Digitalisation and AI a US$500bn opportunity: Rystad Energy

Digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) will create around US$500bn in cumulative value for E&P companies between 2026 and 2030, according to new analysis from Rystad Energy, creating a huge market for digital solutions

Cost reductions from more efficient operations, production increases from higher uptime and increased recovery, and compressed development timelines contribute to this value creation. Exploration and production (E&P) companies currently investing in digital and AI are expected to capture an additional value of US$80bn per annum in 2030 compared to 2025.

The returns are already visible in the industry, Rystad notes. ADNOC reported US$500mn in AI-driven value already in 2023, and has committed US$1.5bn in digital capital expenditure targeting US$1bn in annual value creation. Norway’s Equinor generated around US$200mn in AI-related savings between 2021 and 2024, and reported US$130mn in 2025 alone.

The US$500bn value creation opportunity in upstream oil and gas encompasses four main workflow categories: asset development, operations and maintenance, exploration and reservoir development, and  drilling, wells and production. Each is at a different stage of digital maturity. Digitalisation within exploration and reservoir development is relatively well established. Operations and maintenance is now seeing more rapid adoption, with predictive maintenance and remote operations delivering cost reductions. Subsurface workflows hold the largest untapped value potential, especially from getting more volumes out of the ground and reducing drilling costs. Some operators have, for instance, compressed seismic interpretation timelines from months to around 10 days.The early adopters of these technologies typically have digitalisation and AI as an integral part of their strategy.

Capturing the value at stake requires investment in digital tools, infrastructure and integration, and E&Ps are estimated to have spent around US$25bn on digital and AI purchases in 2025. The market for providing these tools and services is expected to grow by more than US$10bn by 2030, surpassing US$35bn in total annual market size and approaching US$50bn by 2035.

However, the main barrier to capturing this value is deployment at scale, says Rystad. Partnerships with suppliers and technology experts are increasing to reduce complexity, and simplify integration, typically through platform solutions. Traditional oilfield service (OFS) providers with domain expertise, and technology experts such as integrators or hyperscalers are among the most important partners for E&Ps, with the commercial model shifting from transactional service delivery towards integrated technology partnerships that can leverage an ecosystem of players, platforms and scalable tools.

AI is accelerating the value potential of digital solutions in oil and gas. Despite many breakthroughs, most current AI applications in upstream rely on traditional machine learning models trained on equipment and workflow-specific data, which takes years to accumulate, and models may require significant rework. Newer AI approaches may change this, for instance through agentic AI automating tasks and augmenting humans in a way that breaks down organisational silos and acting as a contextualising layer that functions across varied data types without full retraining.

Rystad puts forward a scenario where AI accelerates the value creation even further, with breakthroughs simplifying integration and compressing adoption timelines. This accelerated AI scenario would also require additional spending on digital solutions, and the value creation gap between early adopters and followers could widen even more.