E&P Business in a Dynamic Environment

By

Luigi Salvador¹

(1) ENI Agip Division, N/A, Italy

 In these years Oil Companies are facing a major challenge: increase the efficiency.

With time, the cost associated to the searching and development of Hydrocarbon resources rapidly increased for several reasons and this created an unavoidable reduction in net margins. The challenge is to make the economic return of E&P activities comparable with other business since there is a competition on the capital market, and Oil Business requires an increasing amount of capitals. This fact is forcing the search for more efficiency, but rather than an evolution, today a breakthrough is required, both in the way operations are carried out (technological impact) and the information are used within the company (knowledge management).

The fundamental driver of our economic return is the reduction of cycle time. All the activities concurring to such reduction must be used and the role of Information & Communication Technology is crucial in creating the tools enabling a step change in workflow as well as in contents. Knowledge management is the way to improve the ability of an organization to capture the experience embedded in the activities and to organize and share it among the personnel. The importance to properly manage knowledge is the key to survive, since the number of skilled technicians dramatically dropped down along the last decade.