文档介绍：Information Technology in the Oil and Gas Industry in Latin America
By Jorge Grinpelc and Richard Siegfried, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SOACAT
(A Spanish-language version of this article appeared in the July/August issue of Oil &
Gas Journal Latino America.)
It was in the early seventies that our Firm started an important management consulting
project for YPFB, the national oil and pany in Bolivia. The main objectives of
the project were to restructure pany’s business processes and to implement a new
management information system, especially for logistic and financial functions.
I remember our first meeting with the CEO, Don Rolando Prada Mendez, an experienced
oil and gas warrior. Don Rolando kindly listened to our speech about the project and we
asked him about his expectations. He turned to us and said: “We are very pleased to have
you here to help us with pany restructuring, because an oil and pany well
structured is the best business in the world…and an oil and pany poorly
structured is the second best business in the world.”
That statement clearly pictures how prosperous the industry was at that time and how
little effort was dedicated to business information management. Most technology efforts
were focused, from an engineering perspective, on the core exploration, drilling and
production processes.
Over the years, competition increased and profit margins were substantially reduced. It
became clear that to be petitive player in the market, even in Latin America, a high-
quality information system was imperative. In this report, we intend to provide an
overview of the evolution and current status of oil and gas industry information
technology in Latin America, across its value chain, for the upstream and downstream
domains.
Section I outlines, from a historical perspective, oil and gas industry information
technology in the different areas of the world, as well as in Latin America.
Section II provides an overview of the information needs