By utilizing the cloud data service from Google, Spanish energy company Repsol's efficiency improvements could yield $20 million in capital growth.
Repsol said it established a partnership with Google to use its cloud data service and artificial intelligence to help optimize operations at its Tarragona refinery.
"This is an efficiency project in all senses," Maria Victoria Zingoni, Repsol's executive managing director for downstream operations, said in a statement. "It seeks to consume less resources; reduce energy consumption, which is the highest cost of a refinery; increase the unit reliability and, by extension, improve economic performance."
Downstream refers to the refining segment of the oil and gas sector. Repsol said the project could improve the company's refined barrel margin by 30 cents to the dollar, which could work out to be around $20 million per year at Tarragona.
Net income and adjusted net income for the Spanish company, at $2.9 billion, were at their highest levels in six years. The company's exploration and production business represented about 25 percent of that total. Production averaged 695,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which the company attributed to the resumption of activity in Libya and new projects from Trinidad and Tobago to Brazil.
Repsol said its refineries typically process around 400 data variables and using Google services could improve its computing power "by more than 10 times."
Tarragona has a processing capacity of 186,000 barrels per day, making it the third largest in Repsol's portfolio.
