Interview with Sinopec News | GBase Drives IT Transformation in the Petroleum and Petrochemical Industry

As a high-tech-intensive industry, IT and digitalization serve as important means for technological, management, and institutional innovation in the petroleum and petrochemical sector, playing an increasingly critical role in production operations and management. The extent and effectiveness of their implementation significantly influence the industry’s competitiveness. At the recently held “2020 China Petroleum and Petrochemical Enterprise Information Technology Conference”, GBase was interviewed by Sinopec News, discussing how GBase is empowering petroleum and petrochemical enterprises in their informatization and digitalization journey.

Sinopec News Reporter: Hello, Mr. Zhao. Could you please give a brief introduction of GBase?

Zhao Wei, Senior Vice President of GBase: Founded in 2004, GBase is a foundational software provider dedicated to delivering self-developed, independent, and secure data management and information security products for China's IT infrastructure. GBase is a national high-tech enterprise and a key software enterprise recognized under the National Plan. Over the past 16 years, we have focused on independently developing database products to break the foreign monopoly, significantly enhance the indigenous controllability of China’s IT foundation, reduce customers' informatization costs, and accelerate the development of China’s information technology.

Reporter: Could you tell us about GBase’s cooperation with the petroleum and petrochemical industry?

Zhao Wei: In recent years, as the entire petroleum and petrochemical industry undergoes digital transformation, as Mr. Wang mentioned at the conference, the first step is to get data flowing, achieve data sharing, unlock greater data value, and strengthen data support for upper-level business. The key lies in the underlying data support platform. Several points need special attention: first, security, since international products may carry unpredictable risks; second, technical capability, because IT development in China has its own characteristics—for example, Chinese character processing, which foreign products often support poorly; third, practicality, as the data volume in China's IT systems is enormous. A single application at PetroChina or Sinopec may have a larger data volume than several companies combined in the entire EU. Handling such massive data with foreign products is extremely costly; moreover, those products have not been verified at such scales in Europe or elsewhere.

GBase recognizes the needs of petroleum and petrochemical industry customers in these areas:

① In information security: GBase offers fully independent and controllable data management products with the highest national security certifications, providing robust protection for petroleum and petrochemical enterprises. PetroChina’s security inspection platform project has adopted GBase's secure database with excellent results.

② In enterprise management informatization: In the past, many manufacturing industries, including petroleum and petrochemical, relied on vertical IT systems that used different products for data management, making data flow difficult. After digital transformation, the first step is to share data at the bottom layer, which requires a product with sufficient capacity and high computing performance to build a shared data resource platform—a data lake. All data is integrated to support data governance, sharing, and flow. Previously, information systems mainly dealt with structured data; now, with 5G and IoT, more unstructured data such as audio, video, images, and volumetric data is generated. GBase excels at aggregating all that. Before entering the petroleum and petrochemical industry, GBase already provided big data support for China’s finance and telecom sectors. The People’s Bank of China, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, and other banks rely on GBase for their head office-level big data platforms. We also provide big data platforms for China’s three major telecom operators from group level to provincial branches. GBase has extensive experience processing massive data; for example, the head office of Agricultural Bank of China manages over 20 PB of data and can perform very fast queries. Beyond structured data, we can seamlessly combine and centrally analyze, mine, and manage unstructured data such as images, videos, documents, and IoT data. The experience we’ve accumulated in these industries aligns perfectly with the digital transformation work now underway in the petroleum and petrochemical industry. It has already been well applied in intelligent oil and gas field projects, with pilot operations running in several oilfields. Going forward, GBase can provide even better data-layer support services to customers across the entire petroleum and petrochemical industry.

③ In industrial control informatization: As petroleum and petrochemical are also manufacturing enterprises, IT in industrial control is a critical part. In this domain, GBase combines its expertise with the specific requirements of the petrochemical industry to process data securely and efficiently, providing better IT support for industrial control. For the SCADA project of the China Oil & Gas Pipeline Network (PipeChina), GBase’s secure database has provided data management support.

Reporter: Does GBase currently have any cooperation with Sinopec?

Wang Xuling, General Manager of Energy Business Unit, GBase: In the intelligent oil and gas field project, GBase built the data lake using our secure database GBase 8s and analytical database GBase 8a. This integrates complex data types and massive data volumes, providing the data foundation for intelligent oil and gas field development. Currently, two oilfield affiliates are piloting the system, and their headquarters have started trial operations. We are also in discussions with Sinopec construction units, for example on intelligent refineries, to combine our strengths and data management experience with Sinopec’s practical needs. Together with Sinopec, we are striving to make the digital transformation effort even more successful.

Reporter: Could you share your thoughts on the intelligent and informatization transformation of the energy industry? What trends do you see in the future?

Mr. Zhao: As for future trends, we are continuously discussing with experts and academicians. In my view, two directions stand out:

First, the establishment of data standards. An essential prerequisite for data sharing is data standardization. If different people speak different languages, they cannot understand each other even when sharing. I am glad to see that IT leaders in the petroleum and petrochemical industry have already started working on this. In the past, China’s IT development largely followed a follow-the-leader strategy. For example, a foreign ERP vendor would enter the energy industry with a complete solution package that essentially embedded their own data-layer standards—using their system meant that data storage, data types, data formats, and data flows all had to follow their standards. It is vital that we establish our own standards suited to China’s national conditions. If the external technological and economic environment deteriorates drastically, not mastering our own standards would leave us extremely passive.

Second, the clarification and protection of intellectual property rights. In the intelligent and digital transformation of the energy industry, a critical part of the standards system is IP. We have adopted many technologies, such as open-source software, but what if, as development deepens and scales up, someone suddenly claims patent infringement? Patents are not achieved overnight—a Chinese invention patent takes at least three years to be granted. We must work diligently, step by step. Once we form our own system and standards, we need to identify the core technologies, from enterprises to research institutions to end users. We must not only master the core technologies but also own the related patents and IP. So, we should start early to build a reserve. Here, I would like to suggest that China establish an industry-wide IP patent alliance. Such an alliance serves not only for mutual learning within the industry but also as a defense against external challenges, so that the industry can remain invincible in the face of adversity.

Therefore, through full data sharing, the establishment of our own standards, and clear IP protection, I believe we can build a broad and solid Great Wall in the information field, ensuring the healthy development of the entire industry.