CERAWeek 2018 takes place next week in Houston. The Wall Street Journal calls it “the most influential energy conference in the U.S.,” while the Financial Times refers to it as the “Davos of Energy.” Both are true, but this year’s CERAWeek is even more noteworthy as the energy industry is reaching a tipping point. 

Today, energy companies and others in capital-intensive industries have access to growing volumes of real-time data, as sensors become more pervasive, and as advanced analytics are fed through increased connectivity across operations. But this high-speed access to more and more data is not giving decision-makers the time nor the insights they need to break through barriers to operational excellence. 

The tipping point comes with the convergence and practical application of innovative technologies such as machine learning, which will be a significant focus of our participation at CERAWeek. Individually, advanced analytics and real-time data have brought great benefit to these industries. But their combination with machine learning — in the hands of experienced individuals with practical knowledge of the inner workings of today’s complex processes and environments — is helping companies become, or stay, the highest performers.

The outcome of this tipping point is true asset optimization — maximizing asset performance, uptime and life span in a system-wide context — thereby generating the greatest returns on capital employed.  Asset optimization enables companies to improve the design of assets and processes, streamline operations throughout the system and enable prescriptive maintenance.

In addition to lowering maintenance costs and improving asset reliability, asset optimization also helps organizations discover ways to increase throughput, improve yields, reduce energy consumption and improve quality without sacrificing safety — all leading to greater profitability. This puts market leaders on a path to unlocking the value that some organizations, such as the World Economic Forum, estimate to be as high as $1 trillion USD within the oil and gas industry alone.

At CERAWeek, AspenTech will be demonstrating how we can make the best companies even better with the critical combination of real-time data, advanced analytics enabled by machine learning and rich process knowledge.

We’ll be presenting the AspenTech D2OLab™, an interactive, fast-paced experience that presents a “year in the life” of an offshore oil platform. We’ve also created an Exploration Pod to examine the common issues companies face adopting and implementing machine learning, and we’ll show some real-world examples of rapid successes in the industry.

 

Our goal is to demonstrate how companies can unleash the advantage inside every asset and provide solutions that maximize profitability and productivity without compromising safety or reliability.

We are excited to be playing such an active role at such an important forum, especially at this pivotal time for the energy industry. We believe that asset optimization will enable companies at this critical moment of digital transformation and be the next major driver of operational excellence, productivity growth and ultimately the unlocking of business value.

If you’re interested in learning more about how advanced technologies are harnessing the power of real-time data to drive asset optimization, take a look at my recent white paper, “Low-Touch Machine Learning is Fulfilling the Promise of Asset Performance Management.”