Artificial Intelligence (AI) can boost oil production -- Huawei

 Huawei has announced that advanced technology and Artificial Intelligence can aid oil and gas-producing nations like Nigeria in boosting oil production, effectively managing energy transition, and swiftly recovering from the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

South Africa Chief Technical Officer for Huawei, Matamela Mashau made this known during a roundtable at the MWC Technology summit in Barcelona, where Huawei organized an event to showcase its oil and gas solutions. 

The discussion included insights on the transformative impact of digital and intelligent technologies on the oil and gas sector, emphasizing the use of distributed fibre sensing and AI for pipeline inspection. 

READ ALSO: How Humour can help Nigerians cope with economic hardship – Psychiatry Prof

The global oil market, initially hit by COVID-19, is recovering, prompting economic diversification in non-oil sectors. In Nigeria, challenges like insufficient infrastructure hinder the efficiency of the oil and gas industry, leading to a decline in GDP growth for the oil sector. 

To address these issues, Sonatrach and Huawei collaborated on a joint innovation center to develop a smart oil and gas pipeline inspection solution, aiming to strengthen oil exploration in Nigeria.

 This solution utilizes cutting-edge technologies to minimize costs, detect pipeline deterioration, and promptly address fibre cuts. 

The partnership also highlighted the significance of cloud technology in streamlining seismic data processing and boosting efficiency in exploration and production.

 Additionally, NLNG's partnership with Huawei focused on deploying high-quality Wi-Fi 7 APs to enhance wireless and application experiences. Sonatrach, a national oil company in Algeria, highlighted the innovation of a fibre sensing inspection solution in collaboration with Huawei, addressing the challenges of traditional manual inspection and offering real-time pipeline status updates.

This solution, according to Mashau and Sana Lallali, Manager Sonatrach Joint Innovation Centre, uses cutting-edge technologies to minimise operations and maintenance costs, proactively alert pipeline deterioration, and promptly find fibre cuts.

“During E&P, we need to process a massive amount of seismic data. Generally, the original data of a single unit is dozens of terabytes (TB), sometimes reaching the petabyte (PB) level. Moreover, there are dozens of steps to data processing. Cloud technology enables us to quickly deploy seismic data processing, interpretation, and E&P software, which boosts E&P and operational efficiency.

“Take the most time-consuming prestack depth migration processing as an example. The processing time can be shortened from 19 days to 55 hours, boosting efficiency by 830 per cent” Mashau, who is the CTO of Huawei South Africa region said.

Yumna Audu, Head of Business and Information Technology from Nigeria’s NLNG, said the gas company of Nigeria should be equipped with future-oriented and forward-looking IT systems.

To achieve this, she revealed that NLNG partnered with Huawei and deployed its high-quality Wi-Fi 7 APs on the nation’s campuses.

Audu said, “With upgraded wireless experience, application experience, and O&M experience, we strongly believe that we are capable of building campus network benchmarks in the global oil and gas industry.

“In our office, the speed of Huawei’s Wi-Fi 7 APs reached 3.16 Gbps in actual tests. This impressed us.

“In our golf club, we planned to deploy two APs, while only one Huawei Wi-Fi 7 AP is enough to achieve full signal coverage and high-speed access. Besides, these APs are highly compatible with our devices on the live network.