Oil is a significant raw material that is used throughout the world. It has been the world’s primary source of energy since the mid-1950s. There is a lengthy and complex supply chain in the oil and gas industry. Extraction, production, distribution, handling, manufacture, storage, and consumption of oil and natural gas all require a complex web of interconnected entities.
Supply chain management in the oil and gas industry improves the productivity and competitiveness of a petrochemical facility and its suppliers. Companies are linked to their upstream and downstream suppliers and distributors in a supply chain as resources, information, and capital flow through the network.
The necessity of Supply Chain Management in the Industry
Businesses that sell oil and its derivatives, including petrochemicals, have benefited from the rising demand for these goods worldwide by gaining new customers and increasing their market share and profits.
The administration of the petroleum sector has become much more complex and difficult due to the global demand increase, the ease of international trade, and the inherent inflexibility in the supply chain of the oil and gas industry.
· Enhance Your Customer Responses
Customers count on receiving a suitable selection and amount of products and having easy access to those products in a convenient location. For example, client happiness drops if the auto shop needs an extra day or two to order replacement parts for your vehicle.
· Strengthen Your Financial Footing
Supply chain managers add value to businesses by lowering the need for costly infrastructure in the supply chain management of oil and gas. Construction tools, storage space, and vehicles are all examples of such assets.
Businesses benefit from employing supply chain managers because they help with cost control and management. As a result, a company’s bottom line could see substantial growth.
· Lessen Running Costs
Managers in the supply chain must devise systems that meet service levels for the least amount of money. These supervisors are important to the success of factories and stores. Supply chain efficiency is closely tied to a company’s capacity to compete successfully in the marketplace.
Retailers rely on their supply chains to quickly deliver expensive products to reduce the time they must keep expensive stocks in stock.
Supply Chain Strategy
Businesses need to have a plan for their supply chains to effectively bring things into the organization and then distribute those products to customers. To lower costs while simultaneously raising income, the strategy optimizer optimizes procedures throughout the entire supply chain, from the point of procurement to the End of the distribution.
Upstream and downstream are terms used in the supply chain management in the oil and gas industry. The closer a business or operation is to the final consumer, the further downstream it is in the supply chain.
Upstream
The upstream sector of the oil and gas industry is often known as the exploration and production (E&P) sector due to its focus on these three key processes: exploration, recovery, and production. The exploration and production industry is another name for this field.
The following procedures fall under the purview of this channel:
- Exploration: Work from the air, seismic testing, geophysics, and geology
- Evaluation wells (sometimes called test wells or wild cat wells) are drilled.
- Production and extraction of materials
- Facilities renovation and decommissioning
Midstream
Transporting crude oil and processed petroleum products is under the purview of the midstream. As its name suggests, the midstream oil and gas business encompasses operations and infrastructure between the upstream and downstream sectors.
The gathering system is the fundamental focus of the midstream industry. A collection system is used to transport the oil’s hydrocarbons to the refinery, where they can convert into useful products.
Consequently, the midstream phase comprises:
- Transportation
- Storage
Downstream
Operations at the End of the Supply Chain (Downstream) operations might include refining and selling. These operations refine crude oil into usable forms, such as gasoline, fuel oils, and other petroleum-based products.
Advertising firms need help to get the final goods from the energy suppliers to the retailers or end consumers.
Some examples of what happens, later on, are listed below.
- Refining and purifying natural gas and crude oil
- Commercialization and distribution
- Sales and inventory control
Supply Chain Planning
The four parts of supply chain planning—integration, operations, purchasing, and distribution—establish an efficient and competitive route to the market.
· Integration and Cross-Departmental Interaction
It would help if you had a unified picture of all the important data to properly coordinate, measure, and oversee your firm’s activities. It ensures that all employees see the same data and clearly understand the organization’s current supply situation.
When managers ensure that their teams coordinate their efforts, it is much simpler to maintain track of the bigger picture and identify areas where things can improve.
· Operations
Again, data that is timely and accurate are necessary for supply management. You can simplify operations by attempting to predict demand and finding solutions to satisfy it.
Consequently, many companies now employ lean manufacturing practices, which consist of continually evaluating processes to look for areas that may improve.
· Purchasing
A crucial element in the process is planning for your organization’s supply chain. It is essential to understand your organization’s requirements, materials, supplies, tools, or equipment.
It is critical to always have the appropriate product on hand in the proper quantity at the right time, and demand forecasting software can deliver more precise information than spreadsheets.
· Distribution and Supply Chain Management
The final connection in the supply chain is formed when customers purchase your goods, whether they do so directly from a retailer’s shelf or via direct delivery. Distribution throughout the supply chain must meticulously handle to guarantee that products will arrive at their intended location.
Clients’ orders need to be synchronized with the times of shipment and processing, as well as invoicing and departure.
If the distribution is unreliable or inefficient, unhappy customers may decide to take their business elsewhere. It could result in a loss of revenue.
Developing Supply Chain Strategy
Planning for the supply chain strategy is broken down into three stages:
· Design for Supply Chain Strategy
Before beginning to build a plan for a company’s supply chain, you must first determine the company’s general goals and key performance metrics. While evaluating and choosing suppliers, determining warehouse locations, and making any necessary revisions, you should consider whether to implement software across the supply chain.
· Supply Chain Planning
To be effective, formulating supply chain planning requires an understanding of both the supply and the demand for the good or service being provided. Having the correct products available at the right time and place can help you better satisfy your customers’ needs if you do.
· Supply Chain Strategic Execution
The inventory management team’s primary responsibility is to ensure that the company’s supply chain plan is carried out effectively to satisfy its clientele’s requirements.
Innovations in the supply chain of the oil and gas industry
The oil and gas industry relies on worldwide supply chains that can be complex and interdependent. It leaves these systems open to danger and uncertainty. Potential threats within a supply chain include shifts in supply, demand, and prices. Supply chain Innovations in the oil and gas industry are essential to the sustainability of any industry and are needed to face these challenges. Innovations can affect the service a company delivers to its clients in several ways, including (but not limited to) raising customer satisfaction, decreasing costs, and enhancing inventory management. Innovations in the supply chain of oil and gas are desperately needed.
Upstream supply chain growth requires a culture of constant innovations in the oil and gas sector, so it’s important to determine which technologies should be prioritized for development and to spread about innovation’s value in ways beyond research and development. But the industry is still falling short in how seriously it takes this issue. The oil and gas business is increasingly focused on lowering costs and increasing recovery rates through radical innovation and digital transformation.
1. Core capabilities in oil and gas innovative supply chain
Every company requires the following two basic components in their innovative planning solution:
· Visibility
Companies that operate in the oil and gas industry often do so on a vast scale and are spread throughout several different areas across the world. The Planning process is made more difficult by the breadth and scope of their operating environment, which includes a variety of economic interests being pursued in separate locations.
To provide visibility into action in innovation in the oil and gas sector, it is essential to make efficient use of the data that is now available for future planning. If you do this, you will reduce the likelihood of making the same mistakes twice and will be able to focus more on improving the most important key business indicators.
· Integration
Integration is the next step in implementing a new kind of planning solution. Once complete transparency has been achieved, the oil and gas business can proceed with optimal connection planning across the board, from production to distribution. It will allow the industry to go forward. Throughout the industry’s history, individual divisions of the oil and gas industry have been responsible for planning their operations separately.
2. Innovative generational model
Changes can occur gradually or abruptly in the supply chain due to interactions between customers and sellers. There are multiple determinants of the connection between encounters and the birth of new ideas in the supply chain innovation of the oil and gas industry. They fall into two broad classes:
- First, there are the ones that exist within the two companies themselves, within the context of their buyer-seller relationship, and which can be influenced by decision-making on either side (IT adoption, commitment, and trust).
- Secondly, factors that aren’t directly involved in the partnership are usually beyond the couple’s control (applications of technology, stability of demand, and network connections). Adoption of IT and the standard relationship qualities of commitment and trust are internal factors that impact buyer-seller interactions. There are three factors from the outside including; the availability of a network, the nature of the demand, and the level of implicit technology.
3. Logistics Optimization
Logistics Optimization is reducing costs associated with the transportation of petroleum products, which makes up a significant portion of the expenses incurred by the oil and gas industry. The goods obtained as a byproduct from the refineries have extremely high transportation costs to cover to make it to the service channels before they are made available to customers. The end consequence is a product that is more expensive for customers to purchase.
The movement of refined petroleum products through the various routes is depicted in the figure that can be found above. The optimization of transportation through linear programming is a straightforward approach to resolving this issue.
Innovations drive the future. Oil and gas organizations need to handle the complexity of their operations to enable enhanced decision-making, robust growth, and higher value. This can be accomplished by providing end-to-end visibility, seamless integration, and genuine optimization.
Strategies to sustain the oil and gas supply chain
At the same time as new technological developments are being made, recent market trends are appearing. Because of this, the oil and gas industry is forced to embrace new techniques in place of their more conventional business methods.
Oil-field service and equipment companies are looking into the following three strategies to sustain the oil and gas supply.
· Bringing down the costs
An industry that had become fat and content over the years due to high pricing has been jolted by the necessity of decreasing costs to satisfy declining profit expectations.
In the past, the market went through a period in which prices increased. The barrel cost went up by between 5% and 15% every year from 2009 onward. This growth began in 2009.
Moreover, to sustain the supply chain in oil and gas, new convenient opportunities to save costs have surfaced. The fact of the matter is that operators are in the process of becoming more efficient.
· Improved machinery
Integration of modern and up-to-date equipment is necessary for sustaining the oil and gas supply chain to function properly. If O&G companies want to increase efficiency while simultaneously lowering costs, they need to use modern technology.
The relatively new service, “logging while drilling,” collects information about the well. Even as it is drilled, a drill collar is required for the job.
The oil and gas firms are responsible for providing themselves with the appropriate equipment. These tools should be able to travel without a hitch around the supply chain and be simple to acquire when required.
· Integrating on all levels: a one-stop-shop approach
One can realize cost reductions through collaboration and simplify the contractor management process. When tools, software, engineering, and other service offerings are combined, an incredible amount of value may be unlocked for customers.
Currently, a significant amount of the purchasing of services and equipment is done through many different providers, which results in an increase in complexity and a fragmentation of the supplier base. Several OFSE businesses are beginning to bring these services in-house due to integrated offers that cut down on the expenses associated with coordination.
Conclusion
The supply chain of the oil and gas industry has a crucial role in all oil and gas-related activities. Upstream companies need drilling equipment and drilling service providers to search for and produce oil and gas. An organization can’t hope to grow into a formidable competitor in today’s global economy without first mastering the art of supply chain management.
FAQs
How can oil and gas businesses improve the worth of their products through the supply chain?
If the oil and gas industry builds a supply chain that is more efficient and empowered strategically, it will be able to explore three unique types of value-creation potential. Oil and gas supply networks can create substantial wealth through the ethical pursuit of asset-backed trade and the commercialization of infrastructure and unused assets.
What are the dynamic aspects of the supply chain for oil and gas?
Companies and services in the oil and gas business are typically categorized as either upstream, midstream, or downstream when discussing their dynamic aspects in the supply chain. For the supply chain, a business or service is considered “downstream” when it serves a client base that is more directly adjacent to the ultimate end user. The three main industries that make up the oil and gas supply chain have complex operations.
