Gazprom Neft establishes digital development JV for Russian, global markets

MOSCOW - Gazprom Neft and ICS Holding have set up a joint venture to develop digital products for the oil and gas industry and roll them out in the Russian and global markets.

The development strategy for the new joint venture is aimed at addressing the challenge of digitally transforming the oil and gas sector through the application of Industry 4.0 technologies. The most promising projects include a support system for making investment decisions for working with oil and gas deposits, solutions for process safety based on computer vision, and a process automation tool for the integrated modelling of production assets.

The Gazprom Neft team will provide industry expertise and trial new technologies on industrial assets, while Nexign, part of ICS Holding, will work on introducing software product development processes, as well as building a team of developers.

There will be around 150 professionals working towards solving the company’s technological challenges in 2020, and the team will expand as the venture grows. In addition, various subsidiaries of ICS Holding in the IT sector will offer their expertise towards ensuring comprehensive support for new developments and their effective integration into the joint venture’s business processes.

Eduard Ashrafyan, CEO of the joint venture, commented“We are focusing on developing and promoting products targeted at major industrial clients. We will strengthen our cooperation with Russian enterprises and, in the medium term, launch our activity on the international market. The company is already open to bringing strong partners from the industrial community on board.”

Igor Gorkov, CEO of Nexign, commented “We are confident that Nexign’s strong track record of bringing high-tech products to the global market will be of help in this new venture. For me, this is a very interesting experiment to introduce our knowledge and skills to an industry that is new to us, and I am glad that our company’s many years of expertise in developing complex business support systems is seeing demand outside our traditional market, the telecoms sector.”

Andrey Belevtsev, CDO of Gazprom Neft’s, commented “Our company is expanding into developing modern digital solutions that are scalable across the whole industry. This new venture will allow us and our partners to implement our solutions, thanks to our unique expertise in the digital transformation of major industrial assets.”

Yulia Shutkina, vice president of ICS Holding, said “In addition to the above solutions, we have also been seeing major businesses take an interest in automating processes such as the verification and filtration of industrial data, virtual flow metering, nodal well analysis, production profiling for 90-day integrated operating plans, and condition monitoring and failure forecasting for electrically driven centrifugal pumps. The product also has great potential for a resource planning product for oil extraction network development projects and general resource requirement monitoring.”