Oil and gas IT leaders drilling for AI benefits

Bill Schneider, vice president of IT at Pioneer Energy Services, said oil and gas has historically been "a laggard in digital." And tech investments slowed in 2014, when the price of oil started its precipitous, two-year decline. "So we've got a lot of ground to make up," Schneider said. The San Antonio-based company provides drilling and well services for oil and gas companies in the U.S. and Colombia, and it has sensors affixed to wells and field equipment "which generate a tremendous amount of data," Schneider said. But just a fraction of the data coursing through the internet of things (IoT) and collected by the company is analyzed, he said -- and that presents a huge opportunity.