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Recently, oil and gas giants have been accelerating the application of artificial intelligence technology to enhance safety, cut costs, and optimize performance in all aspects of their operations. Oil and gas giants such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Imperial Oil, Saudi Aramco and ABU Dhabi National Oil Company are demonstrating the achievements of upstream efficiency improvement driven by artificial intelligence. However, it is worth noting that while artificial intelligence brings rich returns, it also brings cybersecurity risks.

Digitalization is not a new thing for the energy industry. Oil producers and utility companies have been using and refining this technology for many years. However, artificial intelligence has become the latest hot topic due to its broad development prospects and powerful capabilities. A latest survey by Ernst & Young shows that executives in the oil and gas industry believe that the two major opportunities for creating value through artificial intelligence and emerging technologies lie in predictive maintenance of heavy equipment and assets, as well as intelligent optimization of operational performance. At present, oil and gas companies are using robot dogs and AI-powered drones to inspect their operational assets. They are also employing automated transport trucks and other digital and AI technologies to minimize costs and maximize profits.

Cheryl Gomez Smith, senior vice president of Imperial Oil, a Canadian oil and gas producer controlled by ExxonMobil, said at the company's investor day conference call in April this year that since the company began implementing digital initiatives, by 2024, these initiatives have cumulatively brought the company an annual value of 500 million US dollars. It is expected that by 2027, digitalization will bring the company an annual value of over 860 million US dollars in a single year.

Gomez Smith pointed out: "We have successfully deployed a variety of robot and drone technologies, as well as our fully automated truck fleet." Fully automatic fleets can keep workers away from danger, enhance safety and also improve work efficiency. We are expanding the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence. By interacting with data, we can obtain viewpoints and insights in real time, thereby making better and faster decisions.

Imperial Oil is using two robot dogs named "Sport" developed by Boston Dynamics to conduct routine inspections and monitoring of the Cold Lake asphalt project in Canada. Gomez Smith said that Imperial Oil estimates that the "Spor" robot dog can complete nearly 70% of the employee inspection work, enabling the company to reallocate employees and maintenance resources to more valuable tasks. Imperial Oil is also using drones that are "about to have artificial intelligence capabilities" in the Cold Lake project, achieving cost savings in aspects such as pumping unit maintenance, operator utilization, and leakage reduction.

Oil giant ExxonMobil said that it is the first company in the industry to adopt automatic drilling technology in deep water. Exxonmobil has developed a proprietary drilling consulting system and is using it in offshore operations in Guyana. This system utilizes artificial intelligence to determine the ideal drilling parameters and also realizes closed-loop automated control of the drilling process without human intervention.

Another American super oil company, Chevron, is also using artificial intelligence in its operations in the Permian Basin to enhance profitability. Artificial intelligence has helped Chevron extract more oil with less investment, increase productivity, shorten cycle times, and discover better extraction opportunities. Chevron said that since 2019, its operational execution performance in the Permian Basin has improved by more than 80%. Near Midland, the core area of the Permian Basin, the drone company Percepto and Chevron have just evaluated the remote inspection capabilities of AI-driven drones. Percepto said that in the first 90 days of deployment, Chevron achieved savings in working hours, enabling personnel to prioritize work, enhancing cost-effectiveness, increasing the monitoring frequency of remote sites, and being able to identify problems more quickly. Carey Harvey, the operations director of Chevron Midland Basin, said, "This not only makes our employees safer, but also enables us to allocate resources to where they can be most effective."

Artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are not only adopted by major international oil companies. National oil companies in the Middle East are also deploying artificial intelligence applications. Saudi Aramco's use of artificial intelligence to extract new achievements from oil seismic data is just one example of its application of artificial intelligence. Ahmed Al-Kovetel, Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Saudi Aramco, said: "In terms of production, we can be more precise and independently drive drilling operations to maximize output, reduce costs and help cut emissions." In March 2024, Saudi Aramco released its self-developed Aramco Metabrain AI large model with 250 billion parameters. It covers the company's over 90 years of accumulated engineering, geological and operational data, and can intelligently analyze elements such as drilling plans, geological structures, and historical operating costs, and recommend the optimal well layout plan. Enhance exploration efficiency and reduce project costs; In downstream business, it can also predict the trend of refined oil prices and market fluctuations, providing forward-looking market decision support for enterprises.

However, while the oil industry is extensively using artificial intelligence, industry insiders also point out that the increase in digitalization has brought more opportunities for cyber attacks, and oil enterprises also need to enhance their ability to resist cyber threats. According to the IBM X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index, in 2024, the energy industry became the fourth largest target industry for cyber attacks, accounting for 10% of cyber attack incidents last year. The report states: "Energy infrastructure is crucial to global operations and is vulnerable to disruptions, making it a continuous focus of attackers."