ONGC leverages technology for competitive advantage Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC)

India’s Maharatna, ONGC is the country’s largest crude oil and natural gas company. It contributes 75% to Indian domestic production. This largest natural gas company ranks 11th among global energy majors (Platts).

ONGC has created a benchmark for industry by setting up EPINET. With this a live E&P information network and a virtual database has been developed for Basin & Petroleum System Modeling of various basins. Through SCADA all production and drilling executives at different levels utilize and reap benefits of online SCADA data for enhanced operational efficiency and productivity.

The Maharatna has also come up with 3D virtual reality centres known as ‘Third Eye’ for real-time supervision of the Oil & Gas fields, bridging the gap between centres with parallel computing technologies for all its major projects.

The IT mission of ONGC has been realigned ‘To develop an integrated, flexible and standardized Information Technology architecture to position ONGC towards fundamental competitive advantage’. The existing standalone applications (UFSO – for Financial Management, SHRAMIK for Human Resource Management, IMMS for Material Management etc.) and other legacy information systems were brought together under a common ERP platform. This gave the birth of Project ICE, Information Consolidation for Efficiency. The project comprises of 23 SAP modules in more than 500 physical locations across the length and breadth of the country, starting from mobile Survey units at Jwalamukhi of Himachal Pradesh to Deep Sea vessels at Bay of Bengal, from Production installations at far flung areas of Assam to Drilling rigs in the desert of Rajasthan.

 Shashi Shanker (CMD)