Oil and gas pros view social media as important tools to drive productivity

The Microsoft and Accenture "Oil and Gas Collaboration Survey 2009," conducted by PennEnergy in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal Research Center, surveyed industry engineers, geo-scientists and business managers worldwide and found that more than 70% believe that collaboration and knowledge-sharing are important for driving revenue, cutting costs and contributed to the health and safety of workers.

However, in spite of this, most respondents stated that their organizations are still using older means of collaboration, such as face-to-face meetings, e-mails and conference calls, even though newer, more sophisticated technology tools are available today.

Perhaps more telling is that 61% of respondents said that they spend at least one hour each working day searching for information and knowledge sources necessary for their jobs.

With an estimated 65,000 engineering professionals in the global oil and gas industry today, this translates into a potential loss of almost 10m people-hours a year among engineers alone, an average net annual loss of $485m for the industry, calculated by the U.S. Department of Labor salary statistics.

"During this time of economic upheaval, when every dollar counts and effective decision-making is crucial, new technologies such as social media tools can help oil and gas industry professionals find information, collaborate and generally be more productive,"

said Ali Faramawy, Vice-President, Microsoft International. "In an environment with fewer workers and less resources, this is incremental productivity our industry can use in finding new reserves, improving execution of capital projects, driving new innovations and reducing costs."

The survey pointed to one path companies can take to help maximize productivity and facilitate knowledge-sharing and capture. Specifically, 41.5% of those polled said they could save at least an hour every day by using these newer and more effective collaboration tools.

Surveyed professionals also revealed that advanced collaboration and information-sharing capabilities bring value not only in sharing enterprise knowledge but also in completing operational projects.

For example, 74% said that these capabilities are very important in managing capital projects to drive down costs; 51% said they are very important in sourcing scarce technical skills needed to enhance revenues; and 50% saw these new technologies as very important to the sharing of health and safety advisories or experiences.

"Companies are dealing with several trends right now, not only the aging workforce walking out the door with decades of knowledge, but also experienced hires coming into their businesses who need to understand a new corporate culture," said Omar Boulos, Accenture's Middle East Managing Executive."

"Companies have an opportunity to supplement their existing collaboration capabilities with newer tools such as podcasts and social networks to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, increase teaming and augment communication between their workforces in different regions."

While more than half the respondents favored adopting social media technologies to help shrink the productivity gap, only 37% of respondents think their companies are prepared or very prepared to facilitate enhanced sharing and capturing of the company's intellectual capital.

When asked why, almost half (48%) said that companies are not well aligned with the implementation of social media tools. And 44% laid responsibility for lack of readiness on older workers who do not typically use digital knowledge-sharing capabilities.

"In the oil and gas industry, collaboration is a key strategy to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and promote collaborative working relationships among oilfield asset teams located in remote locations around the globe," said Omar Saleh, Oil and Gas Sales Manager for Microsoft Middle East and Africa.

Web 2.0 technologies can support the following industry requirements: connection with remote geographic locations, knowledge capture, knowledge access, informal knowledge sharing, and joint ventures and team projects thereby reducing costs and driving incremental business value."