Data Gumbo has provided Diamond Offshore with an industrial blockchain as a service solution that underpins Diamond’s ‘first of a kind’ blockchain drilling platform. The blockchain drilling service provides an immutable record of transactions relating to well construction activities, including drilling services, materiel management and the supply chain. Users can access and analyze performance from any web accessible device for ‘near real-time total cost of ownership management’.
Configurable modules can be adapted to the platform for individual on and offshore well or multi-well campaigns. The platform tracks transactions from procurement stage through construction, completion and production, ‘reducing spend, eliminating waste and helping to deliver a well successfully.’ Diamond is to implement the service fleet-wide to create the industry’s first ‘Blockchain Ready Rig’ fleet.
The world’s four largest auditors – Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC are to add digital technologies, ‘from blockchain to AI and big data’ to the XBRL’s computer-readable reporting format and thus ‘transform global business and the financial world’. The initial lucky testers of the transformational technology form a group of 20 Taiwanese banks that are to test blockchain technology to confirm transactions. The pilot will replace manual audit confirmation of transactions with a blockchain that will be accessible by the audit firms. More from Regulation Asia.
Speaking at the GBC IIoT and Digital Transformation in Oil & Gas conference earlier this year (see elsewhere in this issue), Artiom Kozlovski (EY) described blockchain as the most interesting app in oil and gas. Blockchain offers bullet proof protection against tampering, trading without traders and auditing without auditors*. Blockchain can (could?) be used to trace tubulars and other equipment without needing to know everyone on the network. A closed blockchain-based platform promises trading ‘validated by the system.’ The main current problem is scalability.
* Coming from EY, this is beyond improbable!
A reader responds to our skeptical editorial Blockchain is bullshit.
Dear Neil,
I would just like to take a moment to congratulate you on your latest editorial (‘Blockchain is Bullshit’). It takes courage to point out the emperor’s new clothes, when every second piece of IT marketing & research seems to be eulogizing this technology. I have been mildly concerned, for the last year or so, that I just can’t see the revolutionary potential for upstream and have only of late started to think, maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s them. I recently had a conversation with an old mate of mine, now CTO at a major international bank and asked him to explain the benefits of blockchain to me. His response? ‘Can’t see any – we only do transactions with entities we trust already and we don’t need that extra layer of assurance. It’s also already pretty efficient, so where’s the benefit?’ So, we might be proven wrong in time & I suspect there will be some niche uses once the hoopla settles down, but in the meantime, well said!
David Edwards Group IS Manager Premier Oil
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