The Spotfire Energy Forum brought together Spotfire customers with our team of experts to talk about the visual data science and advanced analytics techniques powering the energy sector. We got to hear from 12 Spotfire experts across the energy industry in 9 sessions, ranging from dynamic panels on developer tips to keynotes about the future of AI.
Visual data science and AI powers the energy sector
The day kicked off with my presentation on visual data science in the energy sector. The energy sector is active with mergers & acquisitions, technological advancements, and workforce evolution. Energy companies are optimizing exploration, appraisal, field development, drilling, completions, production, and trading. Spotfire visual data science can help energy companies improve upstream portfolio resilience, adapt to market fluctuations, and optimize resources and assets over time. Spotfire provides the visualizations, data science, and developer tooling to surface insights—and rapidly build and deploy interactive visual-first applications for round-the-clock operations and decisioning.
Upstream energy – Subsurface insights using Spotfire® Mods
We then got to hear from Manuel Rosales, Manager of Data Analytics at ExxonMobil Global Services Company. He shared how ExxonMobil uses Spotfire® Mods to analyze upstream subsurface data—including 3D layering of formation tops, geo properties, along with existing and potential well paths, and precise spacing analytics. Manny explained how they’ve been trying to do this for a decade with specialized tools that are tough and time-intensive to use, and how awesome it is to have these interactive Visualization Mods inside the platform’s immersive UX. Manny showed the Spotfire mark, filter, zoom, configuration, sliders, analytics, and visual data science controls in action with subsurface data…a dream come true for energy companies.
Customer panel: Using Spotfire® to make critical business decisions
Another great session featured Mike Downing, Senior Data Analyst at Merit Energy, Austin Kolakowski, Senior IT Manager of Enterprise Data & Analytics at Continental Resources, Inc., and Kyle Kinney, Data Visualization Engineering Specialist at Chesapeake Energy Corporation.
The three discussed how their innovative energy companies are diving into their data—covering exploration, drilling, completions, engineering, geosciences, and production surveillance—to drive critical business decisions. At Merit Energy, with over 3,000 well bores to manage and a small team of field engineers, Mike discussed that it was critical to do exploratory work quickly— a Spotfire strength. The teams use Spotfire live in meetings and drill into insights and next best actions in real time. All the panelists described having “Spotfire Meetings,” where insights are surfaced and decisions made live with no follow-up action items! The panel also discussed the challenges of competing analytics tools like Power BS attempting to enter the energy analytics market, and why Spotfire is highly differentiated and critical for understanding and operating their businesses.
A practical guide for tackling upstream energy challenges
Later in the afternoon, Graeme Gordon, Senior Geological Advisor at Hess Corporation, highlighted how Hess is using Spotfire to increase the probability of well success by visual predictions of hydrocarbons from subsurface seismic data, including interactive slices across the new Spotfire® Well Log Visualization. Graeme showcased interactive analyses of subsurface and drilling data for optimizing the rate of penetration. Graeme’s innovative use of visual algorithms like geospatial clustering and depth warping combined with Spotfire interactive visuals showed how he has earned the revered title of “3-click Gordon.”
Developer panel: Spotfire experts’ tips and tricks
The customer sessions ended with a robust discussion from Toby Burrough, Associate Director of Product Management at S&P Global and Jon Henderson, Chief Analytics Officer at Enertel. They were joined by Atheer Al Attar and Jose Leviaguirre from our own Dr. Spotfire team.
Enertel uses Spotfire as the foundation for their Quantum application. This Spotfire app enables production and economic evaluation all the way from well to basin granularities. Jonathan Henderson shared some terrific Spotfire tips in the developer panel. He also had a great session about Tips and Tricks at #TheAnalyticsForum 2023 and was our 2023 Hackathon Winner.
S&P Global has extended Spotfire capabilities to help guide energy companies in critical decision-making processes in unconventional reservoirs. Its Analytics Explorer application, based on the Spotfire platform, helps O&G operators and finance companies make critical investment decisions. Toby discussed more during #TheAnalyticsForum 2023 in his session “Extending Spotfire: How O&G Operators and Finance Orgs Gain Reservoir Insights.”
Drill into Spotfire® for Energy
Thank you to all the presenters for an awesome event. It was great to see the cool innovation, collaboration, and community in Houston. Looking forward to visiting with more customers soon across the globe, stay tuned! And enjoy some more photos from the event below:
Want to learn more about Spotfire’s unique solutions for the Energy sector? Check out these awesome resources:
- Spotfire Energy Solutions
- Spotfire Energy Forum
- Spotfire Energy Forum on Community
- Spotfire Energy User Group
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