Major exploration and production (E&P) companies in the oil and gas sector of the country are increasing their exposure in digital technology to sustain operations in COVID-19 time, experts said on Friday. Adoption of the digital route has now become important for the sustainability of operations, maintenance and also in keeping liquidity, said director (finance) of state-owned GAIL, A K Tiwari.

GAIL is now in the process of implementing a 5000 km long pipeline in which every 200 km is being monitored individually by digital technology, Tiwari said at a webinar organised by ICC.

He said that GAIL is also interacting with other PSUs for keeping itself abreast of the other areas of digitisation.

Chief digital officer of Cairn Oil and Gas, Anand Laxmivarahan R, said that his company is deploying every single aspect of technology like machine learning, artificial intelligence and those available on the cloud.

He said that data-driven technology is being used for reservoir management.

The Cairn official said that predictive analysis is also being used to reduce the downtime of equipment while all the oil fields are being connected digitally to monitor the performance of wells.

Director (exploration) of ONGC R K Srivastava said that navigating the COVID-19 crisis has become a challenge when oil prices are falling internationally and economic growth faltering due to the pandemic situation.

“Using digitisation has helped ONGC maintain production at near-normal levels,” he said.

ONGC has also deployed neural networks for getting data relating to the reservoirs, he said.