We’ve just talked about the stovepipe nature and the silo nature that’s very much the culture of the industry, and information management today reflects that. If you look at a manufacturing company, there’ll be a Chief Operating Officer, who is concerned with how they do their work.

Most oil & gas companies don’t have a CEO, it’s the individual asset owners that control the space. So that’s what is needed: an effective governance model to go over the top of those business assets, which recognises the value of this information integration, has the authority to get work done but at the same time can help sort out the priorities. This will take a long time, and you can’t do it all at once and we need a governance model that can pick which areas to start with and manage progress over time.

What is being done in the middle east to tackle the possible threats and vulnerabilities associated with cyber security?
This is of course a challenge for everybody given the geopolitical importance of oil & gas and national energy policies around the world. And it’s a case where normal businesses have to prepare and defend themselves against very advanced government agencies who are interested in, and have means for, collecting information that are outside the bounds of normal business.

If you step back from it, this isn’t something that is a quick-fix. In fact, this is something you have to continually improve. You need a risk management programme that can identify what are the biggest risks; which are the highest risks you’re exposed to and what are the best technologies and practices for mitigating that risk; and every quarter, you have to re-evaluate what the areas are that you have defended, if you have in-depth defence and are comfortable with the level of risk exposure you have at a particular site (and if not, get that fixed); so on and so forth. You need a risk management programme to identify the priorities.

How far has the digital oilfield market grown – globally or in the middle east – and how much is it predicted to grow in the next five years?
I see more of it as a digital oilfield transformation than growth. That low-level, connected, intelligent oilfield is pretty much most fields today. What is happening is, the level of capability is thickening in all of these fields. As a result, there are more capabilities, automation, etc. However, it requires another good decade of work get the existing problems solved.

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