Woodside to use IBM Watson supercomputer to streamline data for decision making

Australian oil and gas firm Woodside has signed a deal with IBM to use its Watson supercomputer for improving decision making and efficiencies using data science.

IBM Watson is a cognitive computing system, which will be trained by Woodside engineers to help users gather insight from large volumes of unstructured and historical data contained in project reports in seconds.

It will allow Woodside employees to get the evidence-based insights from large volumes of unstructured and historical data contained in project reports.

The faster availability of insight in turn will help Woodside in enhancing its collective expertise in designing, fabricating and constructing major oil and gas facilities as well as managing major turnarounds.

IBM Australia and New Zealand managing director Kerry Purcell said: "Here in Australia IBM Watson is transforming how banks, universities, government and now oil and gas companies capitalise on data, helping them discover completely new insights and deliver new value.

"In any area where knowledge professionals are working with an ever-increasing volume of data, Watson is fundamentally changing how these organisations operate, make decisions, drive growth and gain competitive advantage."

The oil and gas explorer and producer intends to use predictive data science to get advantage of its 30 years of collective knowledge.

Watson is expected to help the firm in having a competitive advantage over other liquefied natural gas operators.

Termed as ‘Lesson Learned’, the service will assist in deriving insights from the data, enabling accelerated resolutions, better process flow and operational outcomes.

Woodside science and technology senior vice-president strategy Shaun Gregory said: "We are bringing a new toolkit to the company in the form of evidence based predictive data science that will bring down costs and increase efficiencies across our organisation.

"Data science, underpinned by an exponentially increasing volume and variety of data and the rapidly decreasing cost of computing, is likely to be a major disruptive technology in our industry over the next decade.

"Our plan is to turn all of this data into a predictive tool where every part of our organisation will be able to make decisions based on informed and accurate insights."

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Image: IBM Watson will help to scale the knowledge of Woodside engineers working in control rooms. Photo: courtesy of Woodside.