CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7 - 48

48

Santos is an upstream oil and

Natural Gas project, or GLNG.

gas exploration company which

In partnership with Malaysia's

originated in South Australia. We've

PETRONAS, France's Total, and

been producing oil and gas from

South Korea's KOGAS, we have begun

the Cooper Basin in Queensland

this year producing natural gas from

for 44 years to supply the domestic

coal seams in Queensland's Surat

market. And we have some very old

and Bowen Basins, shipping it via

equipment assets in the field, run by

a 420-kilometer gas transmission

professionals who have been doing

pipeline to a new plant on Curtis

this all their working lives and have

Island, and converting it there into

made decisions, based on experience

liquefied natural gas for sale to the

and intuition, about how to manage

global market.

that critical equipment.
Take a compressor, which boosts

Because the process of extracting
gas from coal seams is different

the pressure of gas as it is extracted

from our conventional method

from the earth so that it can be

of extracting gas from sandstone

transported efficiently through a

reservoirs, the project is a true

pipeline. One of our men in the field

greenfield operation. This has

might listen to the sound it is making

allowed Santos to take a very

and decide to increase or reduce the

different approach to building and

feed, based on his experience and gut

managing assets in the Queensland

feel. If his intuition is wrong, there is

fields and to improve safety and

a direct impact on production.

decrease costs. We're replacing a

For years, that human assessment

lot of what was traditionally done

was the best way to do things. Today,

by people onsite with automated

there are other options, which allow

solutions. These are integrated into

for more fact-based decision-making.

a back-end collaboration and control

To take advantage of these new

environment in a centralized location

technology options, however, the

that is staffed by our experts around

company is having to change. And

the clock.

the IT function is playing a critical

The GLNG project has helped us

role in that change, transforming

understand how we can use data and

Santos from an intuition-based to a

information to make better decisions

data-driven organization, resulting

throughout our entire operations.

in actionable intelligence and a direct

The concept of smarter production

impact on corporate profitability.

has been around for at least eight

Taking Advantage of
Greener Fields

years. But the sensor technology
and advanced analytics required
to achieve this have only recently
matured to a point where automating

A testing ground for this new

production is achievable and

decision-making approach is an

effective. The key problem continues

$18.5 billion initiative Santos is

to be not a shortage of information

leading called the Gladstone Liquid

but rather the overwhelming

CIO Straight Talk | 34

The key problem
continues to be
not a shortage of
information but rather
the overwhelming
abundance of data
produced by these
systems. It can be very
difficult to identify the
wood from the trees, so
the secret is to identify
exceptions and filter
out the information
where nothing
exceptional
is occurring.
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7
