Capturing the AI advantage through culture change

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Oil Review Middle East, May 30, 2025

by James Thomas, Shantanu Gautam, and Pavel Evteev



The GCC’s national oil companies (NOCs) must put AI to work if they are to keep delivering the world’s lowest cost and lowest carbon footprint barrels. To achieve this, NOCs need organisational cultures that can quickly produce many small, high-impact artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

AI-powered solutions are the next major cost and efficiency frontier in the oil and gas industry. Leading oil majors are already using them to produce oil faster, at lower cost and resource intensity. For example, AI can accelerate subsurface analysis, reduce uncertainty, and optimise capital allocation. Shell partnered with startup Avathon (formerly SparkCognition) and is using AI-powered deep learning to reduce seismic shots by 99%, maintaining image accuracy while cutting exploration time from nine months to just nine days.

Beyond exploration, AI is transforming well planning, automating drilling, predicting conditions, and streamlining workflows. ExxonMobil, collaborating with IBM, used AI to reduce well planning and design time from nine to seven months, and cut data preparation time by 40%.

Drilling optimisation is another area seeing major gains. AI can now analyse real-time downhole data, optimise rate of penetration, and predict failures. Machine learning can adjust drilling parameters dynamically, reducing non-productive time, cutting costs, and improving well economics. ConocoPhillips used three years of drilling data to develop a machine learning model that improved vertical rate of penetration by 20% and reduced premature drilling-motor failures by 65% – saving US$30,000 per well.

Environmental performance is improving too. AI can track emissions in real time, detect leaks, and increase carbon capture. Chevron deployed AI to optimise methane emissions reduction in upstream operations, helping cut methane emission intensity by 60%.

NOCs across the region are also making tangible progress in applying AI to boost performance. Aramco, for example, deployed 40,000 sensors across 500 wells, enabling AI-driven process control that increased production by 15% and halved troubleshooting time. ADNOC’s Emission X tool helped abate 1 million tonnes of CO2 in one year through AI-powered emissions prediction and optimisation. Read the rest here.