What do platforms like Airbnb, Uber and eBay have in common with WorleyParsons subsidiary Advisian?

They each put buyers and sellers closer together.

That’s what Advisian, the digital and global advisory services arm of the Australia-based engineering, procurement and construction company, aims to do with a new platform called Requis. The online trading platform shakes up the traditional procurement process for companies, regardless of size, seeking to buy and sell onshore and offshore oilfield equipment.

“We believe that between 9 [cents] and 15 cents on every dollar spent in oil and gas, according to our research, is spent purely on the people and the process of buying that equipment,” Bradley Andrews, president of digital enterprise for Advisian, told Hart Energy. “If you think about that 10% of everything in oil and gas is spent on the process of buying it not on the equipment itself. That’s a massive inefficiency in cost that we wanted to address.”

The online platform, which was launched this summer, comes as the oil and gas industry continues to look for ways to drive down costs, improve efficiency and ultimately, make money. Lower commodity prices, which shrank profit margins for many oil and gas companies, led to stalled projects and stacked equipment. But as market conditions improve and activity ramps up in certain parts of the world operators may found the need to buy or sell surplus equipment such as pumps, valves and cables.

Advisian said the platform, which was released in late August, lowers handling and storage costs, while also improving warehousing efficiency and eliminating equipment waste.

The company first rolled out its surplus disposal module across the three regions in which it operations: the Americas; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Australia/New Zealand and Asia. Two pilots for the trading platform are currently underway: one with a large Tier 1 offshore operator and another involving an offshore operator in the Middle East that has an onshore LNG facility.

“What we know is in the uptime oil and gas customers have built up massive stores of extra equipment in their warehouse. If you think about it, even in your household, if you’re holding extra things in your house that you don’t need or use, that’s just a waste of money,” Andrews said. “There’s tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas warehouses with equipment that they don’t use, may never use or they don’t need the amount of quantity for. That’s lost capital. It’s capital sitting there, being wasted.”

Requis can serve as a virtual warehouse for a company wanting to trade equipment across of its warehouses and operations. But as Andrews explained it also enables the creation of a virtual warehouse across an entire field, allowing various companies and partners to pool resources.

Data Element

However, the platform is not focused solely on equipment. SAP software-compatible data tools were developed for Requis to include all data associated with that equipment such as warranties, specs, data sheets, certifications, audits and purchase order agreements. The data is pulled, cleaned and structured, and tagged to a piece of equipment, he said.

“Oil companies sit on a lot of inventory. The problem is when you actually go to look for the equipment you can find the equipment but you can never find the paperwork that goes with it,” added Neil Mackintosh, executive vice president for Advisian. This platform allows users to find documentation and other paperwork related to each piece of equipment, he added.

“The data associated with that piece of equipment that you want to buy is more valuable than the piece of equipment itself, which seems kind of strange,” Andrews said.

The digital technology wave spreading across the industry has companies thinking more about how data can be used to create value: whether it’s using data to help predict equipment failures or using it to help create a digital twin, which is the digital version of a physical asset.

“It’s the information about the asset that generates value. This is where the power of digital and what we do in digital really comes to bare. People need to think about their data now,” Andrews said. “There are massive economic consequences when people don’t manage clean data and keep robust data quality associated with their businesses, facilities and spares. Those are the kinds of discussions we are having.”

Although the industry has opened up more to certain new technologies, having seen the benefits, there are still challenges when it comes to change and adoption.

There is a lot of work that must be done around data, which Andrews said scares off customers until they see the advantages and automation of the process.

“The other challenge is around companies governance systems: they are not designed for these kinds of multilateral quick decisions to buy and sell things, so they are having to address that,” Andrews said, noting there haven’t been any challenges with the platform from a technology perspective. “The challenge we have is around changing the way people think about their supply chain.”

Velda Addison can be reached at vaddison@hartenergy.com.