Norway’s Aker BP Bets On Software Engineers For Its Oil Business

When owners of Norwegian oil firm Aker BP decided to digitize its assets and operations, they searched high and low for the right software company. But they failed to find a suitable one.

So instead they set up their own, Cognite, to create digital maps of Aker BP’s oil industry assets, integrating data from equipment such as pumps, heat and pressure sensors, maintenance records and even staff rotas to improve efficiency and safety.

Less than two years later, Cognite is selling its software to Aker BP’s rivals, and one competitor, Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum, has even agreed to share its real-time oilfield data with Aker in what they say is an industry first.

“This will be the first time two different operators, or oil companies, will share operations/production data live from two producing fields, that is between Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen,” a Lundin Norway representative told Reuters.