Trading braces for digital transformation
The age of big data is transforming not just the upstream but energy’s spot markets
The oil and gas industry is rapidly investing in and accelerating a digital transition throughout its value chain. This means not just technological innovation in the E&P, midstream and downstream sectors, but across trading floors as well. The impact on the upstream is fairly easy to picture—leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to improve decision-making in reservoir production or high-performance computing (HPC) to improve and increased drilling hit rates. Data’s ability to transform the markets space may be less physically tangible, but that does mean its impact will be lesser. Trading business now aim to fuse billions of data points from—necessarily backwards-looking—customs dat
Also in this section
29 April 2026
Trafigura’s $1b prepayment agreement confirms African resource holders’ renewed interest in oil-backed financing deals as they look to capitalise on high oil prices
29 April 2026
The UAE’s departure from the oil producers’ group was a surprise to many, but the move can be traced back to a single point five years ago
28 April 2026
Oil traders warning of $200/bl oil are wrong, and the market should be wary of proclamations that the impact of the oil shortage has only begun to be felt and a that a ‘harsh adjustment’ is coming—even for industrialised nations
28 April 2026
Restoring supply from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iraq involves complexities far beyond simply adjusting operational controls






