Three Reasons APIs are critical to oil & gas

Three reasons why APIs are critical to the transformation of oil & gas industries.

Saul Zambrano Saul Zambrano

Historically, in the oil and gas industry, when one came across an “API”, either someone was referencing the geographical location of a well, or the gravity measure for a petroleum liquid. 

While these are important concepts in their own right, there is a new API in town for the oil and gas industry – application programming interfaces.

So what is this API and why is it more important than the historical definitions?  APIs allow applications to communicate with each other and they have become critically important to leading oil and gas operators.

Why?  Coming down from the board and senior leaders is a strategic imperative to leverage digital capabilities to transform their business.  In a recent survey conducted by Ernst & Young, 89% of oil and gas organizations said their investment in digital will increase over the next two years. 

Here are my top three reasons why a modern API architecture will become critical for leading oil and gas companies.

  1. Migration to Cloud Environments

After a cautious start, more and more oil and gas companies are migrating to cloud technologies.  Cloud technologies are seen as the foundational digital layer that will fuel faster application development and lower cost of service.  In order to fully leverage these environments, the ability to connect disparate on-premises and cloud environments, they need a robust, scalable and secure API platform.

  1. Democratizing Data

The rapid evolution of digital technologies is presenting the oil and gas sectors with new capabilities for achieving operational excellence.  From machine learning capabilities embedded in directional drilling applications, to predictive maintenance activities dynamically assessing asset health, these capabilities have a common thread.  They rely on massive amounts of data from disparate systems.  A modern API platform not only allows teams across a company to access the right data, but does so in a manner that is reliable, accurate, timely and secure. 

  1. Fast Path to Automation

One of the principal goals for leading oil and gas companies is the ability to automate field process across their value chains.  Automating processes allows oil and gas companies to not only reduce the cost and resource intensity of their production processes, but also to respond faster and more optimally to changing plant conditions.   

In order to bring ever-increasing levels of automation, more devices will need to talk to each other.  As more and more devices are deployed, with the need for persistent communication and awareness, a modern API capability is critical – for not only the device-to-device connectivity but also to orchestrate work flow and service requests across plant operations.

Learn more about your industry can transform itself – using this generation’s APIs to lead innovation.