4 Oil and Gas Procurement Challenges (with Solutions)

The Oil and Gas industry is one of the most high-risk in the world. With Australia’s oil and gas workforce doubling over the last decade – and growth continuing – legislation is evolving to meet new advances. Those changes are reflected in the safety and compliance challenges facing the industry.

Read on to discover the most common oil and gas procurement challenges industry professionals face—and how you can overcome them.

1. Visibility and Flow of Supply Chain

Oil and gas supply chains aren’t always the most transparent. Many companies rely on oil and gas production from just a handful of countries. When disruptions occur, such as shortages and other economic impacts, it affects the oil and gas supply chain and procurement process at home.

How can you solve this?

The best way to overcome this challenge is to make the supply chain more transparent. How? Monitor the risks abroad, look for alternative suppliers in the event of shortages, and keep track of current prices each day.

The more you can break the supply chain process into manageable chunks, the easier it is to identify challenges, address them, and get the business back on track quickly.

2. Large Amounts of Data to Process and Interpret

When looking to improve procurement and supply chain management, you’ll quickly realise how much data you need to process and interpret every day—it’s a lot. It requires a dedicated person in your team to monitor and interpret this data.

Without doing this, companies may never have the chance to use the information they’ve discovered to create sustainable strategies to improve operations.

How can you solve this?

The best way to address this challenge is to partner with a data analytics expert. They can help you organise, process, and interpret the data that comes in each day. Using a dedicated platform for this process will help you avoid time-consuming and resource-draining information backlogs that interrupt your business’ flow and keep you from being able to expand at a reliable rate.

3. Difficulty Attracting Qualified Employees

One of the biggest contributors to oil and gas procurement issues is the employees and contractors that companies hire. Attracting high-quality talent can make all the difference in solving procurement challenges.

Having the right people – in-house or contractors – can help streamline the procurement process, keep an eye on the supply chain, and help implement changes which improve business. The wrong people can end up contributing to those issues, forcing companies to experience more delays and interruptions each day.

How can you solve this?

Investing in your hiring process and expanding your talent pool to other locations as needed can help you secure better talent. By focusing on quality hires, you’ll be more likely to attract talent that is willing to stay with your business for years to come, which reduces the amount of training you’ll need to pay for over time.

And don’t forget contractors! Working with vetted, qualified individuals along every step in your supply chain can make a big difference in the efficiency and productivity of your business.

4. Changing Demand for Oil and Gas

The oil and gas industry may be one of the more stable operating worldwide, but it’s not without its ups and downs. As more people transition to working remotely or working from home rather than making the standard commute to the office, demand for oil and gas will continue to go down.

This changing demand means the oil and gas procurement process needs to be more dynamic.

How can you solve this?

By keeping an eye on the demand and adjusting your supply chain as needed, you’ll be able to keep up with fluctuating demand levels without losing money. With supply chain analytics in place, you’ll be able to prepare for low-procurement periods and increases in demand without having to adjust things on short notice.

How Can the Oil and Gas Industry Be Improved?

The simplest way to improve the oil and gas procurement process is to embrace technology that’s designed to help streamline operations and reduce backlogs in data interpretation. In doing so, you’ll bring your business into the modern age and can eliminate many of the most common procurement challenges automatically.

Talk to Pegasus today about our Oil & Gas Solution.

A version of this blog first appeared on the Avetta blog here and has been republished with full permission.