Digitalization and artificial intelligence will create more than $80 billion in additional value in 2030 compared to 2025. The returns from digital investments are already visible in the industry: ADNOC reported $500 million in AI-driven value in 2023 and has committed $1.5 billion in digital capital expenditure targeting $1 billion in annual value creation. Equinor generated around $200 million in AI-related savings between 2021 and 2024, before reporting $130 million in 2025 alone. The trajectory is not linear, digital value creation will follow a compounding curve as adoption increases and organizational capabilities mature.

Rystad Energy Advisory's latest whitepaper draws on our global asset-level data, operator case studies and interviews with industry experts to assess this opportunity across upstream workflows. The analysis covers four main workflow categories across surface and subsurface, operations and planning, and segments the operator universe into early adopters, followers and laggards to show how adoption timing shapes returns.