Dear Prime Minister,
Oil and Gas Industry calls for urgent action to unblock the process of digitization.
Digitizing Romania is presented by the Romanian Government, on every occasion, as a priority axis of the government program and a driver of economic development. However, reality shows that the digitalization of the Romanian Oil and Gas industry can only be achieved through updating the legislative framework to technological progress.
Oil industry companies have reiterated the importance of declassifying oil industry data and information, action without which digitalization is inaccessible to Romanian companies. We are referring to technologies such as ”Cloud”, ”Big Data” and ”Cloud Computing”, which imply the processing of data in Cloud data centers located in the European Union.
The classification of some data makes it difficult to use it and impossible to capitalize on it through cloud technologies. By limiting access to digitization for companies and authorities in the oil industry, they are at a disadvantage in the competition for capital compared to other industries in the region or the global market. It is already well known that easy access to data improves the efficiency of the industry and, as a consequence, brings additional revenue to the state revenue.
Need for use of advanced information technology tools is all the more pressing in the case of Romania, which is exploiting mature deposits with a significant natural decline in production.
Most industry-specific solution providers also offer solutions Cloud only, current, locally installed solutions, and will be taken out of maintenance and service offerings.
As a result of the use of cloud solutions, industry in other countries has experienced the following immediate benefits with a direct impact on production levels:
- Faster access to data and models and shortening decision time;
- Reduce drilling time through real-time monitoring;
- Up to 100x reduction in processing time of tank models;
- Increase the success of prospecting and exploration by
Cloud processing of seismic data; - Increasing the recovery factor of reservoir reserves and thus increasing
production.
Moreover, as a result of legislative hurdles, Romania has missed the start in the digitization process of the oil industry and will incur higher costs to catch up. Thus, according to a 2019 Deloitte study1 , Romania is the only country that maintains territoriality requirements for data specific to the upstream industry. This goes against the European trend of removing restrictions and barriers on the transfer, use, storage, processing and access to non-personal data.
In the current context, we appreciate the authorities' focus on increasing the level of national digitization, as well as the measures enabling remote working, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, however, for companies with thousands of employees, such as those in the oil industry, such measures require advanced collaboration and communication technologies, which are again inaccessible to the oil industry because they are largely cloud technologies.
2020 is a tough year for Romania, for citizens and companies alike, and even tougher for the oil and gas sector, which is in the deepest crisis in the last hundred years.
Even in this context, companies are ready to invest in technology. FPPG supports further dialogue between the relevant authorities and industry to finalize and approve legislation on declassification of oil industry data and information.
Yours sincerely,
Franck Neel
President
