GBase Empowers Digital Transformation in Oil & Petrochemical — Sinopec News Interviews GBase

As a high-tech intensive industry, the oil and petrochemical sector increasingly relies on informatization and digitalization as key drivers of technological, managerial, and institutional innovation in production, operations, and management. The extent and effectiveness of their implementation greatly influence the industry's competitiveness. At the recent 2020 China Petroleum and Petrochemical Enterprise IT Conference, GBase was interviewed by Sinopec News, sharing how GBase empowers oil and petrochemical enterprises on their digitalization journey.

Sinopec News Reporter: Good day, Mr. Zhao. Could you briefly introduce GBase?

Zhao Wei, Senior Vice President of GBase: Founded in 2004, GBase is a fundamental software vendor dedicated to providing independent and controllable data management and information security products for China's informatization. We are a state‑level high‑tech enterprise and a key software company within the national planning framework. For 16 years, we have focused on developing proprietary database products to break foreign monopolies, significantly strengthen the independent and controllable capabilities of China's IT foundations, reduce customer IT costs, and accelerate China's informatization development.

Reporter: Could you talk about GBase's collaboration with the oil and petrochemical industry?

Zhao Wei: In recent years, as the entire oil and petrochemical sector undergoes digital transformation — as mentioned by Mr. Wang at the conference — the first step is to get data flowing, enabling data sharing, deeper value mining, and better support for upper‑layer business. The key lies in the underlying data platform. Such a platform must address several priorities: first, security — international products may carry unforeseeable risks; second, technical fit — China's informatization has unique characteristics, such as Chinese character processing, where foreign products often fall short; third, real‑world applicability — China's IT environment deals with massive data volumes. A single application in Sinopec or PetroChina may handle more data than several European companies combined. Using foreign products for such scales is extremely expensive. Moreover, foreign products in Europe and elsewhere have never supported data volumes this large, so their effectiveness remains unverified.

GBase recognized these needs among oil and petrochemical customers:

① In information security: GBase offers fully independent and controllable data management products with the highest national security certifications, providing strong security assurance for oil and petrochemical enterprises. PetroChina's security inspection platform uses GBase's secure database products with excellent results.

② In enterprise IT management: Traditionally, manufacturing industries, including oil and petrochemicals, ran many vertical IT silos, often using different products for data management, making data flow difficult. After digital transformation, the first step is to share underlying data. This requires a product with sufficient capacity and computing power to build a foundational data sharing platform — a data lake — where all data is consolidated to support governance, sharing, and flow. While past systems mainly dealt with structured data, the rise of 5G and IoT now generates vast amounts of unstructured data — audio, video, images, volumetric data — that must be integrated, an area where GBase excels. Before entering the oil and petrochemical sector, GBase provided large‑data support for China's financial and telecom industries. We power head‑office‑level big data platforms for the People's Bank of China, CBIRC, CSRC, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and others. We also support the three major telecom operators from group to provincial levels. GBase has deep experience processing massive data — the Agricultural Bank of China manages over 20 PB of data and still achieves fast query performance. Alongside structured data, we excel at combining and centrally analyzing images, videos, documents, and IoT‑collected unstructured data. The experience accumulated in these industries precisely matches the digital transformation needs of today's oil and petrochemical sector. It has already been successfully applied in smart oilfield projects, with pilot operations underway at several oilfields, and in the future will deliver even broader data‑layer support for oil and petrochemical customers.

③ In industrial control IT: Oil and petrochemical companies are also manufacturing enterprises where IT in industrial control is critical. GBase applies its expertise to the specific needs of oil and petrochemical industrial control, processing data safely and efficiently to better support IT in this domain. The SCADA project of the China Oil & Gas Pipeline Network Corporation uses GBase's secure database for data management support.

Reporter: Is GBase currently collaborating with Sinopec?

Wang Xuling, General Manager of GBase Energy Business Unit: In smart oilfield projects, GBase is building data lakes using our secure database product 8s and our analytical database product 8a to integrate complex and large‑scale data, providing the data foundation for smart oilfields. Currently, pilots at two oilfield subsidiaries have entered trial operation at headquarters. We are also in discussions with construction units within Sinopec, such as smart refineries, to combine our strengths and data management experience with Sinopec's real‑world conditions. Together, we will push digital transformation forward.

Reporter: What are your thoughts on smart and digital transformation in the energy industry, and what trends do you see ahead?

Mr. Zhao: We are discussing future trends with experts and academicians. I believe two directions stand out:

First, the establishment of data standards. A critical prerequisite for data sharing is standardization. Without it, different systems are like people speaking different languages — sharing is impossible. I am glad to see that oil and petrochemical IT leaders are already launching initiatives in this area. In the past, China's informatization largely followed a follower strategy. For example, certain foreign ERP vendors rolled out complete solutions in the energy sector that implicitly imposed data‑layer standards — adopting their systems meant conforming to their data storage, types, formats, and flow. It is vital for us to have our own standards that suit China's national conditions. If the external tech and economic environment deteriorates drastically, lacking our own standards would put us in a very passive position.

Second, clarity and protection of intellectual property. Within the smart and digital transformation of the energy sector, IP is a very important part of the standards system. We have adopted many technologies, such as massive open‑source software, but when we reach depth and scale, someone may step forward claiming patent infringement. How would we handle an IP dispute? Patents — especially invention patents in China — take at least three years to grant and cannot be achieved overnight. We must steadily do the groundwork. Once we have our own systems and standards, the next step is for enterprises, research institutions, and end users to identify core technologies. We need to master both the core technologies and the patents and IP they involve. Therefore, we should start early and build reserves. I suggest establishing an industry‑wide IP patent alliance. Such an alliance is not only for mutual learning within the industry but also to defend against external threats, ensuring the entire industry stands on solid ground in any adverse scenario.

So I think by fully sharing data, building our own standards, and clarifying and protecting IP, we can form a broad and solid Great Wall in the IT domain, safeguarding the healthy development of our entire industry.