The increasing production of shale gas is fueling the demand for digital oilfield technology across the world. In the U.S., the mushrooming production of shale gas is resulting in the generation of large amounts of data related to production and drilling cycles and seismic and spatial information. As per the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in the U.S., shale resources were responsible for the production of nearly 16.76 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of dry natural gas.

Thus, large shale data areas in the country are yet to be tapped and structured. Moreover, it is very important to examine and coordinate such large unstructured data sets for boosting the production and drilling performance. This is propelling the requirement for digital oilfield technology all over the country as this technology employs the use of big data analytics for capturing, analyzing, and transforming data into easy-to-understand and simple sets.

Apart from the aforementioned factors, the rapidly declining number of onshore reserves in various oil- and gas-producing countries is also positively impacting the demand for digital oilfield technology across the world. This is creating lucrative growth opportunities for the companies developing the digital oilfield technology, as this technology is increasingly being required by various exploration and production (EP) organizations around the world for studying and analyzing the potential of offshore sites.

BP and Chevron, which are two of the biggest oil firms in the world, announced in January 2018 that they have made huge deep-water discoveries in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. These factors are fueling the requirement for digital oilfield technology across the world, which is, in turn, driving the advancement of the global digital oilfield technology market. Digital oilfield technology is divided, on the basis of process, into production optimization, reservoir optimization, and drilling optimization.

Out of these, the demand for production optimization was the highest across the world during the last few years, as per the observations of PS Intelligence, a market research company based in India. This was primarily because of the huge requirement for advanced oilfield technologies that can make the process of crude oil extraction easier and hassle-free, on account of the presence of a large number of mature oilfields across the world.

Globally, the demand for digital oilfield technology was found to be the highest in Europe and North America in the past years. This was because of the existence of numerous oilfields, extensive shale gas EP activities, the huge investments made by various organizations, and the large-scale adoption of advanced technologies by several EP organizations in these regions. In the future years, the requirement for this technology will rise at the fastest rate in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.

Hence, it can be said with surety that the demand for digital oilfield technology will shoot up all over the world in the coming years, primarily because of the mushrooming production of shale gas and the increasing requirement for advanced technologies by EP companies.