How is OMV harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI)? In 2024, OMV made significant progress on its digital transformation journey by introducing powerful platforms that bring AI tools to the entire organization. These efforts are not just about technology – they are about making work smarter, faster, and more effective.
Putting AI Into Every Employee’s Hands
At the heart of OMV’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) journey is a robust, flexible, and secure platform that accelerates the development of tailored solutions. By offering standardized services such as sentiment analysis, chatbots, translation, and speech-to-text, the platform allows teams to deploy AI-driven solutions quickly and reliably. This backbone has been instrumental in enabling over 140 AI ideas, leading to 25 projects that deliver tangible benefits across the Group.
OMV understands that the success of digitalization depends on its people. Over 5,000 colleagues were engaged via various digital channels as well as through dedicated workshops in 2024, gaining the skills and confidence to harness the potential of GenAI. Combined with the platform’s capabilities, this upskilling initiative contributes to fostering a culture of innovation where ideas can quickly evolve into impactful solutions.
Through the early introduction of our in-house GPT-powered tools, OMV has brought AI directly to its 23,500 employees, with millions of uses recorded in 2024. These tools have transformed workflows, simplified complex tasks, and boosted decision-making capabilities, significantly enhancing efficiency, satisfaction, and user experience across the organization.
AI Use Cases and Other Digitalization Highlights
In the area of AI, the Chemicals segment has continued its efforts to investigate the potential of GenAI. Borealis is exploring AI solutions to improve safety, efficiency, productivity, and reliability in operations, but is also partnering with Microsoft Copilot to work with an AI-powered virtual assistant that helps with tasks like generating text, translating languages, summarizing content, writing code, and answering complex questions. This initiative was launched in 2024, accompanied by the introduction of a 20-day training program called the MAI challenge. This program aims to educate employees about AI and to train them on its safe and efficient use. At the same time, further investments have been made to establish deeper analytical skills and grow the community of citizen developers to increase AI adoption, analytics self-service, and accelerate value creation from in-house AI solutions. Other strategic initiatives can be found in the area of sustainability, where Neoni (an in-house solution to calculate the carbon footprint) and relevant reporting tools are being advanced. In the customer area, the customer platform MyBorealis was enriched with new features. Last but not least, the further delivery of more digital applications of the Borstar® Digital Twin platform, a set of digital solutions for Borstar® plants, was a key focus area for Borealis.
In Fuels & Feedstock, digitalization initiatives are helping to safeguard our people, manage our assets, and reduce our environmental impact. For example, the use of Generic Dynamic Optimization technology to mathematically model the setting on the heat exchanger used in crude oil distillation has saved the equivalent natural gas consumption of approximately 1,000 single family homes.
Other use case examples include boosting customer retention, predicting market prices, and managing the operating costs of photovoltaic installations. Over the last five years, we have automated 220 processes in Fuels & Feedstock and delivered over EUR 4.8 mn in equivalent year-on-year time savings. In 2024, our continued investment in automation built on the recent developments in AI, extending the capabilities and effectiveness of the solutions deployed. As well as supporting day-to-day efficiency, there have been ten automation projects that directly support our transformation, delivering a time-saving benefit of EUR 0.5 mn in year-on-year savings.
Digitalization initiatives are also helping to improve the user experience for our customers. Our mobile app for retail customers gained 400,000 users. Customers who use the application spend more, visit more, and buy more premium fuels than non-users. In an independent brand image study, the OMV app placed first in the Top of Mind Awareness category. The EV charging rollout has been boosted by digital systems that increase system security and reliability. An important feature in growing utilization has been enabling roaming across our network, allowing customers registered with other mobility providers to use OMV services for recharging their vehicles. Following the 2023 launch of the mobile app in Austria, 2024 brought the eMotion app to EV drivers in Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, providing a platform from which we can build loyalty in the coming years.
In the Energy segment, we are harnessing the potential of GenAI. For example, we are developing a GenAI-based subsurface engineering companion in Norway to provide valuable exploration and subsurface insights, supporting our daily exploration and reservoir management activities. Trained with public and internal E&P data and documents, this companion can now respond to specific subsurface and reservoir management questions with relevant and updated information. In well planning, we are exploring how GenAI can identify lessons learned and other relevant information for similar wells, automatically providing insights from our global report base.
We are also looking at Smart Agents for complex decision-making support. In 2024, we continued sponsoring AI research at Stanford University to support our efforts in developing a low-carbon business. For CCS, we are working on a Smart Agent to optimize field development decisions by processing vast amounts of data and proposing the best decisions (injection volumes, timing, well placement) to ensure safe operations while maximizing storage volume.
Another interesting AI use case in the Energy segment is the SmartShaker, which focuses on training AI to observe real-time footage of drilled rock brought to the surface and alert humans if it spots anything unusual. This improves safety, reliability, and efficiency, while contributing to our vision of drilling with robots. The technology went through testing on wells in Romania and the data has been used to further enhance the AI model to reach minimum viable product commercialization.
AI is also increasing the efficiency in our corporate functions. Among the most compelling use cases were applications such as chatting with regulations, conducting intelligent research for documents, and intelligent processing of data with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy, showcasing the transformative potential of AI in streamlining complex tasks and enhancing productivity across various domains.
Protecting Our Digital Assets
Information security is a top priority at OMV. We continuously adapt our security measures to address changing threats, new business needs, and digitalization efforts, ensuring the protection of our data, systems, and assets. Our Information Security Management System (ISMS), certified to ISO/IEC 27001, provides comprehensive security monitoring of our IT infrastructure and services. We also have specific security controls for AI technologies and adhere to responsible AI principles, regularly verifying our AI solutions to maintain ethical standards.
Our internal security measures are supported by regular external assessments and audits, following various security frameworks and legislative guidelines. This ensures we uphold the highest security standards and best practices, keeping OMV at the forefront of information security and responsible AI deployment.