Risk and drilling regulations get technical

The latest safety news, drilling regulations and risk mitigation are landing high on the agenda in the oil industry, with companies increasingly spending on new technology to aid global integration and efficiencies.

Software solutions are becoming the key to successful futures for oil and gas companies, who are struggling to keep up with internal and external forces that govern the market. Achieving operational excellence and efficiencies while simultaneously mitigating risks and addressing new drilling regulations will be increasingly done using technology, according to an Accenture and Microsoft survey released today.

The survey took into account the views of 200 professionals and found that almost three quarters of them (74.5 per cent) are spending as much or more on IT infrastructure.

The companies are looking for efficient and integrated platforms, as well as increasing the use of mobile computing devices and harnessing data produced in the economy to increase business intelligence.

Albrecht Ferling, managing director for the global oil and gas and mining industries at Microsoft said: "We understand that those working in the oil and gas industry have data coming in from a variety of potentially disparate upstream sources, ranging from big data stored on servers to data coming in from a person in the field on a smartphone or tablet."

Posted by Lauren Steadman