Benson, who spoke at the APPEA (Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Limited) conference recently in South Australia, says that he has seen a number of oil and gas companies challenged with extracting the value from their IT assets and one of the main factors gap in understanding just what IT can do for the company.

"The IT trends in the oil and gas industry range from balancing competing forces - cost containment versus governance; project risk management, exploration challenges, IT outsourcing or shared services to Governance and IT."

"The balancing act for risk management for oil and gas companies requires concise judgement and more focus for it to be efficient and effective," he said.

"Also creeping business costs occur too often in oil and gas companies and it is important to note that IT can be used to lock away efficiency drive (BPR) once they have occurred to reduce future creep."

"It is also apparent that SAP and other big ERP systems continue to be challenged with the complexities of joint venture (JV) arrangements and there is no easy answer to this, except to keep focusing."

"Challenges in managing the cost containment culture of finance operations against the entrepreneurs in Exploration has always been a challenge," noted Benson

"Often finance and information risk management personnel clash heads with the entrepreneurial culture of exploration. A way to deal with this is for a company to at least ensure each driller team uses the same spreadsheet and they are robustly programmed and consistently used to minimise reconciliation problems later. This is visible at the bigger end of companies."

"The potential knock on effect is the accuracy of information that flows into cash calls or JV statements and a company needs to get processes and systems as streamlined as possible and work with its drillers to minimise data cleanups at the end of the drilling program, before the JV auditors come in," he added.

"IT departments need to be business focused and not run as autonomous units. With technology coming so far in what it offers to help the business in productivity gains, IT needs more air time at board level."

Benson continued, "Increased importance of IT to business strategy also increases the importance of IT assurance to board and executives and hence the need for appropriate IT leadership at that level along with executives needing to keep up with the rate of change and the increasing importance of IT."

"As the information age is growing fast, smart organisations are continuing to invest in e-business and security as they realise they can not afford not to in order to survive, which increasingly has IT and e-business on the strategy table," informed Benson.

"Governance and IT should be the key focus for oil and gas companies where board reporting integrity is becoming a common request. Board members want assurance that they are getting accurate and timely information which will assist them to focus in the right areas and using their time more effectively for good, timely decision making."

"IT can be a great catalyst and enabler of productivity gains for the oil and gas industry with a focus on the balance between IT Governance and cost containment which is worthwhile and essential," concluded Benson.