An alliance of 10 oil and gas heavyweights worldwide, including big names such as Shell or Chevron, have reportedly managed to employ a blockchain solution to achieve digitalization for the balloting process in the sector. 

Specifically, the alliance – dubbed The Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium (OOC) – has run a new blockchain-powered tool through the pilot test, to help with the balloting process for Authorization for Expenditure (AFE), as part of a collaboration with the tech firm Blockchain GuildOne from Canada. 

The AFE balloting proof-of-concept (PoC) is an unprecedented initiative, and carries a primary goal to enable ballot sending, as well as practice blockchain-enabled electing activities. 

AFEs have been employed in the oil and gas sector as an attempt to authorize capital and expense projects, along with calculating working interests by all personnel working on a joint contract. The new blockchain-based feature will help the process steer clear from the current manual measure, consequently enhance the process speed compared to the paper-based process.

Moreover, the PoC also sets out to make the authorization process better and provide immutable records of the final working interests, while minimize the problems can potentially occur with smart contract-based automated working interests calculations.

Rebecca Hofmann, chairman of the OOC consortium, shared that the new oil and gas-focused blockchain tool has showcased what distributed ledger tech can do, along with its power to “transform fundamental oil and gas business activities”.