Source – economictimes.indiatimes.com
New Delhi: French multinational oil and gas company Total announced it has signed an agreement with Google Cloud to jointly develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for subsurface data analysis for oil and gas exploration and production.
“Total is convinced that applying artificial intelligence in the oil and gas industry is a promising avenue to be explored for optimizing our performance, particularly in subsurface data interpretation. We are excited to work with Google Cloud towards this goal. This builds on the strategy being developed at Total, where A.I. is already used, for example, in predictive maintenance at facilities,” said Marie-Noëlle Semeria, Senior Vice President, Group CTO at Total.
The agreement will focus on the development of AI programs which will make it possible to interpret subsurface images, notably from seismic studies (using Computer Vision technology) and automate the analysis of technical documents (using Natural Language Processing technology), the company said.
It added the programs will allow Total’s geologists, geophysicists, reservoir and geo-information engineers to explore and assess oil & gas fields faster and more effectively.
“We are thrilled to welcome Total in our Advanced Solutions Labs for the development of A.I. solutions. We are keen to engage our best A.I. engineers to work with Total’s geosciences’ experts,” said Paul-Henri Ferrand, President of Global Customer Operations Google Cloud.
The partnership will involve Total geoscientists working together with Google Cloud’s machine learning experts within the same project team based in Google Cloud’s Advanced Solutions Lab in California.
Total started applying artificial intelligence to characterize oil & gas fields using machine learning algorithms in the 1990s.