International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ:AMZN) said they will work together to extend the reach of data tools that oil companies use to manage their operations.
Amazon in 2018 worked with Shell (NYSE:RDDS.A) to create a technology to turn data from more than a century of oil production, largely from paper records, into a standardized format for multinational oil companies to improve efficiency across their operations.
The technology is being shared industry-wide on an open-source basis, and only works in cloud computing data centers. Some oil producing countries such as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Russia have no Amazon data centers but require companies to store their data within the country's borders.
IBM and Amazon said they have worked together to resolve that problem. Using IBM technology called OpenShift, oil companies can use the oil-industry cloud data tools in their privately owned data centers within their countries.
Amazon said expanding the reach of the data tools would also help oil companies add non-petroleum assets such as wind and solar to their portfolios. Renewable energy requires producers to know their output at various locations at different times.
