Ashburn, Virginia – Sept. 11, 2026

Oil and gas operators have been performing maintenance on their pumps, compressors and turbines much like most drivers change their engine oil — on a fixed schedule, regardless of the equipment’s need. This strategy is becoming obsolete. Instead, more operators are installing sensors on their critical equipment to monitor vibration, temperature, pressure and flow in real time and inputting the data into software that indicates that a component is failing days or weeks before it actually does.

It was evident again late last year when ADNOC Gas, the gas processing unit of Abu Dhabi’s state oil company, signed a multi-year deal with AI firm AIQ and robotics company Gecko Robotics to introduce inspection robots and machine-learning software at its facilities, and thus enter the robotics and edge intelligence space for industrial maintenance. The deal is on top of an earlier ADNOC program, which employed Honeywell software to continuously monitor thousands of critical machines across the company’s operations.

A market moving fast

The scale of that ambition is no longer unusual. Across the industry, the shift is away from the calendar-driven maintenance model and toward continuous condition monitoring, powered by newer oil and gas IT solutions from providers such as DXC — and the money is following. MarketsandMarkets analysts predict that the global predictive maintenance market will expand at a 11.4% CAGR from $13.89 billion this year to $23.79 billion in 2031, with oil and gas digitalization and cost pressure among the major growth drivers. North America will account for about a third of that market this year, with the lion’s share of spending on software and analytics platforms.

The technology is not new — vibration analysis and simple diagnostics have been applied for years in oilfields. The difference is that now sensors can be deployed cheaply, real-time data can be processed at scale, and the underlying problems have grown too urgent to ignore.

A push from aging pipelines

In the United States, there are over 3 million miles of pipeline that transport natural gas, crude oil and refined fuels, and federal regulators report anywhere from 600 to 700 pipeline incidents annually. Historically, corrosion has caused about 18% of those incidents, but according to a report released in March by the Association for Materials Protection and Performance, based on data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, corrosion-related incidents made up more than 25% of reported incidents for 2024.

“Corrosion remains one of the most significant — and most preventable — risks to pipeline safety,” said AMPP CEO Alan Thomas in announcing the findings.

One of the tools operators are relying on to catch that kind of deterioration earlier is continuous sensor monitoring — tracking wall thickness, pressure changes and flow anomalies that can indicate corrosion well before a scheduled inspection would catch it.

The workforce problem

There’s a simpler reason for the change: not enough experienced hands remain to run maintenance the old way. According to a report released by recruiting firm Airswift in February, workers 45 and above now account for 48% of the traditional energy workforce, whereas those between 25 and 34 years old now make up just 19% of the total. AI use among energy professionals has also risen significantly from 2024 levels, to approximately 45%, as the same survey revealed that engineering and technical operations roles were the most difficult to fill for energy companies this year.

That talent shortage is coming at a time when production is near record levels and layoffs are sweeping across the United States. The number of workers in U.S. oil and gas extraction dropped to 114,500 in June, the second-fewest for the month in history, government data indicate. Chevron is announcing up to 9,000 job cuts, representing up to a fifth of its workforce worldwide, and the company is integrating the $53 billion purchase of Hess, and BP has reduced its staff by more than 5% and contractors by 3,000. The vacancies are mostly for electricians and automation technicians, while the jobs disappearing are manual field roles — a shift that reflects how the modern wellsite increasingly runs on automation rather than the hands-on experience many veteran field workers built their careers on.

Competition among the service giants

This is where oilfield service firms are competing head-to-head. The three major oilfield services companies — SLB, Halliburton and Baker Hughes — are all investing in digital reliability tools to secure long-term customer relationships. The areas where the three compete most directly are in predictive maintenance for completion equipment and cloud-based asset management platforms, as the software becomes part of a customer’s day-to-day operation, making it difficult to switch. For its part, Baker Hughes has been in a joint venture with AI software company C3.ai for several years, selling reliability applications to the operators on that same premise: keep the customer’s equipment running, keep the customer.

Where the budget is going

The push toward AI isn’t limited to maintenance — the same economics are driving operators toward AI adoption more broadly. The Deloitte outlook for the oil and gas sector in 2026 suggests that companies are continuing to execute on digital projects despite constrained capital budgets and that they could be spending half or more of their total 2026 information technology budget on AI and generative AI, compared with about 20% of their IT budget currently. While digital investment continues, the capital discipline that characterized the industry in 2025 is continuing into this year, according to Zillah Austin, the U.S. energy and chemicals leader at Deloitte.

The practical argument for maintenance teams is simple. If a compressor or pump on a midstream pipeline unexpectedly shuts down, it can halt flow for hours, trigger costly emergency repairs and — if a leak is involved — draw regulatory attention. Fixed-interval maintenance was born to prevent that, but it has its own waste: Parts are replaced before they are necessary, technicians are servicing equipment that is not failing, and schedules are missing failures that occur between the intervals. That’s where continuous monitoring comes in.

Not there yet

The transition is far from complete. A lot of facilities, especially smaller and middle-sized operators that don’t have the capital of a Chevron or an ADNOC, are still relying on paper inspection logs, portable vibration readers and work orders that are scheduled to be done at fixed intervals. It’s a real engineering challenge to integrate new sensor networks with equipment that’s been in the ground or on a platform for twenty or thirty years and it takes time for maintenance crews to accept an algorithm’s warning over a checklist they’re used to.

Nevertheless, there is no indication that the direction will change. In an era of heightened regulatory oversight of aging pipeline infrastructure, a workforce of experienced maintenance workers retiring at a faster rate than they can be replaced, and the biggest oilfield service companies rushing to integrate their software into customer operations, fixed maintenance calendars are becoming the exception. An experimental upgrade for a few big operators a few years ago is now, for many in the industry, a standard way of doing business.

About DXC Technology

DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) is a global enterprise technology and innovation partner that helps organizations run mission-critical operations while modernizing their technology environments. With more than 60 years of technology experience and operations spanning more than 70 countries, DXC provides solutions across AI, cloud and infrastructure, cybersecurity, enterprise applications, managed services and application modernization. The company works with global enterprises and public sector organizations to help improve operational resilience, scalability and business performance.

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