How Oilmax and Asian Energy are using AI to modernise India’s oilfields ops

From handwritten logs dating back to the 1970s to AI-driven subsurface models, oil and gas firms Oilmax Energy and Asian Energy Services have travelled a long way in their digital transformation journey. The two companies—part of the same group since Oilmax acquired the then Asian Energy Services in 2015—are now using technology to squeeze more value, while expanding into minerals, O&M and global operations.

“Our main office is in Mumbai, with operations spread across India, particularly in Gujarat and Assam,” said Aman Garg, Director, Asian Energy Services Limited & President, Oilmax Energy Services, in an interview with TechCircle. “Delhi is a strategic location for us as well, given our engagement with the central government. Increasingly, we are active in the mineral belt too.”

Founded in 2009 by veteran energy executive Dr. Kapil Garg, Oilmax set out to become what Garg calls “a smaller version of Reliance or ONGC”—a nimble upstream operator focused on value creation. Today, the company produces around 2,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from fields in Assam and Gujarat, generating roughly ₹150 crore in annual revenue. Over the years, it has also operated assets in Nigeria and Romania.

In 2015–16, Oilmax acquired Asian Oilfield Services—then a debt-burdened, seismic-services-only entity. The company was restructured, renamed Asian Energy Services, recapitalised, and expanded into integrated operations & maintenance (O&M) services. “This year, we began work with Vedanta on their Rajasthan oilfields,” Garg said. Asian has also diversified into mineral infrastructure, building handling plants across eastern and southern India, and in 2024, it acquired Dubai-based Kuiper Group to extend its O&M capabilities across the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Why digital technology is no longer optional

Oil and gas is an industry built on what you cannot see—rock layers buried thousands of metres below the earth. That’s why, Garg said, digital technology is now indispensable.

“We drill and produce from reservoirs nearly 3,000 meters below the surface, far beyond anything you can observe directly, so we depend heavily on advanced digital tools to study, analyse, and understand these fields.”

The company relies on global industry platforms such as Schlumberger’s Petrel and Halliburton’s DecisionSpace, as well as specialised software from SAP and newer AI-oriented startups. Their geophysical and geoseismic teams conduct complex modelling in-house, assisted increasingly by AI built directly into these platforms.
But the real transformation, Garg said, is happening in how the company handles its massive troves of legacy data.

Many of the fields Oilmax and Asian operate today were once managed by PSUs like ONGC and Oil India. Fields such as Amguri in Assam began production in the 1970s and still contain wells drilled more than 50 years ago.

“When we took over the field, we had to understand its entire history,” he recalled. “Much of the information we received came as scanned copies of old handwritten documents andnotes recorded by operators in the 1970s.”

Garg remembers manually poring over these reports in 2021, “My team and I would spend days reading handwritten notes to piece together what had happened in each well. ChatGPT was not launched then. AI just wasn’t as accessible.”

Today, digitising the same data with AI-powered extraction tools is almost instantaneous. “We can process and structure legacy datasets in hours instead of weeks. It has dramatically reduced effort and improved productivity.”

This shift matters because older Indian fields still hold untapped potential. Improving interpretation, identifying missed reservoirs, and analysing historical behaviour can significantly enhance recovery, an area where India lags global benchmarks.

A conservative industry adopts digital tools

Oil and gas is traditionally cautious, capital-intensive, and slow to adopt new technology. Garg acknowledged this cultural reality.

“Our company has historically been run in a conservative way, shaped by leaders with deep roots in the oil industry,” he says. “But every year, software gets faster and more accurate. In the past two or three years, AI has started to transform how we work.”

Another area where technology is changing the game is subsurface interpretation. 

“Traditionally, this work relied heavily on visual judgment and human intuition, which made it subjective. With modern digital and AI-assisted tools, we can analyse seismic and geological data far more objectively and consistently. This leads to better-quality insights and improves our ability to identify the most promising zones for drilling and production,” he said. 

The company is also extending AI into operational decision-making. Oil and gas offtake varies by season and even by time of day. “We see higher offtake at night and during winter,” he says. “AI helps us forecast demand patterns, optimize inventory, and fine-tune production planning.”

In parallel, the group is evaluating IoT-based solutions across its green energy projects and field infrastructure, part of a broader push to modernise operations end-to-end.

A sector in transition

The Indian oil and gas sector is in a complex moment. Domestic production is declining, fields are ageing, and global energy systems are shifting. Against this backdrop, companies like Oilmax and Asian Energy Services are turning to digital and AI-driven tools not as futuristic add-ons but as necessities.

In Garg’s view, the opportunity goes far beyond efficiency.“AI helps us focus on what truly matters, which includes understanding our fields better, improving our decisions, and creating more value.”

For ageing reservoirs and fragmented data environments like India’s, that may be the difference between merely sustaining output and unlocking a new generation of production.