Total and Google to develop AI solutions for oil and gas exploration

Total has signed an agreement with Google Cloud for the joint development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to accelerate oil and gas exploration and production.

The partners will develop solutions for subsurface data analysis to interpret images from seismic studies and automate technical document checks.

Total Group senior vice-president and chief technical officer Marie-Noëlle Semeria said: “Total is convinced that applying AI in the oil and gas industry is a promising avenue to be explored for optimising our performance, particularly in subsurface data interpretation.

“We are excited to work with Google Cloud towards this goal. This builds on the strategy being developed at Total, where AI is already used, for example, in predictive maintenance at facilities.”

Using the programmes, Total’s geologists, geophysicists and geo-information engineers will be able to decrease the time it takes to assess oil and gas fields. The collaboration will see the company’s geoscientists collaborating with Google Cloud’s machine learning experts.

The project will be based in Google Cloud’s Advanced Solutions Lab in California, US.

Total exploration senior vice-president Kevin McLachlan said: “Our ambition is to give our geoscience engineers an AI personal assistant in the next few years that will free them up to focus on high value-added tasks.”