The age of digital transformation has arrived, leading traditional industries to adopt new technologies to accommodate a fully digital future.
Rebecca Hofmann, president and CEO of Blockchain for Energy, told Cointelegraph that the consortium initially piloted a solution with blockchain company Data Gumbo back in 2019 and 2020. The pilot combined industry operators — along with their customers, suppliers and vendors — and incorporated real-time sensors to gather data to validate transactions across a blockchain network.
“We call this ‘extreme automation’ because everything is touchless.
Given the success of the trial, Hofmann explained that Blockchain for Energy helped automate an extremely manual process within the oil and gas industry supply chain.
“A smart contract on Data Gumbo’s GumboNet for example can be programmed to trigger payments to a contractor when a sensor indicates a specific milestone is reached, like when a drill bit has reached a certain depth,” he said. In other words, a lengthy process involving invoicing and payments is reduced to just a few days, resulting in substantial savings, financial transparency and improvements in efficiency.
While tokenization for the oil and gas industry is still a developing concept, Hofmann explained that Blockchain for Energy is currently piloting a solution with a blockchain company, BlockApps, to tokenize the seismic entitlement processes. According to Hofmann, tokenization is needed to help track the rights and obligations of those seismic assets to facilitate the purchase, sale and lease of those assets and even monetize the unwanted data.
For example, the energy supplier Restart Energy One recently launched a blockchain-based platform that allows companies to acquire sustainability certificates in the form of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.