Shell has been a pioneer in the development and deployment of digital technologies in oil and gas for decades. The company currently has over 100 AI applications in various stages of development and deployment across its business. Monitor thousands of industrial equipment with a data lake containing trillions of rows of data and machine learning across upstream, downstream, manufacturing, and integrated gas assets.
C3.ai is an essential part of enabling Shell to deploy enterprise AI solutions at scale. Shell continues its efforts to replicate and extend its solutions in the areas of industrial reliability, asset optimization and integrity management. The company’s predictive maintenance solutions, built on the C3 AI platform, have delivered value through improved reliability and reduced costs. The introduction of enterprise AI and data-centric workflows for oil and gas is changing the way assets are used and increasing efficiency across the business.
In addition, Shell uses AI to optimize asset performance. Real-time production optimization takes pressure, temperature, and flow information from hardware sensors and calculates optimal settings to safely maximize system efficiency. At the same time, operational, economic, and engineering constraints are also addressed. By continuously optimizing this process under changing weather conditions, Shell can squeeze out an additional 1-2% of its LNG production. The solution also demonstrates the potential to reduce CO2 emissions. In an LNG facility, this technology has resulted in a reduction in CO2 emissions of up to 355 tons per day when the plant is operating at full capacity. That’s up to 130 kilotons a year, or the equivalent of taking 28,000 average vehicles off the road in the United States.
Shell is also using digitization and AI to reduce its operational footprint. For example, use AI to improve inventory demand planning, reduce product and raw material waste, reduce idle time for heavy equipment, and use AR, robotics, and digital twin technology to reduce the need for travel. AI is also helping Shell deliver low-carbon energy solutions to its customers, from AI solutions that reduce fuel consumption on ships, to smart charging for electric vehicles that optimizes the use of renewable energy on the grid, to virtual power plants that connect distributed energy units, solar, bioenergy and hydropower.
