On Tuesday OOC Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium of oil giants such as Chevron, Shell and Exxon awarded a contract to Data Gumbo. The project involves a trial of its blockchain for water management in the Bakken shale field in North Dakota. By using the GumboNet blockchain platform, the aim is to lower operational costs and reduce payment disputes and frauds.
There are several parties involved in the oil and gas extraction process providing specialized services. GumboNet will be used to transform the legacy system, which manually processes transactions and payments of these services.
In the Bakken shale field, GumboNet will record data related to waste water disposal.
Data Gumbo Chief Executive Andrew Bruce told Reuters that the technology could generate about $3.7 billion in annual cost savings for the oil and gas water business.
Norwegian state-controlled oil company Equinor, a member of the consortium, expects to save 25% in process costs related to salt water disposal. That’s according to Equinor’s Rebecca Hofmann, who is chairman of the Consortium. Equinor is a DataGumbo investor.
Founded in February this year, OOC Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium has many heavyweight members including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess, Pioneer Natural Resources and Repsol. Shell joined a little later.
The consortium sees four distinct use cases for blockchain in 2019:
- Tracking waste water disposal
- Faster approvals of expenditures
- Automated billing and payments between parties
- Automated digital rights ownership for seismic data
Last month, fracking water solutions provider Antelope Water Management announced it was implementing GumboNet for its operations in the Permian Basin. Data Gumbo is backed by Saudi Aramco and Equinor who invested in its Series A funding.
Among other initiatives, last year UK-based oil blockchain platform VAKT launched its post-trade blockchain for the Brent crude oil market. Several stockholders are also members of the OOC consortium
