Oil and Gas Giant Shell Jumps to Public Blockchains

The British-Dutch oil and gas company Shell becomes the latest big-name entry into the Blockchain space. The company has announced its plans to leverage blockchain technology to tap into the new markets within the Energy Web Foundation (EWF), an enterprise-grade blockchain platform.

Shell Plans on Using the Public Blockchain

A major gas and oil giant, Shell was ranked as the world's ninth-largest company in 2019. Now the corporation made a strategic entrance into blockchain tech. Shell considers stepping into the sector of public blockchain which is used as opposed to the private blockchain and deployed by most multinational corporations across the globe.

According to the reports, Shell sees a lot of advantages in the public blockchain technology. Although public blockchains are more of new technology than private blockchain, it is getting adopted by large corporations worldwide. The company has already shown its interest in Blockchain technology, when in 2017 Shell initiated its blockchain adventure by setting up a division within the company charged with navigating the potentials of the technology to the company.

Sabine Brink, the Blockchain lead at Shell, stated that decentralized technologies make up a different perspective for dealing with data and algorithm. He continued in an email to Forbes magazine saying, distributed renewable assets are the next move for the energy sector. Sabine urges that the global energy system must decarbonize urgently rendering centralized systems insufficient. He stated:

"Blockchain and AI are important emerging technologies in Shell. That’s why we have a dedicated team working on realizing the potential of the technology throughout Shell globally."  

How Other Energy Firms are Using Blockchain

While Shell could see value in joining the EWF blockchain-based energy marketplace, other oil companies are using blockchain differently. In Russia, the biggest Aircraft fuel company, Gazpromneft-Aero developed and implements a blockchain-based smart contract for faster Aircraft fuel purchase.  

Another blockchain company, BTL Group recently conducted a pilot project with ENI, BP, and Wien Energy. The pilot was meant to show how the use of blockchain technology could cut the cost of trading oil and gas by 30%-40%. Cost reduction is of significant benefit to many oil companies.  

Other non energy companies as well are progressing with Blockchain, Microsoft and Amazon are among the companies making quick application of the technology into different sectors. From Germany, Allianz SE an Insurance giant recently tested blockchain for a variety of it products.  Some of the products include using smart contracts on a system that sells flight delay insurance.  

At Amazon, the company through its Amazon Web Services developed a blockchain platform that helps companies without the capacity to develop own blockchain systems. The company has clients including Change HealthCare, Guardian Life Insurance among its users on the blockchain platform.