The oil and gas operators blockchain consortium has rebranded as the Blockchain for Energy consortium.

The former Offshore Operators Committee (OOC) Blockchain Consortium comprised of international oil and gas industry players has, confusingly for our sector, launched with “a new name and brand to be better positioned to meet its members’ needs”.

This updated brand represents the association’s core values both in the present day and how its leaders envisioned these values in the future, according to a statement.

“Our ambitions and those of our members have not changed. If anything, they have increased and are further amplified with this effort,” says consortium chairman Rebecca Hofmann, who works for Equinor’s Operations Technology Excellence group and was the founder of the OCC Blockchain Consortium.

While the utility and oil and gas sectors are completely different, blockchain use cases such as asset management and resource tracking are similar. Moreover, synergies are growing as companies such as Shell and others make inroads into the power generation sector.

Thus awareness of each other’s activities and information sharing could benefit both sectors.

Currently Blockchain for Energy is developing three main use cases for blockchain on commodity transport invoicing, joint venture management processes and the lifecycle tracking of seismic data.

Power sector consortia

There are two main consortia in our power sector alongside the smaller project consortia formed by individual companies as they advance their offerings.

The oldest and largest is Energy Web, which was formed in 2017 by Austrian blockchain startup Grid Singularity and the Rocky Mountain Institute with an initial membership of 10 utilities. Subsequently the organisation has grown to count more than one hundred affiliates comprised of both developers and users as it develops a range of sector specific solutions built on the open source Energy Web Chain.

The three main areas of focus are renewable energy markets, demand flexibility and electric vehicle management.

The second is the primarily US oriented Energy Blockchain Consortium, which was founded by Tony Giroti, former CEO of the Accenture acquired consultant Bridge Energy Group, in 2018.

The Consortium counts many of the ‘top names’ in US smart energy and has been primarily information-focussed to date. Recently a $250,000 grant has been secured for a project implementation for which participants are being sought.