How bp replaced legacy hydrocarbon accounting systems with a cloud platform that their own team configured.
bp and BPX Energy both use the EnergySys Cloud Platform to manage their hydrocarbon accounting operations. Across the US, the North Sea, and beyond, the same platform runs in the hands of the people who know the work best.
This is the story of how bp made that happen at scale.
Challenge: high cost, low agility, and no alignment with digital ambitions
Faced with a net zero pledge and ambitious cost reduction targets, bp conducted a hard look at its hydrocarbon accounting systems. Most were legacy on-premise platforms. Making even minor changes required expensive IT infrastructure, external consultants, and specialist developers. Infrastructure and IT support consumed significant time and budget.
More fundamentally, the systems couldn’t keep pace with the business. As operations evolved, the platforms held teams back rather than enabling them to move forward.
bp needed something that aligned with their digital vision: flexible, cost-efficient, and owned by the people running the operation rather than a team of external specialists.
Solution: a cloud platform configured entirely in-house
The wider bp organisation made the decision to deploy the EnergySys Cloud Platform across its global assets.
What made this rollout significant was how it was delivered. Following a five-day training course, a four-person internal bp team configured and rolled out the platform across eleven assets, spanning operations in the US, the North Sea, and internationally. No external implementation partner. No development team. Just a small group of domain experts using a low-code platform to build exactly what the business needed.
”EnergySys is a nimble database, which can grow and change as Operations explores new ways of producing wells. This is imperative in today's oil and gas climate.
HCA Team Lead, bp
The platform replaced legacy on-premise systems with a cloud-native environment that the team owns and manages themselves. When requirements change, they make the changes. When new assets need onboarding, they handle it.
The rollout is ongoing, with further assets being migrated from legacy on-premise systems over the coming years.
Outcomes: lower cost, greater control, and a new way of working
Since deploying EnergySys across their assets, bp’s team has seen measurable improvements across their hydrocarbon accounting operations.
Hydrocarbon accounting processes run faster. Application supportability has improved significantly, with internal teams owning configuration rather than relying on vendor support cycles. The total cost of ownership of the hydrocarbon accounting function has reduced, with infrastructure overhead and costly upgrade cycles removed from the equation.
The self-implementation across eleven assets has also demonstrated something broader: that a low-code, cloud-native platform can be configured and owned internally by domain experts, without a development team or external consultants. For a business with a digital ambition tied to autonomy and cost reduction, that proof point matters as much as the platform itself.
The bottom line.
A net-zero pledge and a cost reduction target are easy to state. The harder question is which systems are holding the business back from delivering on both.
For bp, the answer was their legacy hydrocarbon accounting infrastructure. Replacing it with a cloud platform that their own team could configure, own, and evolve was the right call. Eleven assets in, across the US, the North Sea, and internationally, the rollout continues.
