For the second year in a row, our colleagues have been participating in the international congress AUTOMA, traditionally dedicated to the automation and digitalization of the oil and gas sector. This year, the fifth-anniversary congress brought together the most prominent experts from the world's leading oil companies, who, during a two-day meeting in Milan on October 17th and 18th, discussed the issues of the impact of advanced technologies on industry and society in general, as well as the ways in which digital tools can affect efficiency in the oil and gas sector from the security, technical, and economic point of view, with a comprehensive review of the achieved results in this area over the past five years.
The AUTOMA Congress, which was designed for networking of the relevant participants in the process of automation and digitalization of the oil and gas sector at all levels, from Downstream, Midstream, and Upstream, was this year divided into several thematic panels, sessions, and round tables, during which various cases of digital transformation were presented. In addition, it involved discussions on issues of digital sustainability, predictive analytics, and maintenance, digital progress towards net zero emissions, robotics, and drones in the oil and gas sector, the impact of machine learning and artificial intelligence, cyber security, the Internet of Things (IoT) in refining, etc.
Our colleague Tanja Mićić, a R&D specialist from NTC, who was also a speaker at the congress, emphasized the importance of this event and the newly acquired knowledge.
“It was a privilege to present advanced petrophysics projects at the panel session “Upstream: smart tools for process optimization” side by side with colleagues from Equinor and Bonatti. The exchange of experience with colleagues within the framework of the digital transformation of the oil and gas industry, as well as the positive feedback after the presentation, made the greatest impression on me.
Participation in a conference of this format is a very valuable experience because it brings together world leaders in the field of oil and gas, information technologies, and artificial intelligence in one place. One sentence from the event will remain engraved in my memory "...that the digital transformation should be implemented standing with both feet firmly on the ground (sand/offshore platform), looking at cloud-oriented technologies (cloud computing, cloud technology)."
Exceptional impressions from this congress are also borne by a colleague from NTC Svetlana Šešum, a product manager – new technologies, who participated as a delegate.
"The Automa Congress is a combination of excellent speakers and presentations of service companies and the latest trends in the digital sphere of the oil industry. Therefore, in addition to high-quality presentations by experts from renowned companies, another significant aspect involves networking and analysis of offers in a very competitive market. Talking and exchanging experience with colleagues from different fields of industry and companies certainly opens up new aspects and opportunities for advancement.
The biggest impression on me was left by the presentation of the OSDU platform, as well as a direct conversation with one of the pioneers of the idea. Since our company strives to improve business through clear technological standards, the very fact that the world's largest companies are dealing with the same problems and facing the same challenges only confirms that we are following global trends."