HOUSTON—On a day full of innovation and technological advancement, data mining and artificial intelligence (AI) were front and center at the recently held 19th Annual Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum.

Energy entrepreneurs gathered at the Rice University Shell Auditorium on Sept. 15 to pitch inventive ideas on how to improve both business practices and ESG practices within the energy sector. Ideas ranged from a metaverse training tool that uses headsets, virtual reality and augmented reality, to hyperspectral satellites that can detect methane leaks both above and below ground.

Low emissions and carbon capture look to be the future of the oil and gas sector and AI and real-time analytics look to be paving the way for that. Many of the offerings at the event are looking to eliminate issues by streamlining whatever data analytics processes the energy company uses and lessening emissions.

Arolytics sought to create a “QuickBooks for emissions,” according to president and co-founder Liz O’Connell. With their new AroViz software, they’ve created a methane forecasting tool that is able to aggregate and analyze the data on a centralized platform and deliver real-time progress on a company’s emissions goals.

AttackIQ tackled cybersecurity with its Security Optimization Platform. The platform aims to prevent problems before they even arise, as 80% of successful enterprise breaches should have been prevented by existing controls.

“Imagine a world where you can be confident in your security program,” said Brett Galloway, CEO of AttackIQ. “You could validate your defenses against specific threats. You could answer the questions to the board and the business about readiness and you could leverage technology to automate all of this in production.”

The common denominator between each company’s new software is their approach to data analytics.

Each product was designed to be accessible no matter where the user was. They were also designed to analyze and display the collected data in an easily understandable fashion. Many of these products, such as Craytive Technologies’ Baselinez and RnB Technology Group’s “virtual data scientist” Ari, were also subscription-based.

RnB Technology Group’s Ari is a cloud-based SaaS subscription license product that allows users to analyze large amounts of data from operations and “improve it, fix it, prevent it from failing.”

“What we do is we adjust the data,” said George Hernandez, director at RnB Technology Group. “We determine what’s related to what we built, data-driven models. And then based upon those models, we provide abnormalities or recommendations about what to do in build.”

The other subscription-based product, Baselinez by Craytive Technologies, allows geoscientists to gain subsea insights and share that information across the metaverse.

“Using an app platform, customers gain subsurface insights, access digital twins that explain complex concepts to stakeholders, train and simply showcase technology innovation,” said Jide Ayangande, partner at Craytive Technologies.