As breakeven points become more sustainable, and the oil and gas industry begins to find its footing off of a major downturn, CEOs are bullish on growth outlook and are intensifying investment in emerging technologies and innovative solutions to lead the way.

“The energy sector is an incredible place to be right now. Innovative technologies have the capacity to completely disrupt the way we operate, and it’s clear from our study that global oil and gas executives recognize that these technologies – when properly implemented – put us in a position to make big change,” said Regina Mayor, Global Energy and Natural Resources Leader, KPMG in the US.

In the KPMG study of 51 global oil and gas CEOs:

Investments will primarily focus on:

To achieve this growth:

• CEOs plan to invest in data and analytics tools, followed by
  IoT, and cognitive automation
  

• The CEOs' priority objectives for these investments are to achieve bottom-line growth, transform their businesses, and create organizational resiliency.

While CEOs indicated a clear commitment to investing in emerging technologies to achieve growth, risks and challenges with implementing these technologies prevail. In fact, emerging technology is the top risk oil and gas CEOs are concerned with, followed by operations, changing customer needs, and supply chain. Additionally, when it comes to the biggest technology-related challenges to organizations over the next 3 years, oil and gas CEOs first point to integrating cognitive technology, followed by attracting new strategic talent, trusting the quality of data, and piloting emerging technology. 

“Digitization of the industry is clearly on the minds of global oil and gas CEOs. We’re hearing it in all of our client discussions as concepts around digital labor and cognitive are being explored industry-wide,” said Anton Oussov, Global Oil and Gas Leader, KPMG in Russia. “And with such opportunity for disruption comes risk and concern, but those companies that embrace the new digital environment will thrive.”