Big Oil is tapping Big Tech to keep drilling off the shores of Brazil even as the global pandemic traps workers at home.
Confronted with the need to keep employees working remotely, Petroleo Brasileiro SA fast-tracked a move to a Microsoft Corp. cloud platform it had already been testing before lockdowns, Fernando Lemos, Microsoft’s chief technology officer in Brazil, said in an interview. That’s allowing staff to access from home data that was previously only available in the oil giant’s offices in Rio, and to monitor the use of safety equipment at deep-water vessels.
With the help of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence technology to process its myriad of geological data, Petrobras also aims to eliminate dry holes during exploration and reach commercial production at offshore wells faster while reducing costs.
“We increased and sped up the use of artificial intelligence on drillships,” Lemos said. “We were put to the test as a provider for Petrobras.”
Read the rest here: Bloomberg
