Oil & Gas, Mining Customer Stories

Apache Corporation, a global oil and gas exploration and production company based in Houston, Texas, ran its seismic interpretation and reservoir modeling applications on a 32-bit operating system, and its geoscientists were running into data size limitations. To better handle the large amount of data needed for making optimal drilling and production decisions, Apache deployed the 64-bit version of the Windows desktop operating system and the new 64-bit version of the Petrel® 2009 seismic-to-simulation software preferred by its geoscientists. Now, the company’s workstations can handle more data—700 percent more since the software deployment—to improve reservoir modeling and seismic interpretation accuracy. In addition, after Apache deployed a storage solution from NetApp that uses the latest Microsoft file-sharing protocol, application performance improved by a dramatic 50 percent.

Energy giant BP saved its employees when Hurricane Katrina struck, but the process of locating its people and material assets, and making decisions about their care, was time-consuming when every second counted. The company sought a better solution. That’s what BP has now with its Hurricane Management System, which combines the 3-D satellite imagery of Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ mapping software and real-time weather data with a visual representation of BP people and facilities. The solution uses existing BP infrastructure, including the Microsoft application environment. It saves BP crisis managers hours each day by automatically consolidating data from 20 sources. Most important, BP personnel worldwide can understand and respond to threats hours faster—with the potential both to better care for the safety of their workers and to save millions of dollars.

Chesapeake Energy, the leading natural-gas producer in the United States, is a rapidly growing company that tripled its employee headcount between 2005 and 2008. To meet the challenges of such rapid growth, the company needed a more powerful intranet solution to boost worker productivity, improve workflow, and enhance collaboration across the oil and gas value chain. Using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Chesapeake Energy developed and deployed a new solution that integrates the company’s intranet, extranet, and Internet presence. Through its extensibility, the solution streamlines collaboration across project teams—including teams with remote employees—and creates a foundation for business intelligence applications, stronger content management, and consistent communications with external stakeholders.

Chesapeake Energy wanted to enhance its document and web content management capabilities. It chose to begin the transition of its intranet and Internet sites to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. With the solution, the company plans to standardize on a common development platform, and it expects to improve efficiency and boost the reliability of its services. Thus far, the company has experienced a smooth, trouble-free migration.

Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil companies with assets in more than 100 countries, encourages its employees to analyze data and create rich reports. Information Technology Company, a business unit of Chevron, deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 to provide Chevron employees with self-service analysis and report creation capabilities. Users will be able to create enhanced reports with new visualization and analysis tools. The company has also improved the performance of one of its critical business intelligence applications.

Chevron is one of the world’s leading energy companies with 40 percent of its 59,000 employees using mobile computers. The company sought a solution to help it enhance security while still meeting the needs of its employees and business partners. Chevron decided to upgrade its 90,000 computers to the Windows Vista® operating system. The energy company expects to enhance security, reduce costs, and increase employee productivity.

The refining industry is driven by tight margins, and oil companies are constantly looking for ways to boost efficiency and reduce costs. Chevron has found significant savings in standardizing refinery process steps using mobile workflow software and rugged PDAs to deliver decision support to field workers. Chevron implemented the solution using Wonderware’s Mobile Workforce Management and Decision Support System, IntelaTrac, powered by Windows Mobile® software. With IntelaTrac, Chevron has increased refinery operating reliability, reduced maintenance costs, and improved safety and environmental compliance. Chevron estimates that these process improvements will save the company U.S.$3 million to $5 million annually. Chevron has also found that IntelaTrac helps capture process knowledge before workers retire and speed new-worker assimilation through mobile learning.

PetroChina wanted to maximize the operational efficiency of its IT system. To do this, the company upgraded to Windows Server® 2008 R2 to take advantage of the enhanced Hyper-V™ technology and features such as Cluster Shared Volumes. As a result, the company expects to reduce server hardware by more than 40 percent, increase performance and availability, and reduce IT management time.

With more than one million employees generating annual revenue of U.S.$129.7 billion through sales to 69 countries, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) ranks as the 7th largest oil company in the world. To keep up with its global operations and to meet governmental and other regulatory requirements, CNPC needed a world-class enterprise workflow and file management solution. CNPC created its solution using the Microsoft® Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise (64-bit), and the Microsoft Office System. SQL Server holds more than 3 terabytes of CNPC data. The company created its applications using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006. CNPC is taking advantage of new SQL Server 2008 features including Resource Governor, Enhanced Data Auditing, and Backup Compression.

Based in Norway, DeepOcean specializes in subsea services as part of the Trico Marine Group. In an effort to enhance security for its portable computers and to address challenges with its virtual private network solution, the company decided to migrate to the Windows® 7 operating system. As a result of the upgrade, DeepOcean has simplified IT management, enhanced IT security, and improved employee productivity.

Offshore oil and gas operator, Dubai Petroleum Establishment (DPE), requested a fast and cost-effective solution for running its reservoir simulations to reduce the uncertainty in its drilling and production operations. The combination of Windows® HPC Server 2008 with proprietary reservoir software will give DPE use of 3-D modelling with high-performance computing speed. The solution offers extraordinary and ongoing price advantages over similar open source offerings.

Eni – a multinational energy company with 76,000 employees in 70 countries – produces, transports, and markets oil and gas worldwide. It also operates in the electricity generation and sale, petrochemicals, oilfield services construction and engineering industries. Eni needed to create a knowledge management system for its Exploration & Production division that was capable of gathering, storing, and sharing its employees’ expertise on a global scale. It overhauled its legacy platform in the Exploration & Production division and replaced it with Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server 2007, successfully migrating all its previous databases and information repositories and creating new and improved management procedures.

Exterran—a service and equipment provider to the oil and gas industries, formed from the merger of Hanover and Universal—had an enterprise portal, but employees shied away from it because it was difficult and time-consuming to use. This resistance affected global collaboration and was a potential roadblock to the company achieving its growth targets. To boost collaboration, Exterran worked with Infosys Technologies, a Microsoft® Global Systems Integration Alliance Partner, to create a more usable portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and complemented with other Microsoft communications technologies. Employees find the new portal to be faster, easier, and more effective to use. Document uploads are faster, too, saving hours on major projects. Most important, Exterran’s solution is helping it to win more business, expand its global reach, and build customer loyalty.

Flowserve, a leading provider of flow control products and services for the global infrastructure market, wanted to help customers improve facility performance and reduce maintenance requirements. The company now is doing that with its real-time monitoring solution tied to a highly visual Web portal. The solution has the potential to save customers money by reducing downtime while helping Flowserve evolve from an original equipment manufacturer to a complete solution provider.

Forest Oil Corporation – a major Oil & Gas company based in Denver, Colorado, implemented a corporate strategy to entrust employees with the responsibility to grow the company by reducing costs in all areas of their respective business units, and by preserving financial flexibility, with attention to “disciplined spending” within every department in the company.

In today's difficult economic environment, all companies seek ways to cut business costs. One of the possibilities for serious economizing in the field of information technologies can be reduction of costs on infrastructure, that is, on management of desktop computers and servers. This goal can be attained through employment of virtualization technologies, which enable to ensure the dynamic redistribution of computation load and to increase the consolidation of resources. That is precisely what Gazprom Neft Company did by implementing the Microsoft Hyper-V technology. Owing to that solution, not only did it succeed to increase reliability, flexibility and scalability of its IT infrastructure, but also to significantly reduce expenditures, while substantially increasing work efficiency. At the moment, 15% of all operating corporate applications have been transferred to virtual machines hosted on Hewlett-Packard BL 680 servers.

Hercules Offshore is a global provider of offshore contract drilling, liftboat, and inland barge services based in Houston, Texas. After a series of acquisitions and mergers, Hercules Offshore needed to standardize and automate its various health, safety, and environment (HSE) processes. Instead of buying an off-the-shelf software solution, the company decided to build a Web-based dashboard, using Microsoft® collaboration and database technologies that it already licensed. HSE Dashboard is an Office Business Application that allows employees to effectively collaborate using Microsoft Office system products, promoting the ubiquitous adoption and widespread commitment to HSE that Hercules Offshore wanted. Employees are using the solution’s standardized workflows and detailed reporting to reduce administrative expenses and to make better HSE policy decisions.

The Information Store® helps global petroleum companies access exploration and production data irrespective of where the data resides and presents it in a useful and familiar form. To maintain its competitive advantage, the company was eager to find a cost-effective way to extend its industry-leading PetroTrek® solutions to independent oil producers. The company evaluated two “software as a service” offerings and selected the Windows Azure™ platform —an Internet-scale “cloud services” platform that is hosted in Microsoft® data centers—as the foundation for its online Digital Oilfield solution, along with Microsoft SQL Azure, the Silverlight™ browser plug-in, and Bing™ maps for enterprise. The company expects to increase the operational efficiency of its customers by reducing upfront capital costs, reducing deployment cycles from months to days, and lowering ongoing operating expenses.

LyondellBasell Industries needed to meet new air-quality regulations in Southeast Texas, where its subsidiaries operate eight manufacturing plants. The global petrochemicals and polymers manufacturer opted for a flexible, Microsoft® software–based solution called VisionMonitor Compliance Intelligence (VMCI) from VisionMonitor Software, a Microsoft Certified Partner. LyondellBasell implemented the solution in just eight months. With VMCI, LyondellBasell has an environmental monitoring and management solution that empowers employees to proactively assess 12,000 data points every five minutes using a Web-based dashboard. The system is reliable, cost-effective, and adaptable to meet new regulatory and business requirements as they arise.

Marathon Oil Corporation found itself managing a mountain of information that was difficult to search and expensive to maintain. So the company created an enterprise content management team and implemented a solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that employees can use to find and share information and expertise. Marathon has slowed the rate of information growth and can now better meet operational, legal, and regulatory requirements.

Medco Energi Internasional (MedcoEnergi), a global energy company, wanted to improve communications for its mobile work force. Employees traveled frequently to remote locations, and relied on e-mail to collaborate. However, an e-mail outage could stall communications for hours. To avoid downtime and improve access to information, MedcoEnergi is deploying Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 and integrating it with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. By creating a Database Availability Group, it can increase uptime and restore service within seconds instead of hours. Employees have improved Web-based access to multiple communications tools, and they can find and organize information more efficiently. In addition, MedcoEnergi expects to cut costs by consolidating server hardware and taking advantage of built-in communications capabilities.

Changes in the chemicals used in process manufacturing, such as oil refining, can have profound effects on product quality and company revenues. Nalco wanted to overhaul the time-consuming process by which it collected the data needed to provide effective process improvement services to its customers. By integrating the PI enterprise infrastructure from OSIsoft with the Microsoft® Application Platform and its own systems, Nalco is developing a solution that can securely upload customer data over the Internet for detailed analysis and reporting. Nalco expects to boost the productivity of its technicians by freeing them to expand proactive customer support. Nalco also expects the solution to be a “game changer” for oil refineries, enabling them to increase their own revenues and profits by improving reliability and efficiency.

National Oilwell Varco (NOV) is a global leader in the drilling industry, with 40,000 employees working in facilities across 49 countries. Employee use of public instant messaging (IM) networks resulted in repeated virus infections. The IT department blocked access to the IM networks, but users demanded access to this critical communications tool. When NOV looked for a solution, it found that Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 not only solved the IM problem but also provided many additional capabilities. Now, NOV is using Office Communications Server for presence integration with other applications and for audio, video, and Web conferencing. NOV reports that employees who use Microsoft Office Communicator travel less and have reduced international calling charges. They also report improvement with business processes, such as collaboration, hiring, and employee retention.

NuStar Energy is a crude-oil transportation and storage company that has grown rapidly since its creation in 2001. The IT staff was intent on meeting business needs by streamlining mundane server management chores, keeping headcount low, and standardizing its infrastructure. NuStar deployed Microsoft® System Center data center solutions and enhanced its network security using Microsoft Forefront™ client security software. NuStar can now integrate new acquisitions in days and respond to new business needs in hours instead of weeks with consistently configured servers and a set of easy-to-use tools for managing them. NuStar claims it would need 50 percent more people to manage its growing infrastructure without Microsoft software. The IT staff’s agility yields lower costs and more time to create new services. NuStar has also reduced business disruption with stronger server protection.

NuStar Energy has grown rapidly since its founding, which has introduced greater risks to corporate information, made regulatory compliance more difficult, and increased IT work. Using Microsoft® business-ready security products, NuStar has enhanced network protection, reduced desktop computer downtime by 450 hours annually, improved compliance, and saved U.S.$200,000 annually through IT efficiencies.

Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) is a major world exporter of fossil fuels and the largest petroleum company in Latin America. Its exploration and production subdivision needed to establish safeguards for investment project documentation and comply with prescribed documentation and technical-reporting processes for exploration projects. PEMEX worked with Microsoft Services and Microsoft Certified Partner Indra Sistemas Mexico to develop a solution that takes advantage of the Microsoft software that the company already licenses. In this way, the company avoids additional software licensing expenditures and reduces the need for training by using familiar software. With this solution, the company formalizes safeguards and reporting related to documentation and gives employees faster access to information they need to do their jobs.

Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the state-owned oil and gas company based in Mexico City, has 150,000 employees and generated U.S.$98.2 billion in 2008. Some years ago PEMEX Exploration and Production, the company’s largest business unit, created its own document processing and workflow management application using early versions of Microsoft® SQL Server® database software and Microsoft BizTalk® Server. As success of the internally developed application spread, response times declined. To gain scalability, PEMEX Exploration and Production upgraded the solution to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) and BizTalk Server 2006 R2. CPU utilization has dropped and the company has gained the scalability it needs to roll out the solution to the rest of PEMEX. The company also plans to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 Transparent Data Encryption to enhance document protection.

Reliance Petroleum is Australia’s largest distributor of BP and Castrol products. Its 2,500 employees manage an extensive network of bulk fuel and lubricant depots, delivery vehicles, and service stations. Following a merger in 2007, Reliance Petroleum introduced new customer relationship management (CRM) and intranet systems with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. However, the company still needed to integrate data from multiple systems and make that data available to all business users. With the assistance of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Oakton, Reliance Petroleum deployed a data warehouse solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. It includes enhanced data integration, reporting and analysis. By using SQL Server 2008 R2, Reliance Petroleum has cost-effectively extended business intelligence capabilities to field staff and improved decision–making by sales staff, managers and executives.

Royal Dutch Shell currently relies on multiple vendors for communications and collaboration services. Since these capabilities are not integrated, they can inhibit the effectiveness of the company’s global teams. To improve the work environment, Shell has chosen Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 to provide a single user interface for all real-time communications. Shell currently has 150,000 users taking advantage of instant messaging and presence and more than 8,000 users for the voice capabilities. Shell is currently testing Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and when fully deployed, the solution will provide an integrated platform for voice, video, instant messaging, and Web conferencing for all users within Shell. Shell will be able to consolidate approximately 200 PBX systems and multiple audio and video conferencing services into a single cost-effective solution.

Samson Investment Company is an upstream oil and gas company. Employees have to manage a large volume of data generated from evaluating well prospects, and it was difficult for them to find information in third-party solutions and data silos. Teams approached pre-drill workflows differently, and management had difficulty assessing global operations and coordinating drilling schedules. Samson addressed most of these issues with a knowledge management and collaboration solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. With streamlined access to consolidated data, Samson employees no longer spend a significant amount of time looking for information. Staff uses built-in scheduling logic to maximize efficiency to prepare the surface for rig move in and materials acquisition. Field labor costs are reduced by avoiding expedited location preparations.

Saudi Aramco is one of the largest oil corporations in the world. The company produces, manufactures, markets, and ships crude oil, natural gas, and petroleum products to meet global demand. Its client computing environment is composed of 45,000 desktop computers and 5,000 portable computers running the Windows® XP operating system. The company was looking for a solution that would help it enhance security while reducing costs and increasing productivity for its mobile workforce.

Integrated Project Management (IPM), a division of oilfield services provider Schlumberger, has experienced rapid growth. Its challenge was to support this growth and provide a uniform and high level of project management, global sharing of best practices, and a central source of information for projects. To meet these needs, IPM created Avance—an enterprise project management and collaboration solution based on Microsoft technologies. Avance gives IPM project managers a centralized repository for their project-related information, providing “one version of the truth” for users from any level in the organization. It enables staff to address project-related issues quickly and effectively—for example, a purchase order reconciliation process went from days of manual labor to minutes when done in Avance. The solution is scalable to meet the division’s growing needs.

Oil and gas companies worldwide trust Schlumberger to deliver services and solutions that support their exploration and production operations. With operations in more than 80 countries, Schlumberger needed a robust and reliable communications system that transcends geographic boundaries. The company is integrating Microsoft® unified communications technologies, including Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, with its industry-leading Petrel reservoir modeling software. In addition, Schlumberger is rolling out Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 internally. Employees use Microsoft Office Communicator to view real-time availability information and share data with colleagues, and they hold effective video conferences with Microsoft RoundTable™. With access to the information they need, employees are better prepared to make critical decisions.

Southern Union, one of the largest diversified natural gas companies in the United States, faced a challenge familiar to most large, fast-growing companies: the need to use information to support growth rather than put up roadblocks to that growth. Employees needed faster access to authorized information and a better way to boost security around restricted data. They needed to share information not only with team members within the company, but also with business partners. The company now has the solution it needs in Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. Southern Union has used the software to create a comprehensive and highly successful information platform that is unifying employees throughout the company, increasing the speed and accuracy of collaboration and work processes.

StatoilHydro, an international energy company based in Stavanger, Norway, wanted to make sure that workers in its increasingly global operations could fully collaborate with their colleagues. Operating in a fiercely competitive market, StatoilHydro recognizes that delivering the information that employees need to do their jobs helps give the company an edge. To address remote access issues that could hinder employee productivity and collaboration, the oil company is implementing the Windows® 7 operating system and the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system, which together offer features such as BranchCache™ to improve data access at branch offices and DirectAccess to simplify remote connectivity. As a result of the upgrade, StatoilHydro will deliver seamless access to the corporate network for traveling employees, improve information access at branch offices, and enhance IT security.

By taking advantage of the on-demand application scaling, Windows Azure storage services, Microsoft SQL Azure relational database capabilities, and support for familiar programming languages in the Windows Azure platform, Wipro expects to reduce costs, improve agility, enhance global consistency for its customers, and add new revenue streams for its own operations.

SharePoint Server 2007 is the industry standard for creating convenient, easy-to-use enterprise portals that are compatible with other corporate software. TNK-BP's SharePoint portal supports the work of 18,000 users across twenty Russian regions, making it the largest such portal in Russia.