Investments in artificial intelligence have driven innovation and increased efficiency across sectors, and in the Middle East and North Africa – especially in the GCC – AI companies see big opportunities in the oil and gas sector.
“Energy projects in the MENA are anticipated to attract about a trillion dollars in investment, and we see that investment going into improving operational efficiencies in the energy sector across the region,” said AJ Abdallat, CEO and founder of Beyond Limits, a US-based AI company.
“This is going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI in terms of investment because of the benefits to the local economy in the region,” he continued.
Cognitive AI – which combines data learning and machine learning to allow robots to think like humans in specific scenarios – is being used to drive efficiency in the oil and gas sector.
“One of the biggest challenges in the upstream aspect of energy is the optimisation of well-placement in oil and gas reservoirs. Not only do you want to know where to drill, but the proper placement of those wells can have a significant cost reduction,” explained Abdallat.
“So we are using AI to do that because it can reduce the time spent on this significantly versus doing it manually through a human and it also increases profitability and efficiency by a big factor,” he continued.
Established in 2014 – to apply technology developed for the unmanned space programme to energy, power and natural resources, manufacturing and healthcare sectors – Beyond Limits had been active in the region for several years before creating a UAE-based entity in 2020. Now, they’re looking ahead.
“We are planning to expand across all the countries in the region,” Abdallat said.
AJ Abdallat, CEO and founder of Beyond Limits.
“We’ve been active in the region for a couple of years and it was always on our radar screen. Getting involved with and getting an investment from a local company like Group 42 basically accelerated our attraction and involvement in the region,” said Abdallat.
Abdallat called Abu Dhabi’s Group 42, an artificial intelligence and cloud computing company, “a strong and strategic partner in the UAE that invested in us and who we are collaborating closely with”. Group 42 has a joint venture with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) called AIQ.
Beyond Limits has a contract for a pilot with Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, the public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran, and are also active in Kuwait and Oman.
“There is a huge appetite, we actually see a significant investment both from the region and from global companies that basically want to be part of that investment and creating that ecosystem,” said Abdallat.
“We see the Gulf region embracing and adopting digital transformation in a big way. Cost, operational efficiency, and the ability to make better decisions across the organisation are all tremendous applications for cognitive AI and the region is aware of this,” he continued.
One of the biggest challenges in the upstream aspect of energy is the optimisation of well-placement in oil and gas reservoirs.
Beyond Limits has ambitions in the region beyond the energy sector.
“We also see an opportunity in other sectors in the region like fintech, financial services and healthcare, and we are seeing some appetite for that, specifically after what we saw in 2020 with Covid-19. The pandemic identified major global gaps in the health care system and we see an opportunity there and are excited about it,” said Abdallat.
We are actively involved in a medical devices company here in the US which does remote patient monitoring. The initial application we are doing is in early detection of Covid-19 and it is now being deployed with some large corporations in the west, where the economy is gradually opening up. It is a way of making sure we bring the workforce back safely,” he continued.
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