Orientation
The oil and gas industry is a significant contributor to the global gross domestic product. In 2019, the sector yielded $86 trillion, which is 3.8% of the total GDP of the world (What percentage of the global economy, 2020). The business is conducted by firms that are specialized in the exploration, extraction, and distillation of crude oil. The integrated companies also undertake the extraction of gas from sulfur deposits. This paper explains the trends, patterns, and consistencies in the oil and gas sector.
Trends
The technological trends in the oil and gas industry include big data and analytics, through which the oil companies collect information regarding consumer insights (Ene, 2020). The data is collected using new architectures for business and technology. The improvement of the value of petroleum products depends on the nature of responses from the clients, regarding the quality of the oil and gas products. The application of the internet of things and recent technology in the supervision of oil processing has enabled companies to reduce operation costs, due to the minimal requirement of human labor. Moreover, oil producers use cloud computing, which has provided a secure platform for the storage and access of metadata. Firms also use digital oil exploration machines such as submersible pumps that are electronic, to monitor the flow of crude petroleum (Stevens, 2018). Furthermore, the adoption of asset reliability and integrity systems in oil production has minimized the chances of occurrence of failures during the processing of oil. The most important synergies among the trends are the enhancement of the efficiency and financial sustainability of oil extraction and processing.
Patterns
The oil and gas sector is characterized by a common mode of change in prices, due to the occurrence of economic shocks (World Economic Forum, 2016). For example, the cost of petroleum was almost constant between January 2019 and June 2019. However, due to the attack on an oil reservoir in Saudi Arabia in September 2019, the prices of petroleum significantly increased (What percentage of the global economy, 2020). Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic has caused an increase in the charges on petroleum products, especially in the countries that majorly export oil. However, producer countries experience low oil prices due to the excess reserves.
Consistencies
The oil and gas sector experiences an expansion in the market cover – many investors venture into the petroleum exploration business, despite the negative effects of the economic shocks (Baker, 2019). However, the improvement of the quality of petroleum products is not conducted to a significant level. The constituents of the final products have remained the same over time. Moreover, major oil producers are still the main suppliers to the international market, even with the discovery of oil deposits in other parts of the world.
The Most Important Trend
The automated systems for oil exploration, extraction, and processing will be crucial for the oil and gas sector, due to the improved efficiencies associated with computerization. The major impact of automation is the reduction in the need for manual labor in the oil fields and refineries (Ene, 2020). Therefore, petroleum companies will yield enhanced revenues due to the reduction of operation costs. The adoption of programmed techniques in oil extraction and processing will also cause technological advancement within the producer countries since extensive technical research will be conducted for the improvement of the performance of petroleum refinery equipment. Moreover, advancements in the exploration of oil and gas will lead to the discovery of petroleum deposits in other regions. Successful exploitation of the newly found volumes will spur global economic development (World Economic Forum, 2016).
References
Baker, D. (2019). Digital technology trends in the oil and gas industry. GeoExpro.
Ene, A. (2020). How technology is changing the oil and gas landscape – for the better. Energy CIO Insights. Web.
Stevens, P. (2018). The role of oil and gas in the economic development of the global economy. Oxford University Press.
What percentage of the global economy is the oil and gas drilling sector? (2020). Investopedia. Web.
World Economic Forum. (2016). Future of oil and gas.