NEWS

GE and Statoil are launching a global Open Innovation Challenge. Knowing that great ideas can be conceptualized outside of their own companies, the Challenge will invite innovators from around the world and beyond the oil and gas industry to develop potential solutions to make energy production more sustainable.

The first phase of the Open Innovation Challenge specifically aims to address the use of sand in unconventional operations. Focusing on sand—which requires thousands of truck trips to transport this proppant onto the site when drilling new wells—has the potential to reduce the environmental impacts on local communities, lessen emissions and make energy production more efficient. GE Oil & Gas and Statoil will help fund the commercial development of winning approaches.

“While the actions directly involved with producing energy have an impact on more sustainable energy production, so too do indirect operations that surround production,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, president and CEO of GE Oil & Gas.

“At GE we know that some of the best ideas we have brought to life were initially conceptualised outside of our company. That’s why we’re launching the Open Innovation Challenge as part of this collaboration to solicit ideas for a most unique challenge in onshore operations. With the collaboration between GE and Statoil, we can bring scale and resources to ideas that target more sustainable energy solutions, and can help develop and implement these technologies in a way that benefits us all.”