SLB and Shell Push Deeper Into AI for Upstream Workflows

SLB and Shell are extending their partnership to co-develop AI-driven platforms that unify upstream data, workflows, and decision-making

12 Dec 2025

Oilfield digitalisation is getting another push. SLB and Shell have signed a new strategic collaboration to develop artificial-intelligence tools that promise measurable gains in efficiency and performance across upstream operations. The effort centres on SLB’s Lumi platform, through which the firms hope to build an open data foundation uniting subsurface, well construction and production workflows.

The goal is not to add yet more stand-alone applications but to link data and decisions that are often trapped in separate technical domains. A shared digital backbone, they argue, can speed up routine judgments, make operations more consistent and enable greater use of automation. The partners see the project as a step toward agentic AI, systems capable of taking decisions and executing tasks with limited human oversight.

For SLB, the collaboration fits neatly into its strategy to move beyond software licensing toward cloud-based digital services. For Shell, it complements its long-term plan to modernise upstream operations and refine its digital technology roadmap. The companies say the resulting solutions could be commercialised for use beyond Shell’s assets, suggesting ambitions that stretch across the industry.

The agreement follows an earlier partnership in 2025 to deploy SLB’s Petrel subsurface software across Shell’s portfolio, a move that standardised much of its geoscience infrastructure. The new pact takes that logic further, connecting the subsurface to production through a unified data and AI architecture.

Whether such integration delivers on its promise will depend less on algorithms than on governance and adoption. Yet the SLB and Shell alliance shows how large operators and technology firms are trying to turn years of digital rhetoric into tangible operational change. If it succeeds, upstream decision-making may finally become as connected as the reservoirs it seeks to exploit.