Trading & shipping GSS

Digital gas scheduling smartsheet

Our trading and shipping business uses a digital gas scheduling smartsheet (GSS) to coordinate the flow of natural gas. Launched in 2019, our GSS technology successfully integrates gas operations data into a seamless information exchange, providing a versatile and stable platform.

For our gas operations team, the GSS platform is a game-changer, offering a flexible yet standardized tool that streamlines the once-fragmented process of nominating and transporting natural gas through hundreds of pipelines from producers to end users in the Americas.

Among other benefits, GSS allows us to maintain a real-time position without sacrificing functionality. It reduces the risks associated with manual data entry and delivers costs savings by replacing an outmoded accounting system. Both provide a strong foundation for further automation.

bp fully moved our entire Americas trading estate to the digital cloud in 2020. This made a big difference for our Houston-based gas and power trading business in February 2021, when Winter Storm Uri caused extreme and unprecedented freezing temperatures across the US and significant disruptions to supply and demand within US natural gas and power markets. This caused extended power outages within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which serves Houston. Because we moved our US trading applications to a highly resilient cloud datacenter in Ohio, all bp electronic systems were fully operational and the business was able to perform and deliver business critical activities with minimal disturbance to its customers and the markets.