Digitalization

Digital Transformation – OMV’s Digital Journey

OMV’s Digital Journey is our strategy for digital transformation, which will enable us to become a digital leader in our field and unlock smart opportunities along the entire value chain. Digital transformation is powered by key initiatives orchestrated across the entire Group and built on three pillars: Digitalize, Act, and Enable.

The digital strategy was developed in line with OMV’s structure alongside key divisional programs, namely DigitUP in Upstream, digitalmotion in Downstream, and Finance 4.0 in corporate services. Lighthouse projects have contributed to operationalizing our business strategies and generating maximum value since 2018. Our digital strategy also enables digitalization based on hybrid IT infrastructure services and state-of-the-art cybersecurity. We promote cultural change and develop future skills to foster an innovative mindset and create digital dexterity in our organization.

For OMV, digital leadership also means acting as an industry role model for sustainable HSSE, reducing our carbon footprint, and maintaining a highly efficient and effective process operation. Digitalization is an additional lever for sustainability, for example by increasing remote collaboration (less travel), lowering CO₂ emissions by optimizing data center operations, and unlocking opportunities for improved maintenance in Upstream and Downstream.

Today, digitalization is vital for business at OMV, for example, to ensure optimal evaluation and convergent use of digital and analog data in machine controls for increased efficiency and availability, safer operations, and more targeted maintenance activities. Leveraging our experience, collaborating with strategic partners, and transforming key elements of the IT landscape into platforms allows us to execute a well-balanced portfolio of use-case and value-drive digital endeavors.

OMV Group

Digitalization in Procurement

The implementation of the new SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning software enables us to use automation and state-of-the-art digital tools, which are key enablers of transformation with the ultimate aim of value-oriented procurement. The SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite is the basis for a global electronic signature process ensuring efficient remote approval workflows regardless of office location. This results in 75% of purchase orders being fully automated, digitalization of the process, and 100% paperless sourcing resulting in reduced cycle times. (For more information, see Supply Chain.)

Paperless Initiative at OMV Petrom

OMV Petrom started the roll-out of the Paperless initiative to minimize the use of paper for daily work activities. Goals of the initiative are twofold: avoidance of printed paper and establishing a digital working culture where employees have the necessary tools and skills to go paperless. Numerous other tools in the initiative help reduce the use of paper, including the roll-out of digital signatures and digital documentation storage. Currently e-signatures are replacing paper-based approvals. More than 50% of OMV Petrom employees were enrolled by mid-2020 and over 9,000 documents electronically signed.

Culture Initiative “Make a Difference”

The objective of this initiative is to create an environment receptive to innovation and change based on our people, culture, and organization by building digital capabilities and adapting our ways of working. The “Make a Difference” initiative consists of a network of over 100 volunteers in six different workstreams and focuses on improving diversity, empowerment, integrated leadership, collaboration, and sustainability at our Company. This initiative is supported by our Digital Academy, which offers online trainings and events. Thanks to webinars and e-learning, OMV employees participated in Digital Academy learning events in 2020 at the same level as before the pandemic.

Each quarter, we also hosted global virtual Digital Breakfasts with over 350 participants to share digital and culture hacks, and F-up Nights to promote a learning culture that celebrates learning from mistakes. In addition, last year we launched a Culture Toolkit containing several guides and tools to support working from home, empowerment in teams, collaborative steering committees, virtual facilitation guides, and much more.

DigitUP

DigitUP is OMV Upstream’s digital transformation initiative that will make OMV the “digital frontrunner” in the oil and gas industry. We have set up a global program encompassing the entire Upstream value chain to accelerate the integration of digital technologies into our day-to-day activities. Our ambition is to become a safer, more resilient, and more efficient organization. We are committed to “go green” and contribute to OMV’s HSSE and climate targets to reduce the carbon intensity of our Upstream operations. We aim to do this with digital technologies such as automation, cloud technology, and artificial intelligence.

Digital Subsurface

The Digital Subsurface program focuses on subsurface-related matters ranging from exploration to development within OMV’s supply chain. The digital representation of subsurface models will be part of the high-performance computing (HPC) environment and deliver deep insight into our reservoir properties. Compared to traditional stand-alone models and technologies, no search will be required for information and tools; instead, they are available anytime so that all employees can contribute to fast and valuable decision-making. For example, the Digital Rock project creates Digital Twins of real rocks with all their components in the micrometer range. Compared to traditional rock scanning, this yields fast results, uses less hazardous chemicals for laboratory measurements (mainly mercury), and helps improve the quality of our exploration and development activities. In another lighthouse project, a Digital Twin will connect models for reservoir simulation directly with real-time production data. This Twin allows us to increase the accuracy of our subsurface model predictions and, consequently, update production forecasts more quickly and accurately.

Real-Time Digital Oilfield

Every two years, the data generated by our operations approximately doubles in volume, with signs this pace is increasing. The subsequent transformation into actionable insights for safe operational performance is complex, and the value of information erodes the longer it takes us to make sense of it. Extending our human ability to cope with this constant flow of information in operations is at the forefront of our lighthouse project. Value is created if the right performance data is available at the right time to the right skilled professionals in order to facilitate the best decisions. Pilots prove that supplementing the work of our experts with algorithm-based insights, digital reality, and robotics in their day-to-day activities is directly improving on-site safety, while reducing costs as well as our carbon footprint. In the 2020 COVID-19 environment, our remote certification and commissioning approach helped us successfully start our Nawara facilities even with closed borders in Tunisia. It also helped demonstrate to certifiers that our New Zealand pipeline repairs were complete, and it was safe to operate. With high-quality images, including digital site visits and information streamed from location, OMV experts around the world can provide support and make decisions remotely without the need to travel. Based on the aforementioned examples, OMV aims to achieve a sustained reduction in long-distance travel by 30% by 2022 thanks to remote support. This will reduce CO₂ emissions and external costs for staff transportation.

Advanced process control systems are in the execution phase, implementing an algorithm-based predictive model that helps operators control and optimize the facilities at all times so that they can operate as efficiently as possible. This reduces the internal consumption of energy, decreases the carbon footprint, and increases the efficiency of processing chemicals, thus optimizing our carbon footprint and production costs. The connected operator (or connected worker) uses technology that enables direct data and streaming connections between the office and operational production sites, and allows our OMV experts to connect and make decisions remotely, thus making these processes location-independent. This helps facilitate same-day support and just-in-time decisions, which minimizes long-distance travel to high-risk areas. Our CO₂ footprint is therefore reduced, while our employees’ safety is increased.

Digital Rig of the Future

This program focuses on reducing the time spent during the drilling phase of well delivery, while providing for real-time monitoring to reduce the impact of drilling issues. It uses AI-supported decision-making to address hazards through historical probability. The use of automated rigs and just-in-time logistics shrinks the rig site footprint considerably, reducing traffic to the rig site, improving efficiency, and easing the environmental impact due to less time spent drilling.

Addressing drilling hazards in the planning phase through the use of AI in the Decision Making & Simulation project will cut non-productive time, reducing operating days for the drilling rig. Furthermore, new well delivery software which will automate workflows is ushering in the future of well planning with an integrated, multidimensional model that reacts immediately to new engineering and subsurface information. This will reduce development well engineering time by 90%. Improving efficiencies in planning and execution opens the door to exploring geothermal drilling.

Digital Office of the Future

The above DigitUP lighthouse projects are enabled by the Digital Office of the Future. One goal of the Digital Office of the Future lighthouse is to modernize and consolidate our worldwide infrastructure and to provide the technologies needed for safe operations at all our locations. To a large extent, this is achieved through a transition from on-premise data centers to modern and public cloud providers. This transition enables us to actively modernize and consolidate our worldwide infrastructure to remove redundant equipment and to sharply decrease the need for cooling power, thus reducing the carbon footprint of our IT operations.

Another goal of the Digital Office of the Future is to provide the right data at the right time to our decision-makers. We are therefore providing a global and integrated data ecosystem with the objective of increasing the safety and efficiency of our operational activities. For example, our GIS systems display live weather data in combination with our asset data to ensure safe logistics and people transfers to our offshore platforms. We also provide information on safety risks on the roads we use to increase awareness of potential hazards. Moreover, we provide access to about 400,000 real-time sensors in our facilities to ensure that equipment integrity can be monitored.

digitalmotion

digitalmotion is Downstream’s effort to reach the next level of digital transformation covering all business aspects in Downstream’s value chain. But digital transformation is more than applying and scaling technology – it’s about people and culture. We therefore meet in an impact hub where collaborators share, innovate, and shape the digital transformation in Downstream and contribute to OMV’s HSSE and climate targets.

Predictive Heat Exchanger Cleaning

One digital energy-efficiency measure is the development of a “digital twin” to optimize the preheat train of the crude distillation unit in the Schwechat refinery. Process simulation is used here to help optimize the selection of cleaning cycles and flow conditions in the heat exchangers. The result is an increase in energy efficiency, meaning that we can recover more heat from our preheat systems and therefore reduce CO₂ emissions up to 18,000 t CO₂ annually.

Algorithms to Support Gas Traders

As part of its emissions reduction strategy, OMV has been consistently increasing the share of natural gas in production and aims for gas to account for around 60% of the production portfolio and for increased natural gas sales in Europe. Through this emphasis on natural gas, the fossil fuel with the lowest carbon intensity, OMV can reduce the carbon intensity of our energy system today and enhance the viability of operations in the long term. Automatic gas trading supports this scale-up of our gas activities. Western European gas markets have made great strides in the last 15 years. Like financial markets, gas exchanges and brokers operate electronic marketplaces for trading gas contracts. OMV GAS is authorized to trade in twelve EU gas markets with physical gas delivery periods ranging from the remaining hours of the current day up to full calendar years and quoting in different currencies and energy units.

OMV GAS implemented an algorithmic trading tool connected via an API to the electronic trading platform to monitor the various and constantly changing order book activities and related opportunities simultaneously and 24/7. Every event is read and stored in real time in a high-performance database, which generates around 400,000 data records per day. Data analytics tools consolidate market information to search for patterns and optimize trading decisions. These combined with other customized Python scripts developed in-house enable trade signals to be processed in real time and order updates sent or deals closed within milliseconds. Up to 15 algorithms are in operation simultaneously to balance fluctuating gas supply and demand, as well as optimize gas transportation and gas storage capacities.

Consistency, multi-tasking capability, and speed are the main character traits of our algo-trading bot. Once set up and activated, the whole process from order entry, deal closing, deal capturing in the ETRM system, and renomination of the physical gas flow runs automatically without manual interference. These algorithms therefore support the work of gas traders and further optimize OMV’s gas portfolio – all day, every day.