particular, simulating the behavior of the system in critical, unprofitable and simply dangerous working conditions. will allow preliminary testing of new components. "

Performance management

In the long term, the entire value chain in the logistics, refining and sales block of Gazprom Neft will be united by a single technological platform based on artificial intelligence. The "brain" of this organism will be the Performance Management Center, created a year ago in St. Petersburg. It is here that information from the "digital twins" will flow, here it will be analyzed and here, on the basis of the data obtained, management decisions will be made.

The strategic goal of the Center is to radically increase the efficiency of the downstream segment using the technologies and capabilities of Industry 4.0. That is, it is not just to manage the processes - this can be done within the framework of traditional systems, but to make these processes the most effective: through predictive analytics and artificial intelligence at every stage of the business, reduce losses, optimize processes and prevent losses.

In the near future, the Center should learn how to solve several key problems affecting the efficiency of business management. including predicting the future 60 days ahead: how the market will behave in two months, how much oil will need to be refined to meet the demand for gasoline at the current time, what state the equipment will be in, whether the installations will be able to cope with the upcoming load and whether they need it repair. At the same time, in the next two years, the Center should reach 50% capacity and begin to monitor, analyze and predict the amount of reserves of oil products at all oil depots and refueling complexes of the company; automatically monitor more than 90% of production parameters; analyze the reliability of more than 40% of technological equipment and develop measures to prevent the loss of oil products and a decrease in their quality.

Daria Kozlova, senior consultant at VYGON Consulting:“In general, integrated solutions bring significant economic benefits for the industry. For example, according to Accenture estimates, the economic effect of digitalization could be more than $ 1 trillion. Therefore, when it comes to large vertically integrated companies, the implementation of integrated solutions is highly justified. But it is also justified for small companies, since efficiency improvements can free them up additional funds by reducing costs, increasing the efficiency of working capital management, etc. "

Digitization (in a broad sense) is the process of introducing digital transmission systems (DSP) at the level of primary networks, switching and control facilities that ensure the transmission and distribution of information flows in digital form at the level of secondary networks.

From time to time, we all need to create a small database with a convenient and understandable logic and interface, but at the same time there is absolutely no desire to tinker with Access or other similar programs ...