Navigating an E&P Operator’s Journey to Cloud-Planning, Execution, Challenges and Impact
Authors: Rehman Atiq Ur , Fogat Mrigya , Aika Mohd 
Published: February 2025

Abstract

Objective/Scope
Halliburton carried out a huge project to support a major E&P Operator migrate to cloud involving the migration of dozens of petrotechnical applications, serving more than hundred end business users across a diverse array of operations like GG, Reservoir Engineering, Production, Drilling Completions, etc. collaborating numerous application vendors, handling data in Petabytes and high computing capacity. The objective of this paper is to discuss the process involved in the execution of this project, its impact, and groundbreaking advancements in the digital transformation of this major EP operator supported by Halliburton for almost a decade.

Methods, Procedures, Process
Considering Halliburton’s development and innovation in cloud technologies and cloud native applications and plat-forms, a large E&P operator collaborated with Halliburton to navigate their journey to cloud. The entire project can be divided in the following phases:

Results, Observations, and Conclusions
This technical solution has been instrumental in delivering heightened business agility. The deployment of the solution has enhanced efficiency and user experience of Geology Geophysics (GG) solutions spanning from basin to reservoir powered by underlying seamless cloud technology and an open architecture data management. By integrating cloud computing and digital technologies, the initiative allowed to elevate success rates, resource monetization, and operational efficiency. The cloud platform facilitates collaboration in various national operations, ensuring data synchronization and centralized interpretation platforms that accelerate decision-making.
The migration to cloud native applications and data storage and management marks the transition to advanced E&P petrotechnical applications in terms of performance, security, collaboration, and scalability. By enabling rapid completion of reservoir simulations, seismic processing and interpretation bolstering data security with rigorous protocols, fostering seamless collaboration, and offering scalable solutions, it has elevated operational efficiency, confidentiality, collaboration, and adaptability, thus driving transformative impacts across the entire petroleum sector. This solution facilitated faster performance, reduction in total cost of ownership and faster deployment than a client server traditional infrastructure.

Novel/Additive Information
This study showcases how large EP operators, managing petabytes of data, hundreds of applications, and a large number of users in different parts of the globe, can navigate their journey to cloud while following best practices, having seamless business continuity and minimum-security exposure during the journey to cloud in the era of digital transformation. This paper also quantifies resource, cost, and performance optimization. Lastly, this paper address critical topics of security, costs, disaster recovery, company policies for critical EP Data and operations and the impact of digital transformation on the same.