The world’s biggest oil and gas firms are embracing AI and related technology to maximize savings, optimize operations, and boost earnings.
Digitalization is not new to the energy sector—oil producers and utilities have been using and perfecting it for years. But AI and its rapid advancements and capabilities are the latest hype, and it seems everyone is using it, and doing a very good job at it, at least companies say so.
Robot Dogs, AI Drones
Oil and gas firms use robot dogs and AI-enabled drones for inspections at operating assets, as well as autonomous haul trucks, among other digital and AI technologies, to minimize costs and maximize profits.
At Canadian producer Imperial Oil, majority-owned by ExxonMobil, digital initiatives have helped achieve US$500 million (C$700 million) in cumulative annual value as of 2024, Cheryl Gomez-Smith, senior vice-president at Imperial Oil’s upstream division, said at the company’s Investor Day call last month.
Digitalization is expected to deliver more than US$860 million (C$1.2 billion) annual value by 2027, Gomez-Smith said.
“We've successfully deployed several robotics and drone technologies, including our fully autonomous truck fleet. With our fully automated fleet, we're improving safety by removing the worker from the hazard while offering efficiencies and work execution,” the executive noted.
“We’re expanding generative AI capabilities, and this is where we're chatting with our own data to allow operations to gain real-time insights to drive better and faster decisions.”
Imperial Oil is using two of the robot dogs called Spot, developed by Boston Dynamics, to conduct routine inspections and surveillance at the Cold Lake bitumen project in Canada, one of the largest thermal in situ operations in the world.
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Imperial Oil estimates Spot can conduct almost 70% of some operator rounds, allowing the company to reallocate operator and maintenance resources to higher value work, Gomez-Smith said, adding that the firm will take delivery of two more Spots this quarter.
Another robot, Holly, autonomously performs truck and undercarriage inspections at Imperial Oil’s Kearl project, while the trucks themselves are being refueled autonomously.
Imperial is using drones “on the verge of becoming AI enabled” at Cold Lake to extract savings associated with pump jack maintenance, operator utilization, and spill reduction.
Imperial Oil’s parent company, U.S. supermajor ExxonMobil, says it’s the first in the industry to use autonomous drilling in deep water. Exxon has developed a proprietary drilling advisory system, which is used in operations offshore Guyana. The system uses AI to determine the ideal parameters for drilling. It also allows for closed-loop automation, which controls the drilling process without human intervention.
Exxon also uses AI and machine learning to make its Permian operations more efficient, in a first step towards closed-loop automation.
The other U.S. supermajor, Chevron, is also using AI to boost profitability at its operations in the Permian. AI helps Chevron extract more oil for less effort, which is driving productivity, reducing cycle times, and revealing the best opportunities. Chevron boasts that it has improved execution performance in the Permian by more than 80% since 2019.
Near Midland, the heart of the Permian basin, Percepto and Chevron have just reached a six-month milestone to evaluate the use of the drone company’s AI-powered remote inspection capabilities.
Over the first 90 days of deployment, Chevron saw work hour savings that allow personnel to prioritize activities, cost-efficient and increased monitoring frequency at remote sites, and faster issue detection, the drone company Percepto said.
“This not only keeps our workforce safer but also allows us to direct resources where they can make the biggest impact,” said Kerri Harvey, Chevron’s Midland Basin Operations Superintendent.
AI and other advanced technologies are not exclusively used by international majors. The top national oil companies (NOCs) in the Middle East are also deploying and touting the use of AI.
Aramco, the Saudi state oil giant and largest oil company in the world, uses AI to generate new results from oil seismic data, in just one instance of its use of AI.
“In production it means we can be more accurate, and we are able to drive our drilling operations autonomously to be able to maximize production, reduce costs and help to reduce emissions,” says Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, Aramco EVP Technology & Innovation.
Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC boasted early this year the successful proof-of-concept trial of ENERGYai, in what the UAE’s oil firm said is the world’s first-of-its-kind agentic AI solution tailored for the energy sector.
Opportunities and Threats
Oil and gas executives in a recent EY survey said that the two highest opportunities for creating value from AI and emerging technology are predictive maintenance for heavy equipment and assets, and intelligent optimization of operational performance.
“While reservoir simulations and drilling functions may face higher risks to using AI, they also have the opportunity for more significant rewards,” said Abhilash Krishna, Manager, Technology Consulting, Ernst & Young LLP.
“Leaders who embrace that risk — and give their people permission to fail — will solve the AI puzzle sooner and gain an advantage.”
But leaders will also need to beef up resilience against cyber threats as increased digitalization creates more opportunities for cyber attacks.
The energy sector ranked as the fourth most targeted sector in 2024, accounting for 10% of cyber incidents last year, according to the IBM X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index.
“The critical importance of energy infrastructure to global operations and its susceptibility to disruption makes it a persistent focus for attackers,” the report found.
