April 5, 2021
Industry rapidly adopting AI-based technology as a path to higher profits: a $30 million example

Many oil and gas companies have been undergoing digital transformations to drive down inefficiencies, increase production, and improve their Return On Capital Employed (ROCE) measure. While the oil and gas industry has been slower than other sectors to adopt AI-powered technologies to reap bottom-line benefits, that’s beginning to change. Companies like Shell have been making investments in software that harnesses AI, and in 2020 reported $2 billion in profit margin increases, cost savings, and production increases as a result of their digital technology initiatives1.
One operator saved $30M in reduced cycle time and time to first oil by adopting Actenun’s modern scheduling tool
We at Actenum have heard similar jaw-dropping stories from our customers. Within the first two years of using our AI-powered scheduling software, one of our users at a super major saved the company $30 million in cycle time reductions, trimming time to first oil as well as saving 1,000 person-hours/year. Those are impressive numbers, all from adopting a modern scheduling tool that harnesses AI.
In our software, AI rapidly evaluates thousands of schedule combinations to automatically build optimal activity sequences that maximize production, reduce Gantt chart white space, and align with other business objectives. You can’t do that with a spreadsheet or 1990s project management software.
The AI-powered optimizer does the heavy lifting of building the schedule
Trying to manually schedule complex well delivery activities using a spreadsheet or other tools that aren’t fit for purpose is ineffective and inefficient. Actenum’s AI-powered optimizer does the heavy lifting of assembling a complex schedule—and automatically takes into consideration all business constraints—within minutes, not days or weeks. This frees the scheduler to spend time and expertise fine-tuning the schedule once the optimizer has it built. And unlike simplistic scheduling tools, Actenum’s scheduling software gives you a 360° view of the schedule, helping you see your upstream operation from different perspectives (by resource, pad, lease, area, for example) so that you can make more informed decisions that have a bottom-line impact.
AI is the next step in the oil and gas industry’s digital transformation process. If you’d like to see how Actenum can help you leverage AI to transform your drilling program scheduling, contact us at info@actenum.com.
Owen Plowman
Vice President Business Development
1 Houston Chronicle – “Energy Industry Gets Smarter with AI,” March 19, 2021