Driving value: how AI is quietly reshaping bp’s operations

At bp, AI is increasingly playing a role in our day-to-day operations, from subsurface imaging to smarter retail logistics. Here's Emeka Emembolu, our executive vice president for technology, on the impact AI will have, and is already having, when it comes to driving value at bp

Emeka, why is AI so valuable to bp at this moment in time?   

Our strategy is to grow our core oil and gas business, focus our customer and products business and invest in the transition with discipline. We are growing our top line and improving our cost base to deliver returns for our investors. AI is a key enabler of that.

It helps us to stay safe, supports more informed decision making on our operations, and helps us to grow -- whether that’s in terms of more productive fields, more responsive trading teams, or higher margins in retail. Right across bp, it’s helping us to find practical solutions for business and engineering puzzles.  

Where are you seeing AI help frontline teams to work smarter?

One example in our core oil and gas business is how we’ve radically reduced how long it takes to design a well trajectory, that is the optimal path from the surface to the reservoir. Previously, it took weeks or even months to do this.

Now, in less than a day, we can cycle through hundreds of trajectories to pick the best one.

One of the other areas we’re most excited about is seismic imaging. bp has always been at the forefront of seismic advances – from acquisition to processing. We now have access to so much data volume that our geophysicists can’t possibly look at it all. AI will help here, allowing us to push the boundaries in hydrocarbon field development.  

What’s your biggest priority for AI right now?     

A couple of things. Firstly – placing AI in the hands of every employee. Many of our teams are already using Gen AI on a daily basis – whether as part of Palantir’s Foundry or Microsoft copilot.

And secondly, putting in place a robust data foundation across the company – so taking the essential, statistical data on our operations all over the world and making that accessible wherever it’s needed in bp. To get there, we’re building a unified data platform with two brilliant partners, Databricks and Palantir. What we’re aiming for is a system where all operational decisions are informed by data – trusted and real-time – and enhanced by AI.

Let me give you an example of what it might look like in practice. With the right data foundation, you can internally search a query like ‘how many fuel pumps are operational right now across bp’s 13,000+ gas stations or how are the gas compressors in our facilities operating?’. AI can look for and interpret patterns, predict when a pump is about to go offline and initiate the actions to keep the equipment running. That's a truly predictive bp. Our intent is to maximize the efficiency of every asset across our value chain.  

Lastly, what gives you confidence that we can harness AI to its full potential?   

Technology has always been a big part of who we are.

We moved early to digitize our upstream. We’re cloud first – over 95% of our data is on the cloud; we’re quadrupling the capacity of our high performance computing centre; and we have very strong strategic partners.

Now we’re moving beyond the world of pilots and small-scale experiments and starting to deploy AI at scale in our core infrastructure, which is where the value really kicks in.

Throughout bp, we’re building strong data foundations, leveraging our technical and commercial expertise, and applying our AI capabilities to drive operational value. Most importantly, we have a great team with masses of enthusiasm to embrace digital. This gives me great confidence for our future.