Wintershall Dea launches AI-powered search engine for exploration process

Wintershall Dea has introduced an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engine to enhance its exploration processes.

Developed in partnership with IBM, the Exploration Advisory Tool provides Wintershall Dea’s explorationists with ‘quick and easy’ access to related subsurface information.

Wintershall said that the tool has been designed to improve and accelerate knowledge discovery by helping users in extracting information from unstructured data like reports or presentations.

Wintershall Dea chief technology officer Hugo Dijkgraaf said: “Artificial intelligence can help us make better decisions about expected gas and oil volumes in the early stages of the value chain.

“Digital transformation at Wintershall Dea is about enhancing competitiveness and reducing risk. The roll-out of the Exploration Advisory Tool does exactly that, by enabling better and faster decision making. Importantly, it will free up our experienced team to spend more time on the tasks where they add most value.”

Successfully piloted last year, the tool uses the latest cognitive search technology and will be launched across Wintershall Dea’s global exploration teams this year.

IBM chief technology officer Stefan Mueck said: “The IBM Garage approach was a key success factor for this innovation project. It is a transformation accelerator that brought together an empowered, agile and multi-disciplinary team.

“And it kept the focus on end users’ needs while building a solution based on leading edge AI technology.”

Separately, Wintershall Dea and its joint venture partners Gazprom and OMV have developed a new method for producing gas from Turonian formations.

The Turonian reserves are located in the Yuzhno-Russkoye oil, gas and condensate field in Western Siberia.

The new gas production technology, which harnesses different methods and technologies in a novel combination, is used to maintain plateau production from the Yuzhno-Russkoye field for longer.