OREANDA-NEWS. February 28, 2013. Information officers from nine of the world’s leading oil companies met recently to share best practices for information technology.

Called the Oil and Gas IT Benchmarking Group (OGBG), the current membership includes BP, Chevron, ENI, Petrobras, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Statoil and Total. ExxonMobil is expected to join later this year. The group’s objective is to benchmark both qualitative and quantitative information, so that each company can maximize the delivery of its IT services.

The information and insight gained from the benchmarks is used to improve internal IT processes and capabilities. There is no exchange of cost or sensitive data.

The meeting featured four agenda items with companies taking the lead on each topic. Chevron prepared a report on information risk management and IT security; Shell tackled process control automation; Statoil and BP joined to examine IT consumerization — basically allowing employees to use their own communications devices to access company data and work processes; and Repsol and ENI looked at future IT business models.

 “This is a new experience for me — sharing best practices supporting Saudi Aramco plans to secure our network and plants,” said Abdulaziz A. Abdulkarim, Saudi Aramco’s executive director of Information Technology.

“I found valuable insights which will help me improve the way I run IT,” said Dana Deasy, CIO of BP.

A variety of benchmarks are used to evaluate IT issues. The Full Spend Benchmark (FSB) is the most important benchmark for the group and provides a quantitative look at costs. The Maturity Assessment Benchmark provides a qualitative perspective. Other benchmarks currently ongoing, either in design or execution, are in the area of information risk management, applications and ERP/SAP.

All benchmarks are conducted with respect for competition laws and other agreements. Often a third party facilitates the benchmark. This party then reports company data against a backdrop of the averages and other statistical data of the companies that take part in the benchmark. This way no individual company data is revealed.