White Papers Improving Data Aggregation and Analysis to Address | Page 2

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The major North American energy markets, including natural gas, power and oil, have undergone
massive changes over the last decade. New sources of supply enabled by technical innovation
have created market imbalances and have spurred billions of dollars of investment in process-
ing facilities, pipelines, export facilities and power transmission systems in order to better align
those new supplies to the markets they serve.
Additionally, with the easing of export regulations, in-
vestments in energy export facilities and increasing
overseas demand for US LNG, liquids and crude oil
have resulted in a tightening connection between
US and foreign energy markets. And while these
new energy market structures are generally seen as
a net positive for market participants, the increasing
influence of global market developments has created
significant uncertainty around future market direction
and price formation across most energy commodities.
Absorbing these many new energy sources and the
resulting massive growth in supplies has created
new markets, hubs and trading locations; and have
increased the sources, granularity and velocity of mar-
ket data that flows into energy trading floors across
the industry. Identifying and collecting the appropriate
sources of data and information is a critical first step
in developing the insights and actionable information
necessary to succeed in these challenging and con-
stantly evolving markets.
However, without a sophisticated analytics capability
to convert that data to timely, relevant and actionable
market and operational insights (i.e. early warnings
of potential supply bottlenecks or inventory chang-
es, timely identification of shifts in your intraday P&L,
non-optimized physical assets, etc.), the flood of data
arriving at your doorstep will overwhelm your existing
resources and your team’s commercial and operation-
al decisions will be based on data and information of
increasing vintage.
Fortunately, advances in web-based technologies
have enabled a new generation of tools and solutions
that can accelerate the analysis of huge data sets from
multiple systems and data sources - allowing the earli-
est possible identification of market moves, emergent
opportunities and impending risks. One such solution,
by Eka Software, utilizes apps that can be configured
by business users to mix and match different data sets
from divergent sources and perform real-time analysis
to answer their organization’s most critical and timely
questions. With support for all types of analytics from
simple aggregations to advanced predictive mod-
els, energy companies using this solution can gain a
competitive advantage by optimizing operations and
strategies to take advantage of both rapidly emerging
opportunities and longer-term market developments.
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