Digital adoption in energy has moved from advantage to imperative. Market forces are what made that happen.
That was my argument on Wednesday at the Xait Forum in Houston, in a talk titled From Advantage to Imperative: The Economics Driving Digital Adoption in Energy.
The core thesis: energy companies are being asked to generate more cash, with less capital, under more uncertainty than at any point this century.
That squeeze is what’s turning digital from a shiny object into a line item that’s key to the investment thesis.
SLB’s digital segment now operating at a 28% pretax margin is a particularly powerful piece of evidence in this direction.
After the talk, I moderated a fireside chat with Frank Sohn and John Ingve Eielsen on centralization vs. decentralization in digital adoption, how digital best practices have evolved over the past decade, and where AI is generating both excitement and consternation across the energy sector.
I’m grateful to Eivind Windspoll and Jeremy Widener for the invitation and for an afternoon of substantive conversation with the Xait team and the broader community they brought together.
And it was great to trade thoughts with Eirik Gudmundsen on the evolving financial reality for both SaaS providers and energy companies writ large at the reception after.
I’ll pick up these threads in Foundations of Energy in the weeks ahead.
