OMV Petrom aims to become a regional energy leader in innovation and digitalization by leveraging global developments with an agile and skilled combination of the three enablers: People, Hardware technology and Digitalization. We are using an open innovation approach and are actively working with strong local and global partners to constantly find and implement customized innovative solutions.
We embrace innovative ideas, initiatives and projects that relate to the development and deployment of new technologies and products to improve competitiveness while reducing impact on the environment or reducing carbon intensity in our operational sites and products.
We are deeply aware that the linear economy model of production and global consumption is testing its physical limits in the next years. Therefore, a sustainable shift toward a circular economy is becoming obvious. We believe that transitioning to a circular economy will significantly reduce the impact on the environment and CO2 emissions, while reducing the leakage of waste into the environment.
The circular economy will also reduce global warming. Through the efficient use of our precious resources, we can recover and reuse byproducts or waste to make new materials and products. This process has the potential to reduce associated emissions rights across product value chains significantly.
We are deeply aware that circular economy also has wider social implications, from mental behavior to a better life in a cleaner environment. It will provide economic benefits to the society by reducing the significant financial burden of ineffective waste management systems and pollution management and will create new business opportunities and employment at various stages of the value chain.
In the long term, OMV Petrom aims to support a change of energy paradigm and a conversion of the current consumption pattern towards a more sustainable and rational one, leveraging on the principles of the circular economy, pursuing a path to conversion by exploiting the Company’s expertise, the OMV Group experience and positioning priority of the Downstream business in a highly innovative scale.
We are ready to become an important player in Romania in the circular economy. We will invest in innovative energy solutions such as co-processing, and traditional recycling for a circular economy and lower-carbon future. Further details will be provided with the Strategy update planned in the second part of the year 2021.
In July 2020, OMV Petrom successfully conducted the first field trial for Co-Processing in Petrobrazi refinery using rapeseed oil and was certified as an HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) producer based on CERTROM audit, in accordance with the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) standard, an EU-recognized system for the certification of sustainable biomass. We continue developing projects for Sustainable Distillates production through hydro-treatment. By 2025, the Company aims to co-process up to 90,000 tons of sustainable feedstock per year, depending on future legislation.
SDG 12, Target 12.5: By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.
OMV Petrom develops projects to increase fuel quality and stability with biogenic components through new technologies, such as co-processing and/or sustainable distillates production through hydro treatment. These processes involve introducing biogenic feedstock during the fuel refining process instead of the conventional method of blending biogenic components into fuel after production.
At the same time, for further reduction of the Green House Gases emissions of the produced fuels, OMV Petrom executed a major investment program for increasing the capabilities of blending biogenic components. The bio-blending project was completed in 2020 and started at the beginning of December.
In Upstream, OMV Petrom works on extending the lifetime of operational facilities by mitigating abrasion and corrosion. To this end, cross-linked polyethylene pipes are inserted in tubing with a special polymer lining developed by OMV Group and patented in 16 countries, including OMV Petrom. In addition, it has performed pilot tests on polymer flow lines under various operating conditions. Therefore, we started a pilot EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) project in OMV Petrom, with the initial increase in the recovery rate and production in 2020 and aim to start the implementation in 2021.
In Upstream, our target for 2025 is in relation to increase our fields’ recovery factor and the implementation in various fields to start in 2021. The target for 2025 is in relation to increase our fields’ recovery factor and the implementation in various fields to start in 2021. As an achievement, the viscous water injection pilot project successfully passed with success in Independența site. A similar project for the Vata field advanced to the next phase by passing another project phase.
Research and development activities
We collaborate with different universities – Politehnica University from Bucharest, University of Oil and Gas from Ploiești, Academy of Economic Sciences from Bucharest, Montanuniversität Leoben – and benefit from the experience of our own research institute – Institute of Research and Technological Design from Câmpina (ICPT Câmpina). ICPT Campina has continued to deliver support and expertise to the entire OMV Petrom – Upstream but also had a very close collaboration with OMV Head Office and Technology Center & Laboratory Gaenserndorf. All services requests were treated with maximum care and professionalism in the special conditions created by the pandemic environment. The research activity continued this year with 66 ongoing projects, out of which 25 were directly run by our own specialists, in many others ICPT being the main contributor. Among the topics covered by the research activity, it is worth to mention:
► methods of increasing the recovery factor
► risk reduction in the exploration and production activities (reviewing the geological age of mechanical cores and / or sieve samples and correlating with rock samples from outcrops);
► corrosion mitigation;
► improve the water treatment in the injection processes;
► new slurry compositions for cementing jobs used in workover.
Being keen to deliver services at a high level of quality, ICPT Campina was involved in a number of international inter-laboratory comparison rounds successfully passed. The excellent results obtained throughout this entire process proved our specialists’ professionalism and confirmed that our laboratory methods and equipment are adequate to the scope.
We also benefit from the collaboration and experience of our colleagues from OMV Group. In 2020, OMV opened its Innovation and Technology Center (ITC) in Gänserndorf, Austria. The main focus is placed on the technology areas of geology and geophysics, drilling technology, artificial lift, smart oil recovery, material and corrosion, saltwater treatment and nanotechnology. Sustainability is the connecting factor for all technologies.
Developing of cutting–edge technological competencies and Digitalization
Digital transformation promoted at OMV Group level was also implemented in OMV Petrom. The Digital Journey program is much more than applying and scaling technology – it is about people and culture, about creating a digital mindset, building digital skills, and reshaping the talent landscape. All of this is done using design thinking and agile ways of working and in close collaboration with technology partners, universities and start-ups. The digital strategy is focused on three key divisional programs, namely DigitUP in Upstream, Digital motion in Downstream, and Finance 4.0 in corporate services.
Three signposts guide the OMV Petrom Digital Journey:
► DIGITALIZE! Creating business agility through smart investment choices that focus on the highest impact on business and HSSE priorities.
► ACT! Innovating at speed and scale by creating environments receptive to innovation and fostering an organization, skills, mindset and culture that are adaptive to digital. ACT! part specifically addresses our people and our ways of working.
► ENABLE! Common digital platforms form the backbone of our digital core that enables us to break down data silos and use data across the Group
Digital will become a major component of our daily activity. We started initiatives in the Corporate and Finance divisions, including the Procurement department, which have a key role in the Company’s digital transformation. With the implementation of the new SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning software from OMV Group, we enable automation and state-of-the-art digital tools, which are key enablers of transformation with the ultimate aim of value-oriented procurement. The SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite establishes a global electronic signature process enabling efficient and remote approval workflows independently of office location. This would result in 75% of purchase orders fully automated, digitalized process and 100% paperless sourcing process triggering reduced cycles times.
Paperless initiative
We seek to reduce waste in our office operations. For instance, since 2017, OMV Petrom has launched the Paperless Project, where it takes a close look at its day-to-day operations involving paper consumption and considers ways to reduce the related environmental impact. To this end, the company has deployed various initiatives under the umbrella “Go paperless,” including implementing electronic signatures starting in 2017.
The environmental benefits include reducing paper consumption, preventing paper waste, avoiding carbon emissions from courier services as well as minimizing the impact on natural resources required for maintaining controlled parameters (e.g., temperature and humidity) in the storage rooms. In addition, increased business efficiency and reduced costs are among the wins of this project. Its implementation was gradual, starting with several financial flows of internal documents, then with external ones such as commercial contracts or operational documents in Upstream. An important step took place in 2020, when around 6,300 employees were provided with qualified electronic signature solutions for most types of documents. This technology helped the Company to reduce its paper consumption by 25% in 2020 versus 2019.
Developing of cutting edge digitalization
In 2020, at the corporate level, our OMV Petrom Regulation Platform, REAL, went digital. This offered a full-fledged electronic approval workflow for all internal regulations, covering all group-wide requirements.
Today, digitalization is vital for business at OMV Petrom, for example, to ensure optimal evaluation and convergent use of digital and analog data in machine controls for increased efficiency and availability, safer operations, and more targeted maintenance activities. In 2020 we developed several special projects in OMV Petrom for the enhancement of employees’ digitalization skills:
► “Welcome to the Digital Democracy!” – This program is enabling everybody in OMV Petrom Group to acquire the tools and skills to solve their own digital challenges.
The Digital Democracy project brings awareness sessions, hackathons, self-help guides and expert access.
► One of the first project From Digital Democracy program, that contributed to the Downstream Digitalization initiative DigitalMotion and aimed to improve efficiency, profitability and customer focus through modern digital platform-based innovation and new technology was Power BI. This new tool is very important in Sales, offering the power to swiftly collate, organize, and analyze data. It improves the decision-making process related data when managing volume and margin and provides the Sales Team with a user-friendly tool that helps them day to day.
Using Power BI, our colleagues managed to switch from manually extracting mountains of data compiled into Excel pivot tables to a series of punchy reports that allow to feed insights and optimize the processes.
In the flipbook of the Digital democracy program, data management and data visualization tools in Power BI were introduced through training courses, for individual use of Power BI, as well as for the creation of own dashboards from our own data sources. First and foremost, it implies an involved Sales Team that is willing to learn and has a customer-oriented attitude to be able to interpret and tailor the approach. As a next step, the project will be rolled out within Sales EAST: Bulgaria, Serbia and Moldova. We have developed these digital self-help kits for our colleagues, based on their feedback collected in individual and group ideation and design thinking sessions. They offer a new and attractive way to consume and interact with the large amount of material that can be accessed from any fixed or mobile device, as long as we were connected to the OMV Petrom corporate network or, when working remotely via VPN, My Office (PC) or the Secure Web browser (smartphone/tablet)
► New Ways of Working (NWoW), webinars/trainings for our colleagues.
The Learning Hub and the Digital Democracy project teams have organized a deep learning experience where six of our colleagues shared their best practices on New Ways of Working (NWoW) during a webinar that took place on June 30.
Scrum, Design Thinking, Power BI, Kanban Board, are just some of the many tools that are labeled as “New Ways of Working”. The purpose of this webinar was to highlight the unspoken personal experiences, to share valuable tips and tricks of NWoW in practice. The webinar was interactive, with lively discussions that offered our colleagues the chance to find out exactly what they need to know or help others with our own insights.
The session was an opportunity to learn how to improve the effectiveness and quality of our work, how to face disruptions and address challenges in a flexible manner, in a nutshell: how to unlock more value by adopting new ways of working.
► In 2020, to promote the digitalization within the organization, we organized the online workshops “Microsoft Artificial Intelligence” for Upstream and Downstream divisions with a large participation of 124 colleagues from Upstream divisions and 28 colleagues from Downstream division.
At the end of the year, a digitalization program was set up in Downstream Oil, Aviation Subsidiary. Using a new web application, FuelPort Go-Live, operators and management of OMV Petrom Aviation can manage fueling operations, reporting or resources just by accessing a secure link.
Starting with the FuelPort Go-Live, OMV Petrom Aviation can rely on a professional management system, based on latest technology and ready to answer to the current and future needs such as: possibility to fully digitalize the aircraft fueling process: daily fueling planning, automatically receiving fueling orders, automatically receive fueling data; real time data exchange with airlines and airports systems in conformity with IATA (International Air Transport Association) standards; possibility for data exchange with major operations platforms used by airlines.
| Sustainability Strategy 2025 target | ► OMV Petrom aims to co-process up to 90,000 tons of biogenic feedstock per year in Petrobrazi refinery by 2025. ► Implement Advanced Recovery pilots in OMV Petrom Upstream to increase the recovery factor of our oil fields and asses upon full field implementation starting with 2020. |
| Status 2020 | ► Process studies finalized for Petrobrazi refinery. ► Upstream: pilot and extension successfully done in Independența. ► Field Roll Out Vata started execution. ► Several other fields are under evaluation at the moment. |
| Action plan to achieve the target | ► Execute Vata according to schedule and Budget. ► Pass another phase for Independența roll out. ► Prepare implementation of additional chemically enhanced recovery methods such as alkaline polymer flooding |
