While commodity prices have somewhat recovered from the lows experienced since 2015, the reality is that there are still significant pressures on Oil and Gas companies – whether from a negative perception of fossil fuels, government pressures on a carbon-based industry or geopolitical upheaval. As a result, more companies are looking to squeeze their assets and “Digital Transformation” is heard more and more as one of the means to achieve lower costs and reduce risks. The power of analytics, which becomes possible as part of a Digital Transformation, is coming to the forefront.

The challenge for Midstream Oil and Gas companies is to leverage the various data sources to convert a “Data Swamp” into a useful data warehouse – various estimates of the amount of data processed and analyzed out of the massive amounts of data generated from sensors range currently from 2% to 10%. This leaves a lot of opportunities on the table, as this data can be converted to valuable knowledge and business value.

There are many uses for data analytics in the Pipeline industry. We will start with Asset Analytics, then look at Process Analytics, and finally examine Operational Control Analytics.