A digital trailblazer paves the way for others, creating a substantial impact and serving as a precursor to further digital innovation and value creation in the subsurface geoscience community.
At the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo this December, the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025 will recognize such a pioneer.
We are pleased to announce Peter Bormann, Chief Geologist at ConocoPhillips Norway, as one of this year’s candidates.
Over his 14-year career at ConocoPhillips, Bormann has consistently been at the forefront of digital innovation in geoscience, combining deep domain expertise with a pioneering approach to machine learning, AI, and data-driven workflows. He has initiated and managed technically demanding subsurface projects, provided mentorship to junior colleagues, and supported industrial PhD students in cutting-edge research.
Earlier roles at Shell and BP gave him exposure to basin-scale exploration and foundational geological workflows. He holds an MSc in Basin Evolution and Dynamics from Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BSc in Petroleum Geology from the University of Aberdeen.
Bormann’s impact on the industry is perhaps most visible through his leadership in cross-industry machine-learning and AI initiatives. He is a driving force behind the FORCE machine-learning events and hackathons, bringing together engineers, geoscientists, and domain experts to build open-source subsurface tools.
The first hackathon in 2018 attracted 50 participants, generated seven new open-source tools, and built hundreds of professional connections. The datasets released at these events now serve as industry benchmarks. Colleagues recall how he not only shaped the technical direction of these events but also fostered an enjoyable and collaborative atmosphere — even bringing homemade beer. He also helped coordinate a global machine-learning competition on well logs that sparked over 200 publications, further extending the reach of these innovations.
In collaboration with Kadme, he also helped develop a ChatGPT-like geo-bot that enables rapid, natural-language queries across subsurface document collections, including licence relinquishment reports, wikis, and well reports. This tool dramatically reduces the time required to retrieve critical information, providing geoscientists with accurate, context-aware answers in real time. Within this collaboration, he also helped develop algorithms and a search engine that automatically maps unstructured documents—PDFs, presentations, and reports—allowing users to locate and query content by geographic area, a world-first capability. His efforts in this project exemplify his ability to combine cutting-edge technology with practical workflows to create tangible value for the industry.
Bormann has also contributed to internal R&D initiatives at ConocoPhillips, continuously evaluating emerging technologies, mentoring staff in Python programming, and sharing best practices for machine-learning and AI tools such as CoPilot. He supervised an industrial PhD with AkerBP, resulting in fully public code and research for unsupervised seismic facies classification and seismic conditioning. He also led the MalenoV summer project, which was made publicly available as the first framework for machine-learning on seismic interpretation, creating a valuable resource for the wider subsurface community.
He has championed open collaboration, worked with startups, and guided initiatives such as public releases of porosity and permeability datasets from Norwegian wells, as well as providing guidance to DISKOS for making their documents machine-readable for AI and ML applications.
He has been described by colleagues as a “snowplow”—relentless in driving projects forward and always able to find creative routes around obstacles. They also emphasize his genuine passion for the craft — he codes in his spare time, experiments with new ideas, and is always ready to help others learn.
Despite living and breathing digital workflows, Bormann is equally devoted to life beyond the computer screen. He cycles to work, enjoys climbing and surfing, and spends time at his mountain cabin, where he reconnects with nature. His energy, enthusiasm, and generosity make him as much a community-builder as a technologist.
Through his creativity, perseverance, and generosity in sharing knowledge, Peter Bormann has made a lasting mark on the subsurface digital community. He is a truly deserving candidate for the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025.