Christian Arndt, Senior Vice President – Oil and Gas Logistics, gives an interesting insight into Oil and Gas Logistics at deugro and how the company is reacting to developments in the global supply chain.
To start with, can you give us a short explanation of what Oil and Gas Logistics is at deugro?
After a thorough mapping of the industry market, we have identified four major oil and gas categories to create synergies related to best service practices for this demanding clientele:
• Oil & Gas Producing Companies
• Oilfield Service Companies
• Drilling Contractors
• Marine Operators
deugro’s flexibility and lean management structures enable a unique response mechanism and time for challenging exploration drilling and remote upstream production logistics operations.
Sophisticated procurement, expediting, hub/consolidation, freight forwarding, customs clearance, and domestic/last-mile delivery operations form the backbone of deugro’s Oil and Gas Logistics. Relying on our extensive global network and proven operational excellence, we can go the extra mile, especially into locations with limited local infrastructure, by equally serving the major trade lanes, for MRO and manufacturing business alike, among others.
How does Oil and Gas Logistics fit into the classical deugro scope?
deugro is a leading global project logistics service provider with an extensive client portfolio in the EPC industry. As part of our service extension strategy, deugro’s management made the bold decision in 2018 to diversify its portfolio of oil and gas field life-cycle services by targeting early involvement at the seismic/exploration stage. With that, it’s possible to leverage the presence at a future project site to support the upcoming FEED and the project execution for EPC companies.
Ideally, once the project is completed successfully, the project forwarder—with all their logistics expertise gained—should manage the upstream production resupply business. Hence, our desire to serve IOCs and oil field service companies in the same professional manner.
Classic oil field life-cycle logistics fulfillment is now possible with deugro.
Do you think we need to rethink the global supply chain as we know it right now?
Many supply chain initiatives are happening as we speak, often driven by big industry names to achieve a far higher degree of automation for industry verticals with a more repetitive scope (e.g. automotive, FMCGs, pharmaceuticals). Except for the downstream/chemical distribution, the oil and gas industry is not as “automated” when it comes to a seamless supply cycle, from the manufacturing location to the production site. At deugro, we build our response strategy on two main pillars: a) major trade lane business and b) strategic solution design. Both play an equally important part, since the client portfolio for such requirements is the same. The differentiator here is that deugro is able to provide a supply chain consistency at an attractive commercial rate and delivers the most complex supply chain solutions from start to finish in every corner of the world.
The underlying foundation is a good mix of excellent operatorship with equal standard operating procedures, network infrastructure in strategic oil and gas hub locations, and a stateof-the-art IT system solution that accommodates visibility, predictability and extended suggestion management for improved budget control.
How vital is digitalization in logistics these days?
Digitalization has been a “hype word” in our industry for a few years already. Several precious new technologies have emerged as well, such as the blockchain solutions. But again,especially for the oil and gas industry, given its complexity in geographical onshore and offshore locations, such digitalization has to go hand in hand with key operational personnel.
They must understand the challenging industry requirements and bridge it to ensure cycle consistency and the respective digitalized system use or data output. Personally, my focal point is procurement within the supply chain business. Here is the key to cost savings and budget control, which will remain the two main drivers for our industry clients first and foremost.
deugro is known to provide tailor-made solutions for complex logistics requirements. In this sense, we have rolled out an IT system, deugro visiotrack, that offers extended advantages and value creation for every client group, whether EPCs, oil and gas producers, drilling contractors, and oil field service companies, in addition to mining resupply, power generation MRO or the low-carbon energy industry. We believe that real value creation comes from enhanced procurement practices based on artificial intelligence as part of the solution. Mario Hess, Vice President Global Operations Oil & Gas Logistics, has put a lot of effort and time into the development to ensure a tailor-made solution for our clients. He continues to lead the client-specific implementation process.
