Following the initiative for a ‘Digital Pakistan’ by the Government of Pakistan, the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) and oilfield services company Schlumberger announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on the deployment of AI and digital solutions enabled by the DELFI cognitive E&P environment, hosted on the NTC’s data centers in Pakistan.
By working together, the two organizations will enable Pakistani energy companies to benefit from new digital and data-driven technologies that significantly increase operational efficiency and improve business performance.
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Zaurayze Tarique, the Managing Director of Schlumberger Pakistan and Yemen stated, “Our strategic collaboration with NTC accelerates digital transformation for the Pakistani energy industry. By hosting the DELFI environment on NTC’s in-country cloud services Schlumberger provides customers with secure access to our leading AI and digital solutions on a rapidly expanding cloud service across Pakistan”.
“With advanced cloud technologies and almost limitless capacity, geoscientists, engineers, and data scientists can accelerate their workflows and insights to enhance critical business decisions,” Tarique added.
He said that the “Deployment of DELFI solutions will help the Pakistani energy sector elevate performance across the industry’s value chain,” and remarked that “in resource and knowledge-intensive industries, such as the oil and gas industry, companies can now deliver breakthrough performance thanks to the development and large-scale use of innovative digital technologies and new cloud-based business models”.
“By collaborating with Schlumberger, the NTC is extending its commitment to investing in the development of the industry by working with the largest industrial and technological leaders from international and Pakistani oil and gas markets,” commented Viqar Rashid Khan, the Managing Director of the NTC.
Schlumberger will work with the NTC on a programmatic roll-out of technologies to expand cloud-based solutions in Pakistan. This will include the adoption of the DrillPlan coherent well-construction planning solution which maximizes the results from drilling teams by automating repetitive tasks and the validation of workflows in a single, common system.
Energy companies will also gain access to the DELFI Petrotechnical Suite — Schlumberger’s collection of digital solutions for petrotechnical workflows — and will enhance their capabilities with AI and high-performance computing power enabled by the cloud.
These new digital technologies are advantageous for the discovery and production of energy because they enable large complex models, computer simulations, and analyses to be run in a fraction of the time in comparison to traditional computing solutions.
The MOU also formalizes the commitment from both organizations to deploy the OSDU™ Data Platform — the industry standard for digital data for the energy industry — and lays the foundation for collaborative innovation for future energy workflows and solutions.
The NTC has its extensive and growing network of data centers across Pakistan, supported by proprietary technologies and services for storing, processing, and analyzing data with advanced digital capabilities including AI.
The NTC also complies with international and Pakistani standards for data protection and security.
The Federal Secretary IT Siddiqui said that “It is indeed a historic occasion for NTC to have achieved this milestone and I would like to congratulate NTC management and Schlumberger on the signing of this MOU”.
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“Given the augmented IT demand and growth in line with ‘DIgital Pakistan’ vision of the Government, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT), being the national focal Ministry and the enabling arm of the government, has formulated the ‘Digital Pakistan Policy’ based on the vision of a ‘Digital Pakistan’, and we can proudly say that the NTC is playing a very important role under the MoITT supporting ‘Digital Pakistan’ — a vision of the PM,” he said.
Speaking on the occasion, Brig. (R) Viqar Rashid, the MD NTC remarked that the NTC is a G-Cloud (Government Cloud) Services provider. The NTC has partnered with Schlumberger as part of the endeavor to fulfill Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision of a Digital Pakistan to establish Pakistan’s first E&P In-Country Cloud Center.
This is a major step forward in the journey to establishing the open and flexible digital environment that the oil industry needs, and this digital partnership will produce an industry-first solution to help overcome Pakistan’s E&P challenges.
The ceremony was attended by the Federal Secretary of IT & Telecommunication, Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui, the Managing Director of the NTC, Brig. (R) Viqar Rashid Khan, the Managing Director of Schlumberger Pakistan, Zaurayze Tarique, the Director Digital of Subsurface Solutions, Trygve Randen, the President Schlumberger of the MENA region Tarek Rizk, the VP of Digital Subsurface Solutions – MENA region, Lyndsey Lomas, the Regional Managing Director (Pakistan, Oman, and Yemen), Ali Al Lawati, the Regional Manager of Integrated Projects, Ali Raif, the Country Manager Schlumberger (Pakistan, Oman, and Yemen), Khalid Mahmood, and other high-level officials.
