The compounding demand for energy and rising shale gas production in the U.S. are expected to accelerate the digital oilfield technology market at a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period. At this rate, the market will witness an increase in its size from $26,570.4 million in 2017 to $34,871.6 million in 2023. Additionally, a significant dip in the number of onshore reserves in oil-and-gas-producing nations is creating huge opportunities for the industry players, who are offering a range of exploration production (EP) solutions to increase the supply of oil and gas.
The substantial growth in shale gas production in the U.S. will drive the market growth in the coming years. A rise in the EP activities for shale gas is generating a large amount of spatial and seismic information and data related to drilling and production cycles. All these unstructured data sets need to be examined and analyzed to amplify the drilling and production performance. EP firms are using the digital oilfield technology that uses big data analytics to capture, analyze, and transform this data into easy-to-understand sets.
Further, the categories under the device segment of the digital oilfield technology market are remote terminal unit (RTU) and gateway. Of these, the gateway category will display the faster growth in the market during the forecast period due to the ability of these devices to transfer data efficiently to data storage and computation centers from oilfields. Moreover, EP companies are using remote operations to optimize oil and gas production, and gateway devices are quintessential for the realization of this objective.
Additionally, the service segment of the digital oilfield technology market is bifurcated into instrumentation and automation and information technology (IT) expenditure. Of these, the instrumentation and automation bifurcation held the larger share, in terms of value, during the historical period (2013–2017) due to the rising demand for cost-effective devices and equipment, such as safety systems, distributed control systems, sensors, and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). This is why this bifurcation will also witness the higher CAGR in the market till 2030.
In 2017, Europe generated the highest revenue in the digital oilfield technology market as a result of the soaring demand for digital technology to maximize oil production and reduce costs. In the European region, the U.K. accounted for the largest market share due to the presence of an umpteen number of oil reserves in the North Sea. Moreover, the high capital investments, a significant rise in EP activities for shale gas, and integration of novel technologies by EP firms have added to the market growth.
During the forecast period, the Middle East and African (MEA) digital oilfield technology market is set to demonstrate the fastest growth. This can be ascribed to the existence of numerous oilfields, increasing energy demand, and decreasing production from mature oilfields, all of which are coercing upstream companies to enhance the recovery rates by using digital oilfield technologies. Moreover, the recent discovery of a large number of brownfield oil and gas reserves is expected to propel the market growth in the region during the forecast period.
Thus, the declining production from mature oilfields, rising production of shale gas, and discovery of new oil and gas reserves are driving the growth of the market across the globe.
