The UAE has accounted for the highest increase in upstream oil and gas investments in the Middle East, raising expenditure by 30 per cent from Dh154 billion ($41.9 billion) to Dh202 billion ($55 billion) in 2009, said a recent report.

Amidst the Emirates’ emergence as the only country proceeding with new upstream investments, local oil and gas companies are leveraging the analytical solutions by SAS, the leading provider of business intelligence and analytic software and services, to boost their decision-making processes, exploration and project profitability.

“As the country with the fifth largest oil reserves in the Middle East, the UAE has become a key market for our analytical solutions,' said Peter C. Venn, regional director – Oil & Gas, SAS - Middle East & Africa.

'Furthermore, the downward slope of the global economy has convinced the UAE Government of the importance of pushing its oil and gas initiatives in terms of exploration and development, and also in addressing issues concerning declining reserves, deteriorating assets and long-term supply,' he noted.

“We are committed to supporting the growth of UAE’s oil and gas industry by aiding them transform masses of data into strategic business intelligence, which will serve as fuel for competitive advantage, proactive decision making and enhanced reserves exploitation,” he added.

In today’s economic climate, oil and gas companies are seeking to improve reservoir characterisation and flow modeling based on geostatistical analysis to estimate reserves with as much accuracy and reliability as possible, Venn pointed out.

By using ‘SAS Analytics’, companies can make reserves-exploitation decisions more quickly and accurately, while ensuring consistency across silos and enabling geoscientists perform interpretive assignments without being burdened by data preparation, he added.

National oil companies in the Middle East are facing challenges such as ageing infrastructure and equipment, lack of efficiency in refinery processes and shortage in skilled manpower.

'By adopting ‘SAS Analytics’, companies are equipped to achieve sustainable production improvements and control costs. Furthermore, upstream organisations can also improve their overall operational efficiency, safety and integrity, lower maintenance costs, and lessen the impact of unplanned shutdowns,' Venn stated.

“The oil and gas industry generates large volumes of valuable data – from the sub-surface operations, reservoirs, oil fields, other assets, suppliers, contractors – which can be analysed to produce credible intelligence to boost efficiency and profits,' he explained.

'We have been working with some of the biggest oil and gas organisations in the region and across the globe to ensure that oil fields are monitored and managed very carefully to produce maximum yields, and we look forward to becoming a trusted partner for more organisations in the future,' Venn added.

With over 20 years of experience working with oil and gas customers, SAS' client list includes regional companies as well as global organisations such as ConocoPhillips (Norway) and Petrobras (Brazil).

SAS offers a comprehensive range of solutions specifically tailored to the oil and gas industry, which are divided into four main categories: Operational and Asset Intelligence, Investment and Financial Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, and Subsurface Intelligence.

The company last year launched a Global Oil and Gas Business Unit, which is dedicated to the advanced technology needs of the worldwide energy industry.-TradeArabia News Service