BP has announced a significant advancement in its technology strategy by extending its collaboration with Palantir for another five years. This partnership aims to leverage artificial intelligence to enhance decision-making processes for engineers.
The British multinational oil and gas company intends to employ substantial language models to autonomously analyse data from various sites, providing recommendations to assist human decision-makers.
This new agreement builds upon a decade-long partnership, wherein Palantir’s technology has already been instrumental in creating a ‘digital twin’ of BP’s oil and gas operations. These digital twins are currently utilised in locations such as the Khazzan gas fields in Oman, offshore oil platforms in the North Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.
BP has highlighted the role of these advanced simulations in overseeing and optimising various facets of the production process. According to Sunjay Pandey, Senior Vice-President for Digital Delivery at BP, the simulations aid in safely monitoring and enhancing operational performance.
The collaboration includes precautions for ‘safe and reliable AI deployment’ and measures to ‘guard against hallucinations,’ a phenomenon where AI-generated models produce inaccurate or fabricated information due to problematic training data or data combination methods.
As generative AI becomes increasingly prevalent across diverse sectors, there are ongoing discussions about its potential impacts on employment, with some experts suggesting it might replace existing jobs while others believe it will augment them.
In the context of this evolving debate, Palantir’s Matthew Babin stated that the technology ‘offers the opportunity to help accelerate human decision-making on top of the robust digital twin and deep operational workflows already in place.’
The announcement is part of BP’s broader strategy to enhance its technological capabilities under the leadership of its Chief Executive, Murray Auchincloss, who assumed the role following the unexpected resignation of Bernard Looney. Further underscoring this strategy, BP recently reached an agreement with NASA to exchange technological expertise, particularly knowledge derived from operating in challenging environments.
In 2019, BP invested $5 million in Belmont Technology to expedite the development of its AI platform, a noteworthy addition to its technological initiatives.
This renewed partnership between BP and Palantir represents a significant step forward in the utilisation of artificial intelligence within the oil and gas industry. The integration of sophisticated AI models and digital twins is expected to streamline BP’s operational efficiency and decision-making processes.