Blockchain has moved past its status as a niche technology, and is now being looked at as a valuable technology that can transform many traditional industries by bringing digital automation, security, and huge cost savings.
Blockchain as an online distributed database (read here for its benefits), the core concept of this revolutionary technology, holds incredible potential for every sector of the economy as many existing industries still rely upon outdated legacy systems for data storage, security, and other administrative duties.
Database maintenance involving many stakeholders can now be quickly digitally automated, secured, shared, and updated in real-time by leveraging solutions using blockchain technology.
In the oil and gas industry in particular, blockchain-based solutions can be useful.
As a capital-intensive industry, spare parts, leaks, repairs, and many other things have to be constantly tracked all around the world involving different stakeholders.
As an extraction industry, international supply chains become extensive and hard to follow.
Finally, as an international business, legal agreements have to be crafted and executed across many jurisdictions.
All of these areas can be improved by the application of blockchain to digitally automate these processes while securing, sharing, and updating at the same time through a tailored solution accessible by all stakeholders.
What Services Does Blockchain Deliver to Oil & Gas Enterprises?
1) Product Traceability + Supply Chain
The supply chain of the product and the parts needed to run an operation in the oil & gas industry span the entire world.
Right now, these are tracked via a complicated web of redundant systems that generate inefficiencies and create contradictions in the information by stakeholders that are using different tracking systems.
The process is not only laborious but in most cases done manually with frequent errors that become costly.
Blockchain as a trusted tamper-proof distributed ledger updated in real-time provides a solution to these.
It maintains an immutable record of events, whether these be transactions, transfers, entries, or any type of recordable information.
By implementing a tracking solution that logs the information in a blockchain-based solution, logistics costs and erroneous data can be reduced significantly and bring increased business margins to enterprises.
2) Blockchain + IoT Devices
Another solution for the oil & gas industry being promoted today are IoT devices.
But the amount of data reported by such sensors is difficult to manage using traditional information systems that are not as secure and transparent as blockchain-based solutions.
If implemented erroneously, IoT sensors can actually become part of the problem, but blockchain again can solve this situation.
Blockchain solutions are able to directly record and validate the data provided by the IoT network immediately.
In real-time, that data would be relayed to all of the stakeholders utilizing the blockchain solution without any contradictions.
A blockchain solution combined with IoT systems offers an unprecedented service value.
3) Smart Contracts
Finally, oil and gas markets are global and have to go through a web of legal agreements and sale cycles.
In the past, this has been one of the most costly parts, as armies of lawyers and administrators have to manually confirm each document.
But blockchains can streamline this process too and bring cost savings.
Smart contracts, one of the unique value propositions of blockchain, are self-verifying pieces of code that automatically execute once programmed conditions have been met.
Once launched, a smart contract cannot be manipulated, and the business logic coded into it can be viewed by all participants in the network.
This creates a whole new level of transparency and efficiency.
All of these features are delivered by a single technology, the distributed ledger central to blockchain.
The industries of the future based on how well they have integrated blockchain into their business verticals will have gained a huge competitive edge.
To those enterprises lacking resources or the knowledge to implement tailored blockchain solutions, a capable partner will be needed.
EMURGO Trace Solution Offers a Value Add for Oil & Gas Enterprises
Due to its complexity and specialized expertise, a blockchain-based solution is best built and implemented by those with the knowledge and expertise to build tailored solutions appropriate for the specific needs of enterprises.
This is especially true for companies not native to the blockchain ecosystem.
As a result, successfully developing and deploying a blockchain-based solution can be very challenging without a capable partner.
EMURGO as a global emerging technologies company and a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain protocol, is an industry leader in developing customized blockchain solutions for enterprises.
Our customized enterprise solution EMURGO Trace, is in live production with enterprises in the coffee industry to track products through their supply chains in Indonesia and in the Asian region.
EMURGO Trace is flexible enough to adjust to the specifics of supply chains in the oil and gas industry as well to offer the benefits mentioned above including full traceability, compatibility with IoT devices, smart contracts, and so forth.
To begin exploring the solutions EMURGO Trace can bring to your business or project, please contact info@dev.emurgo.io for more information.
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