Open Source Software: Efficiency and Cost Savings

Open-source software is software available under an open-source license, allowing users to modify and maintain the code.

This can be done by the user themselves or through an expert third-party of their choice. The Open Source Initiative must approve all open source licenses.

It is not proprietary software where the code is kept secret. This allowed the companies to earn revenue but limited customers ability to understand and work with that code.

Companies that use proprietary software, however, are bound to the software.

Open-source software has revolutionized the technology industry. It lets users see how code is written, which helps them create the best innovative products.

Open source allows for reuse and recycling, which makes it much easier to achieve your goals and collaborate with others. Also, companies have more choices regarding who they can rely on to support them. Developers can now pay for services and support to help them achieve their goals rather than old-school royalties.

Open Source: Whats the Future?

Open source, which began in the software industry, means something different to everyone, depending on their experience and interaction.

It has grown in importance for tech projects, covering code ownership, licenses, and development. It isnt a business plan.

To run a successful business, companies still have to make money. However, they cannot charge royalty fees in the way other software companies may.

We are seeing the rise of business models allowing revenue generation alongside free code. For years this was based on subscription and support models. Today, it can also include cloud services to make the service easy to use.

What stops other companies from doing the same thing without giving back to these projects? It can affect the companies revenue potential and the community surrounding the project.

While the customer may not bear the cost of the software, the cost associated with maintaining and securing the code is an ongoing cost.

To date, the cost has been paid for by the business or community that developed and maintained the code. But with the vast majority of todays digital and infrastructure services relying on open-source code, it is more important than ever that governments and organizations in public service contribute and support this model.

It is important to consider open source as an infrastructure that greatly benefits society, just like real-world roads.

The Commons can no longer be dismissed. Globally, it must be funded at a large scale by governments.

The UKs Energy Digitalisation Task Force released its recommendations for the UK utility sector in January 2022.

These included how it must change to achieve its energy goals and net zero. The report stated that using open-source software and standards would allow for interoperability and remove the need to lock into proprietary systems.

As with critical infrastructure, the report called for strong governance structures and collaboration.

Sustainable Development: A Perspective

Open source is a great way to accelerate the process of getting things done. It can help spread value, reduce costs, and improve innovation.

Open source is a great way to increase efficiency and sustainability. It is much more efficient for open-source projects to share code than for each open source development company to create its own.

Open APIs provide de facto standards for everyone to use, improving efficiency. Reuse and recycling are not only part of a circular economic model but also allow those with less access to innovation.

The UKs work on energy efficiency will result in digital assets of public value that benefit both the existing businesses within the energy sector and those who enter new markets.

This should make the services available to customers more competitive and improve their sustainability. Other countries can reuse the work done to boost their energy economy. Open-source projects in the UK can result in digital projects that must be supported and evolve into new business possibilities over time.

Benefits of Open Source Software in the Oil and Gas Industry

Oil and Gas (O&G), which has suffered trillions in losses, must adopt digital technologies faster. It must fully adopt IT solutions to address the industrys critical issues.

The oil and gas (O&G) sector is particularly affected by geopolitical conflicts and increased competition from renewable energies. These solutions can include open-source platforms and tools.

Oil and Gas (O&G), based on the areas of operation in the value chain, is classified into three main categories: upstream, middle stream, and downstream.

Upstream Operations

The following operations are included:

1. Exploration: Identifying the areas that can extract oil/gas
2. Production: Drilling, bringing oil/gas up to the surface

Upstream Operation Pain Points

1. Costs of exploration and drilling: The cost of drilling oil wells is high, involving millions of dollars for personnel, materials, equipment, and logistics.
2. Downtime of equipment: Equipment that is not maintained regularly and effectively can fail, causing production to stop and a significant financial loss.
3. Concern for sustainability: upstream operations leave a large carbon footprint.
4. Safety Risk: Upstream operations pose physical, chemical, and biological hazards for those working there.
5. Ineffective data management: Numerous sensors generate humongous data. These data are of limited use without effective analysis and management.

Midstream Operations

The midstream industry includes:

1. Transport of oil/gas from the production site to the refinery site
2. Oil/gas storage

Midstream Operation Pain Points

1. Cybersecurity risk: IT and communication infrastructures used for transportation and storage are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Colonial Pipeline in 2021 was a US oil pipeline that suffered from a cyber ransomware attack. The computerized equipment used to manage the pipeline had been affected.
2. Extraction of value from midstream data is a major challenge.
3. ESG (environmental, social, and governance) examination: The investment in midstream operations depends on the companys ESG inspection. Low ESG scores could hinder investments, leading to increased energy costs, disruptions in supply, environmental risks, and reduced innovation.
4. Safety Risk: Aging pipelines, human interference, and corrosion and cracks in tanks pose safety risks.
5. Inventory management inefficient: A lack of robust predictability leads to inventory management that is less efficient and costs higher.

Downstream Operations

The downstream operations include:

1. Refining of petrochemicals
2. Market and distribute refined products at retail and wholesale

The Pain Points of Downstream Operations

1. Safety of personnel: Leakage of hazardous gas is a serious safety issue.
2. Stockouts are a result of inaccurate demand predictions.
3. Cybersecurity risk: This includes refinery IT infrastructure, similar to midstream operation risks.
4. Treatment of waste: Toxic residues that are not properly treated can cause serious environmental problems.
5. Data management problems: The ineffective management of unstructured data generated by sensors and other sources can be a real pain.

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The Open Source Movement is Transforming the O&G Industry by Bringing Many Solutions to O&G Challenges

Many major oil and Gas companies have begun to recognize the benefits of open-source software and are now participating in projects and open-source communities.

1. Shell joined Linux Foundation Energy and planned to enhance the Open Subsurface Data Universe platform (OSDU), which uses data from renewable energy and other sources. Shell will make the code of the Shell Sensor Intelligence Platforms data ingestion component open-source via LF Energy under the title Real-Time Data Ingestion Platform.
2. Chevron has been a member of the Eclipse Foundation since its inception. This latter offers individuals and organizations a mature and scalable environment that is business-friendly for collaboration and open-source software innovation.
3. British Petroleum (BP), too, is dabbling in open-source. The company has a public GitHub with 13 repositories.

Oil and gas companies are increasingly adopting open-source software to reduce costs, increase collaboration, innovate, and modify it to meet their needs.

Technologies that address the major challenges of the Oil and Gas (O&G) industry are grouped into the following categories.

1. Internet of Things
2. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
3. Big Data
4. Digital Twins
5. Augmented Reality (AR)
6. Automated robotic process (RPA).
7. Cloud Computing
8. Blockchain
9. Quantum computing

These technologies are shaped in many ways by open-source tools and platforms, software, and the technology itself.

These are just a few examples.

Internet of Things

The O&G sector uses sensors to gather data along the entire value chain. The Internet of Things is built on these sensors, edge computing, and cloud computing infrastructure.

IoT can help O&G firms solve the many problems that plague the industry.

Open source platforms and tools are essential to IoT, as they are for most other innovative technologies. Below are some of the most popular ones:

1. OpenRemote, an IoT open-source platform, allows you to create custom applications, control devices, and visualize the data.
2. Googles Flutter SDK is a UI toolkit (user interface). It allows cross-platform development of apps.
3. ThingsBoard, an open-source IoT platform, is a device management and data processing platform that allows for the collection of data, its visualization, as well as management devices.
4. SiteWhere is an open-source platform with industrial strength for IoT app development.
5. Eclipse IoT, an open-source IoT platform, has components to manage IoT data and devices.
6. Node-RED is an open-source tool that allows visual programming for IoT development. Kaa is an IoT framework open to all.

The 5G network can improve IoT capability through higher speeds, reduced latencies, and a larger capacity for the network than other mobile networks.

Therefore, it is a good fit for IoT, as it allows for more connectivity and more devices to handle more data.

Several open-source projects are devoted to 5G development and applications. Below are a few.

1. O-RAN is a radio network that focuses on developing open and interoperable networks.
2. OpenAirInterface focuses on developing software for wireless communications systems, including 5G.
3. OAI-CN focuses on developing a network core infrastructure that will be used for future 5G networks.

The research for the 6G version of 5G is underway. The new technology promises higher speeds and less latency. The 6G network is set to be available by 2030.

It will combine the physical and digital worlds, bringing new IoT applications relevant to O&G.

AI and ML

By providing a forum for sharing code and ideas, open source has facilitated collaboration and innovation within AI/ML.

It has led to a growing community of developers working together to progress the field.

AI/ML is commonly used with open-source software, platforms, and tools. Some examples include:

1. MindsDB is an open-source AI layer for databases.
2. PyTorch is an open-source ML framework.
3. Keras is an open-source deep-learning framework.
4. Apache MXNet is an open-source deep-learning framework.
5. OpenAI Gym is an open-source platform for reinforcement learning algorithms.

Big Data

Big Data is often implemented using open-source tools that support ML and data visualization and provide a flexible environment for developing and running apps.

The following are some of the most popular open-source tools used for Big Data:

1. Apache Flink is an open-source Big Data platform.
2. Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed streaming platform.
3. Elasticsearch is a search engine thats distributed and open-source.
4. Open source column-store real-time data store for OLAP.
5. Kylin is an open-source distributed analytics engine.

Digital Twins

Digital twins can be digital models of real-world systems and processes. They are useful for simulating, analyzing, and modeling their behavior.

Digital twins can be developed and managed using open-source tools and technologies.

Digital twins can be enabled by open-source platforms such as Apache Kafka and Influx DB. They also include IoT data collection in real-time, management and virtualization, analytics, and visualization.

1. Eclipse Hono is a remote service interface that allows you to connect many IoT Devices and interact with them uniformly, irrespective of their communication protocols.
2. Eclipse Ditto supports the implementation of software patterns for IoT Digital Twins.
3. Apache Kafka allows the creation of real-time streaming data pipelines.
4. Influx DB allows you to set up a real-time database easily.
5. Grafana provides analytics and monitoring solutions that support many popular time-series databases such as Graphite, Prometheus Elasticsearch, and Influx DB.

Combining these five open-source platforms can create a universal digital twin architecture.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (AR/VR) can alleviate many of the pain points that O&G industries face, such as downtime, safety issues, cost, productivity, etc.

These technologies can be implemented using open-source platforms and software. Below are a few of the technologies.

ARToolKit+ consists of a set of tools that can be used to solve some fundamental AR problems, such as geometrical and photometric registration.

1. Open source AR Browser mixARE is published under GPLv3.
2. HoloKit, a mixed reality experience (MR), is a free and open-source project that includes HeadKit headsets on cardboard and TrackKit.
3. Aframe.io is an open source web framework that allows you to create 3D/AR/VR content.
4. ApertusVR is an embeddable, open-source, framework-independent, platform-independent, network-topology-independent, distributed AR/VR/MR engine.

Read More: What Is Great About Developing Open-source Software?

Robotic Process Automation

RPA is the automation of business processes that people typically carry out. Open-source software can be used to develop RPA systems.

Many tools and libraries are available that automate different types of business processes.

Below are some examples of tools available for free that you can use to develop RPA systems.

1. Apache Camel, an open-source integration framework, can automate routing and data processing between systems.
2. Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework designed for acceptance testing (ATDD), and acceptance test-driven development.
3. AutoIt is an open-source automation language for automating scripts and programs.
4. Ansible, an open-source platform, automates the management and scaling of infrastructure and applications.
5. OpenCV is a free computer vision software library that allows you to build applications for processing and analyzing visual data.

Here are only a few open-source tools, platforms, and software that can be used for RPA. Research and evaluation of options are crucial to determining the best fit.

Cloud Computing

Open-source software and tools can be utilized in cloud computing.

1. Apache CloudStack is an open-source platform for building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds.
2. OpenStack is a platform that allows you to build and manage private clouds and public clouds.
3. OpenNebula, an open-source platform, allows you to build and manage private, hybrid, and public clouds.
4. Terraform is a free and open-source tool that allows you to build, change, and update infrastructure safely and securely.
5. OpenShift is an open-source platform that allows you to build and deploy containerized applications.
6. Cloud Foundry is an open-source platform allowing you to build and deploy native applications.

Blockchain

Many open-source tools and platforms can be used with blockchain, including many open-source blockchain platforms and many open-source apps built on these platforms.

This allows for the best of both worlds and maximizes their decentralization and security.

These open-source tools and platforms are suitable for use in the Blockchain space.

1. Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source blockchain platform designed to build enterprise applications.
2. EOS is an open-source blockchain platform designed for high-performance and scalable applications.
3. Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source platform that allows the creation of decentralized apps (dApps) and smart contracts.
4. Cosmos, an open-source, decentralized blockchain network built using the Tendermint algorithm, is a distributed and independent system.

Hedera Distributed Ledger Technology

Hedera Hashgraph, a platform for distributed ledger technologies (DLT), uses the novel hashgraph consensus algorithm.

This algorithm is based on the idea of a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Most blockchain technologies, on the other hand, use a consensus method called Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS).

Hedera Hashgraph is a new technology that has yet to be tested in production. It claims to have advantages over other blockchains, including speed, security, and low fees.

The O&G sector can explore many different blockchain applications using this hashgraph.

Quantum Computing

Quantum computing, a rapidly developing field, uses quantum mechanical phenomena such as superposition, entanglement, and other similar ones to manipulate data.

The quantum computer can solve some problems faster than traditional computers that use bits to store and process information.

You can find several open-source quantum computing projects, which provide users with access to software, libraries, and tools for quantum computing, as well as the opportunity to participate in developing these projects.

Below are some of the projects.

1. Qiskit is an open-source framework to work with quantum computers.
2. QuTiP is an open-source library for quantum computation and quantum information processing.
3. Pennylane, an open-source quantum machine learning software library created by Xanadu.
4. QuantumFlow, a Google-developed open-source quantum computing library, is free and open-source software.
5. Ocean SDK, D-Waves open-source Python tool suite for quantum computing problems.

Open Quantum Hardware, for example, is a project that develops open-source quantum computing equipment based on qubits made of superconducting materials.

GESDA, the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator, is launching an Open Quantum Institute in partnership with Microsoft.

The institute aims to give global access to research and quantum computing technologies relevant to O&G, such as seismic computing, forecasting weather, transportation optimization, process optimization, and chemical engineering.

Open Source Software Can Address Security Concerns in the O&G Industry

The Industrial Internet of Things in O&G has increased the data sensors generate. This information must be analyzed to make better operational and financial decisions.

Data generated in legacy systems is transmitted to data centers for analysis, but its sent unencrypted and raw. This can lead to security breaches.

Edge computing improves security through data analysis performed at the edge and only transferring encrypted data selectively to data centers.

Most of these edge computing devices use open-source operating systems and software, making them more secure. A gateway intelligence that can run an enterprise-grade open-source operating system, such as Linux, offers greater security than IoT devices with a thin real-time embedded operating system.

Open Source Software: Why is it Better Secure?

Open-source software, in general, is supported by an active community that monitors and fixes security flaws quickly.

It is evident in frequent updates to the security status.

However, proprietary software updates are usually released in a regular cycle. Hackers can then exploit these zero-day flaws.

Open-source communities also provide code maintenance at a level that is impossible to achieve by one company alone.

Open Source Adoption in O&G Industry: Organisations and Forums That Promote It

A few organizations and forums are working to promote the adoption of open-source software/platforms/tools in the O&G industry.

1. Energy Web Foundation: Energy Web Foundation promotes the creation of value in energy by building an open and decentralized infrastructure based on blockchain technology.

The objectives of the project are:

1. Develop an ecosystem that includes users, developers, and infrastructure providers
2. Together, we will identify and evaluate blockchain applications in the energy sector.
3. Build an open-source IT infrastructure on which to implement these use cases
4. Educate regulators, other stakeholders, and standardization bodies

1. Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU), Forum: This forum aims to improve efficiency and innovation within the energy industry through open data standards, a common data platform, and promoting these data. The OSDU Forum aims to reduce data silos and enable better decisions through digital solutions. It also aims to create an open ecosystem based on standards to encourage innovation in the energy sector.

The forum will provide the following:

1. The scalable Data Platform and Related (Common) Services
2. The OSDU Platform can be used in various technical settings, including cloud, on-premises, and edge.
3. The API (application programming Interface) should be a stable and standardized platform for all applications.
4. OSDU Services for an enlarged group of Energy Companies
5. Service providers use the latest technologies to monitor and improve data quality.

1. O&g, Like All Other Industries Today, is Affected by Open Source: Open source technology can be used to make IT solutions for O&G more efficient, robust, secure, and effective.

Open-source software is a great option for companies developing O&G solutions. It can save money and provide a flexible, reliable, and secure solution.

Associating with organizations that promote open-source adoption for O&G will help you stay updated on the latest developments in open-source solutions.

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Final Remarks

Finance and resources will be needed to make it successful. This will be achieved through the increased partnership between the public and private sectors, as well as by building code-holding bodies on both a national level and an international one.

It will be possible to ensure the code management that code quality is maintained and remains secure. It is also necessary to have open data.

Still, it must be clarified if this involves the same entity working with multiple organizations over time.

Oil and Gas companies can benefit by incorporating open-source software in their business. Open-source software can help companies reduce costs, enhance collaboration, innovate, and increase security.

Many companies are already adopting open-source software for their projects. Open-source software is a great way to increase efficiency, agility, and competitiveness as the oil and gas industry evolves and faces new challenges.

Open-source software can help the oil and Gas industry unlock opportunities to grow and succeed in years to come.

Open source was historically categorized as a commons. Today, the value of open source has changed, and private investment in it is no longer enough.

The value of the project isnt just economic but also social.

The software supports the development of skills, employment, and collaboration opportunities. It also allows for collective equity, community growth, and open source app development.

Open-source access accelerates and improves the innovation of all organizations instead of making it the exclusive domain only for the biggest and wealthiest enterprises.

References

1. 🔗 Google scholar
2. 🔗 Wikipedia
3. 🔗 NyTimes