The oil and gas industry faces a lot of price pressure. Recently, the pandemic has caused the price of fuel to plummet. ResearchAndMarkets reported that the January 1, 2020 price of $67.05 a barrel shrank to $30 a barrel by March 15, 2020. Because of shutdowns across the country, people are traveling less frequently by car or plane. For this reason, oil and gas companies must find ways to squeeze value out of every cent per gallon.
As the leading enterprise asset management (EAM) solution, IBM Maximo helps oil and gas companies optimize processes to save money. These companies can gain even more value from Maximo by using Maximo as a service (MaaS) to better track assets, increase asset portability, reduce risk, and meet compliance.
Oil and gas companies are increasingly owned by people who come from outside the industry. Venture capitalists have been buying assets, such as wells and pipelines, as an investment. Originally, these VCs did so for stability. They used these assets for a tax advantage and as a revenue stream.
As the revenue stream has begun to dry up, the VCs have made oil and gas assets portable, as in a game of Monopoly. When acquiring and redistributing assets, VCs who are inexperienced in the industry must know how to track, manage, and maintain them. When Maximo is being used, VCs know they can trust that the data Maximo generates will have the level of accuracy needed to make decisions about buying and selling.
These VCs also need someone to take over the Maximo system. They don't want to buy servers, middleware, and infrastructure. They want to buy systems and they need people to run them. Working with MaaS allows VCs to leverage the expertise of a third-party company that can manage Maximo. The MaaS provider can pivot quickly to enable asset portability. With cloud-based Maximo, there are no resources to move.
Having systems on-premises is a huge risk for oil and gas companies. In 2017, hurricanes Harvey and Irma both devastated oil and gas infrastructure, drastically reducing output and driving fuel prices up. Companies that housed their data centers in the middle of their facilities couldn’t start repairs because they lost the system that contained the necessary data.
MaaS solves this problem by providing supporting resources for Maximo in the cloud. MaaS providers have cloud data centers in many locations so oil and gas companies can store data outside the reach of a natural disaster that would affect them.
MaaS also helps with the process of tracking and remediating spills. After responding to an emergency, companies lose track of assets that have been relocated. The cloud-based system connects the assets and tracks them wherever they are located.
The oil and gas industry is heavily regulated to maintain quality and safety. Equipment must be inspected regularly, and scrupulous records must be kept for auditing purposes. Oil and gas companies need to keep track of who is inspecting equipment, how often it is being inspected, and how it is being maintained. If a weld is made in a pipeline, records must be kept of the certification of the inspector, who made the weld, and where the welder was trained.
MaaS helps to streamline this record-keeping process. Maximo automates many compliance processes, and MaaS stores records in the cloud so they can be archived and then accessed for an audit.
According to IBM, 70% of the largest oil and gas companies use Maximo. MaaS is an alternative consumption model in an industry saturated by Maximo. Oil and gas companies should look for a MaaS provider that knows the industry and its asset management requirements.
Projetech is experienced in providing MaaS for the oil and gas industry. We understand the regulatory requirements of the industry and hold key certifications. We have data centers located thousands of miles from each other so companies that partner with us for MaaS have peace of mind after a disaster. Our cloud-based consumption model allows oil and gas companies to receive MaaS resources and expertise at an affordable monthly rate.
Find out how affordable MaaS can be for your company. Get a quote for Projetech MaaS.
