If there is one industry that evolves very slowly, it would have to be the liquefied natural gas industry, and yet, digital is even making an impact here.

As a digital nerd, I was alert to any digital developments at LNG 2023, but I was also curious what I had written back in 2016. At the time my weekly article series was called Fuel Up LNG, and chronicled Australia’s staggering rise from a gas exporting bit player to global LNG giant.

I regret to inform you that not much has changed, really. It takes seven years to move an LNG project from conception to reality, if not longer. There’s not much iterative technology development happening, because the capital project life cycle is so long—a project is effectively just one iteration. Perhaps an expansion project can adopt some innovations, but there will be pressure on the project to stick with the status quo to capture scale economies.

However, there were still a few pearls to share. Here are four key takeaways about the impacts that digital is having on the LNG sector.