Applications of RPA in Oil and Gas Industry

Machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA) are well-known for their capacity to allow machines to replicate human actions to automate jobs. Organizations can take advantage of RPA due to its high accuracy and speed in completing jobs and to make their business processes more efficient and effective.

Moreover, RPA’s capacity to perform jobs helps several firms streamline their processes and improve operational efficiency. Due to the need to complete tasks on time, the oil and gas industry has become reliant on automation in recent years. Therefore, automating these operations can improve the efficiency of companies.

For an industry with heavy investment cuts, employee reductions, and projects halted, shifting to automation-led digitalization is of fundamental importance. There are three key sectors in the oil and gas industry, upstream, downstream, and midstream. RPA tools may be used for a wide range of operations in each area. Read on to learn more about RPA implementation stages and some of the common challenges faced by businesses in this industry.

Applications of RPA in Oil and Gas Industry

Technology solutions like RPA have increased in popularity because of their ease of development, speedy implementation, and ability to give instant outcomes that can be measured and tracked. Additionally, automation (RPA) in the oil and gas sector uses computer software, also comprehended as “robots,” to conduct repetitious, rules-based operations and raise capabilities while reducing time. RPA also works similarly to an Excel macro, but it is just not restricted to the use of Excel files.

1. Joint Venture Accounting

The accounting department devotes a few hours to account for joint venture accounting every day. As a result, the accounting zones are as follows:

• Calculation of expenses
• Regulate the gas
• The distribution of income
• Appointments, as well as receivables

Besides assisting with ordinary data management for oil and gas industries, robotic process automation automates the joint venture production accounting process. This involves a large number of additions, deletions, and modifications. Additionally, RPA provides the option to automate creating buy orders (POs) supporting joint venture arrangements.

2. Close Process Automation

Automating the closing process of oil and gas firms can cut risk, speed up the closing process, and improve transparency at the same time. You can also utilize RPA technologies to automate the process of doing checks. Work speed can be increased by 30 to 50% by using them. In addition, automating checks and alerting processes enables functional leaders to control the closing process by exception.
However, automating routine processes frees up company analysts’ time to develop data-driven insights in the long run.

3. Robots Battle Fluctuating Barrel Prices

The price of oil barrels fluctuates in the market. As a result, many oil and gas MNCs are attempting to digitize their operation while also differentiating themselves from their rivals to reap the benefits of lower operational expenses. Back-office operations might see a 25–35 percent reduction in labor costs thanks to RPA tools. Furthermore, it can save 30,000 person-hours each year in the supply chain alone.

4. Automated Well Construction Examine and Reporting

The development team on a high-quality project works long hours each day to gather and manually process many reports. Because of this, their routine includes processing external geological information to provide accurate project predictions. The customized bots automate preparing, examining, and analyzing information using computers.
As a result, they collect information from various sources and compile it into reports while also considering the venture’s specified stages, key performance indicators, and time calculations.

5. Shipment and Logistics Overlooking

Robotic process automation (RPA) bots can substantially contribute to the shipping industry, particularly in communication, with the help of trustworthy forwarders and system-generated shipment data updates. Because of optical character recognition technologies in robotic process automation, bots can read standardized photos and scanned documents and produce marks connected to the shipment information.

6. Automation of Compliance Rules

The oil and gas industry is highly regulated, and these laws are based on established rules. Bots are an excellent fit for such procedures because they can monitor all areas of gas pipeline-related laws, from operational compliance to exception notifications, and provide immediate feedback.

7. Increase in Customer Satisfaction

It is possible to process orders and routine queries considerably more quickly than ever before, thanks to robotic process automation (RPA). An RPA system, for example, can review new client applications and automatically notify the customer if they include fundamental flaws. Using automation to track down and resolve these mistakes provides clients with faster service and allows your team to devote time to human engagement questions.

8. Automation of the Field Processes

Solution integration with robotic process automation (RPA) technology can aid in administering checks and warnings in field operations. Because of this, key decision-makers and stakeholders no longer have to deal with the tedious tasks of managing field operations and can focus their attention on the tasks that require human judgment.

9. Lease Record Management

You can also use RPA tools to automate the lease payment process, which is necessary for the leases. You may also use the system to generate reports on various leases across multiple geographies, calculate profitability measures, and forecast future trends. You might also transform a significant portion of the oil and gas business due to RPA since it allows executives to bring more value to their everyday work.

Common Challenges Encountered by Automation

Undoubtedly, the oil and gas industries stand to gain significantly from the implementation of RPA. What, then, is limiting these businesses from investing in this type of technology? The following are a few significant challenges that businesses encounter while integrating RPA in their operations:

Legacy

The growth of many oil and gas industries is dependent on legacy systems. However, for some reason, clients are assured that RPA would be practically impossible to implement with their current IT architecture. While this is true, RPA tools do not need alterations to the existing architecture. Additionally, they may be deployed with little to no coding knowledge.

Lack of Expertise

Typically, RPA implementation for administrative center capacity in the oil and gas industry necessitates the experience of RPA or RPA-related professionals. Implementing RPA technology may be highly complex, especially early, especially for back-office operations. Usually, firms would encounter a scarcity of experts in robotic process automation (RPA) or RPA-related domains while automating back-office operations.

Bottom Line

Using robotic process automation (RPA) can help oil and gas companies improve the efficiency of their digital transformation strategy. RPA employs cost management, resilience enhancement, new value creation capabilities, benefits from the initial investment, and maximizes return. This solution also offers advantages over other alternatives that are currently available on the market.

Source: https://www.ltechpro.com/blogs/rpa-in-oil-and-gas-industry-use-cases