The world needs more energy. The growth of artificial intelligence (AI), data centers and the electrification economy are driving up demand for power generation across all sources. To address this growing need, the oil and gas industry is doubling down on investments in existing assets to increase reserves and production.

By 2030, 80% of global oil and gas production is expected to come from mature fields. This will have a tremendous impact on operational expenditures and the need for seamless data integration, both of which will present significant technical challenges and will require innovative solutions.

So how will energy companies address these challenges? We sat down with Abdellah Merad, executive vice president of SLB’s Core Services and Equipment to talk about what’s ahead.

What’s the biggest challenge in the production and recovery space today?

The biggest challenge the industry faces today is declining yields from mature fields. As fields age, they become more technically challenging to produce, requiring various technologies and services to sustain or increase production. What we’re seeing today is operators strategically producing from their existing assets for longer to drive down breakeven costs per barrel. Think of it like a person who drives a vehicle for 10-plus years. There’s an economic benefit to keeping the vehicle longer, but regular maintenance is required to keep the car running at peak performance. In this sense, oil and gas wells are similar, but instead of oil changes and new tires, they require artificial lift, water flooding, gas lift, chemical injection, and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). As a leading provider of these technologies and services, we see this as a huge opportunity to help our customers shift the needle on yields from their mature assets in the other direction.

Why is it so difficult?

Once an asset starts producing, our customers are focused on maximizing value. But the customers have to strike a balance between maintaining production, keeping costs manageable and reducing emissions. And continued investment in a field can quickly become uneconomical as the wells age, water cuts increase and other challenges invariably pop up. Every dollar spent on the existing asset needs to see a measurable and timely return. But it’s not always obvious how to allocate that investment to the best effect because every field is different and the way the reservoir behaves over time changes. At SLB, we have the expertise and the global deployment capabilities to provide our customers with the right solutions at the right scale and at the right time for their operations, so that they can get the most value out of their assets.

SLB recently acquired production chemical leader ChampionX. What was the goal?

SLB has decades of experience in providing a broad array of technologies and services for every phase of the production lifecycle, including artificial lift, re-stimulation and well intervention.

ChampionX adds a leading production chemicals business that improves equipment integrity and flow efficiency; proven artificial lift and emissions monitoring technologies that are complementary to SLB’s; and a broad digital offering with a large installed base of connected production equipment.

Long before we agreed to acquire ChampionX, we knew we needed to find opportunities to insulate our business from the more volatile and cyclical nature of our industry. Exploration and drilling are more exposed to market fluctuations than the production phase of the well lifecycle. ChampionX strengthens our presence in this less cyclical, high-growth space and enhances our ability to meet growing energy demand through innovation, scale and digitalization.

Let’s dive into digital. How is it helping drive better recovery?

Historically, average recovery rates from conventional oil reservoirs have hovered around 35–40%, meaning a significant portion of hydrocarbons remains untapped. With connected production equipment and advanced technologies — like AI, real-time data analytics and automation — we can push those recovery rates higher, unlocking more value from existing assets.

With ChampionX, we’ve acquired a large installed base of connected production equipment. That’s important, because connected assets play a key role in enabling AI-driven predictive maintenance, automated chemical injection and autonomous lift optimization. These capabilities not only improve uptime and reduce emissions — they also help operators recover more oil and gas from their reservoirs.

How is AI already starting to have an impact?

We will have to drive greater adoption of digital and AI to maximize production performance. The oil and gas industry is one of the most data-intensive industries in the world, generating terabytes of data per day from a single well. However, data fragmentation poses a major challenge that hinders the industry’s ability to unlock insights from data and put AI capabilities to work.

SLB is working with a customer in the Middle East to solve this challenge — integrating data from connected production equipment with our OptiFlow™ production assurance and Agora™ edge AI and IoT solutions. These solutions combine real-time intelligence at the edge with full-field visibility across wells and gathering networks — providing users with in-context, data-driven insights derived from wells, pipelines, facilities, operations, maintenance and other elements of the fragmented production landscape. This is a real game-changer for the industry that is making production operations more automated, more efficient and higher performing.

What does success look like for your customers in production and recovery?

Success for our customers will come in many forms — as no two customers or regions have the exact same challenges, priorities or timelines. I believe we have to meet our customers where they are on their production journey, no matter where that is. Whether they need a sucker rod pump for artificial lift or a fully integrated production and recovery solution, I’m confident in our ability to help customers get the most value and return on investment possible. As we look to the future, the adoption of AI-driven automated and autonomous production capabilities will be the force multiplier for our industry to improve its production and recovery rates — and SLB will lead the way in helping our customers achieve this.