Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

To break free of the limitations of yesterday’s technologies, the oil and gas industry is accelerating its adoption of private 5G networks. Some time ago, I helped an oil field logistics company respond to customer feedback that its services were “in the Stone Age”. Its systems were entirely manual, inaccurate, slow, and error prone. Virtually every invoice was disputed, causing cash flow problems. Worse, its multi-year contracts were coming up for renegotiation, and there was a real risk that the contracts would not be renewed, stranding an enormous fleet of 750 vehicles. We decided to create a fundamentally new business model that would upend the prevailing customer service standards in the industry, dramatically improve the utilization of the fleet of assets, staff, and facilities, and transform for the better its overall competitive position. Market-leading companies in oil and gas recognize that the status quo industrial network (SCADA) and public networks are simply not fit for the purposes of responding to the pressures. Private 5G networks offer a highly appealing alternative. As private networks, they eliminate the problem of contention for third party access or bandwidth. Solutions are free to run as designed delivering continuous near real time service. 5G networks run at much lower levels of latency compared to other network technologies such as 4G, and private 5G networks lower the latency further. Private 5G networks offer dramatically improved bandwidth compared to 4G, operating at gigabits per second, versus megabits per second. Private networks are far more secure as network access is under much tighter control. 5G networks can be deployed far more quickly than wired networks, and offer improved future-proofing for assets intended to run for years.

"We really kind of focus on the data and analytics side, really helping identify challenges where innovative data solutions, machine learning and AI technologies can be leveraged to drive more data driven insights." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Clark Lai, the CEO of Motiv Innovation Group. Clark’s team helps businesses apply data analytics, machine learning and AI tools to some of their more intractable problems. A great example is letting generative AI models feast on proprietary company data, such as engineering content, and using those models to create first drafts of new engineered assets. They won’t be perfect, but the speed to get to an editable first draft is the real prize.  "Our client is able to simply search through unstructured text and the AI will be able to retrieve and reference the associated documents within their workspace." Clark Lai is the CEO of Motiv Innovation Group—an internationally recognized, award-winning digital innovation and venture building company. Since 2013, Clark has led the strategic vision, execution, and expansion of various business units within Motiv. Under his leadership, Motiv has helped its clients and partners increase shareholder value by over $2 billion. "Now that you have your documents embedded within this AI model, using generative AI, you can now generate net new content and net new value as a result." With a commitment to excellence, Motiv has been honoured with several prestigious accolades, including The Webby Awards, W3 Awards, German Design Awards, and Ember Awards. He has over 16 years of software development experience in full-stack development, system architecture, cloud computing, data science, and machine learning. Clark has also successfully launched multiple ventures across a range of verticals, including advertising and PPC, health and wellness, data analytics, e-commerce and social commerce, professional services, and AI. "We are solving the challenges for our team that actually matter. Rather than just building the next shiny toy." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarklai/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/motivdigital Website:   https://motiv.digital/  

"There's been a real reluctance on the part of operators to jump back in to some of these higher-cost opportunities. That's further constraining  exploration and development of supply." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Howard Crosby, the Founder and CEO of LGX Energy Corporation. Howard and a partner acquired an oil company in Indiana and the acquisition included some 400 miles of 2D seismic data that had been shot some 15 years earlier, but never processed. By putting this old data through new tools, LGX was able to reveal oil plays that had been overlooked. The team then shot the highly prospective locations with 3D, which helped pinpoint more precise drilling locations. What was thought to be 15 possibilities turned into 50+.  "Instead of stringing wires across farmer's cornfields to set up the geophones prior to making the recording, they’re using wireless geophones that don't need to be strung together with the wire." Howard Crosby is the Founder and Chief Executive of LGX Energy Corporation. Howard was raised in the Pacific Northwest, and is a successful entrepreneur who has founded several companies over the years.  With his background in finance and natural resources, Howard has over 40 years working with mining, gas and oil developments. "You look at the Lima Peru field where [Rockefeller] had the first 100 million barrel field in Allen County, Indiana. They recovered over 100 million barrels, but they estimate, because of poor technology in the 1890s and early 1900s, they left 100 million barrels behind, stranded." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-crosby/ Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/lgxenergycorp/ Website:   https://www.lgxenergycorp.com/  

Halloween. A gory and ghastly night of ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. And as with previous years marking All Souls, I reflect on the latest digital demons molesting the oil and gas industry, how best to exorcise them, and how to speedily return them to the land of the undead. When you open the front door to this season’s mob of treat-hunting ghouls, just remember that your work world is not only facing its own cyber spooks at the gate. There’s a better than even chance that you have more than one zombie system staggering around, AI Apparitions secretly messing up your performance system, and a cloud vampire sharpening its fangs. Good luck.

A pioneering application of artificial intelligence at Woodside Energy is finally ready for wider deployment in oil and gas.    I learned about this use case back in 2016, at APPEA’s annual conference in Perth, where Woodside’s data science team presented their work. Surprisingly, few companies bothered to replicate this innovation, even though it was both proven and easy to execute. Many oil and gas facilities have been in production for decades, and want to be in production for decades more. Not only do these assets handily outlast their designers, but they’re now outlasting their maintenance engineering staff, operations, logistics managers, and key suppliers. In short, the complete original workforce. But the oil and gas industry has long relied on the memory of its people to recall critical information about its assets, information beyond the kinds of data easily found in modern systems. Answers to questions like “why did we design it this way”, and “have we encountered this problem before” depend on the memories of workers. Oil and gas companies cannot reliably use ChatGPT, as it was trained on the whole of the internet, and is a mix of fact and fiction, science and religion, truth and lies, and faulty logic. However, training a private version of ChatGPT unlocks a huge use case that was proven many years ago.

"Aviation fuel because it is a big amount of emissions, roughly 2% in actual measurement, but about three and a half percent in terms of impact. It's not likely to change because you need high density fuels, so batteries aren't going to work for long haul flights. And 90% of aviation is long haul flights." In this episode, I’m in conversation with John McDougall, who is the CEO and founder of SynBioBlox Innovations, a company seeking to solve the global emissions problem by applying synthetic biology to the creation of sustainable aviation fuel. Imagine the ability to design, test, and then build, at scale, a biological microorganism that ingests a given feedstock and produces, at scale, a valuable compound. That’s the promise of SynBioBlox.    "The GHG that's being emitted and being thrown away essentially, is the opportunity to create value by turning it into products." John McDougall is the founder and CEO of SynBioBlox Innovations Ltd.  A fourth generation Albertan, he spent two decades as President of the Alberta and National Research Councils following leadership positions in real estate, engineering consulting, manufacturing, oil and gas and technology businesses.  He is a former Chair of APEGA and Engineers Canada, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, and many other social and not-for-profit organizations.  "Rather than waiting for them to evolve on a hit or miss basis, with the tools that exist today, we can actually explicitly design them and make them." He has been an appointed member on numerous agencies and advisory committees related to trade, education, innovation, engineering, economic development and employment at the local, provincial, federal and international level.  The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, he continues to support the community with his time and resources in education, voluntary and not-for profit agencies, advisory and philanthropic roles. "If you really want to make a difference in greenhouse gases, if you're not looking at things that are a billion tons a year or more, you're not going to make a difference." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mcdougall-049280124 Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synbioblox Website:   https://www.synbioblox.com/  

If you want to be a successful digital leader, you need to be able to sell your ideas to a reluctant oil and gas buyer.  Selling is so innately human we don’t even know when we’re selling or being sold. Have you ever been to a restaurant and found yourself ordering something you would usually not ever have at home, like some decadent dessert? The end of the main meal arrives and the server kindly brings you a fresh menu already open to the dessert page. They innocently ask “can I tempt you with some freshly brewed coffee?” Next thing you know you’re scarfing 2000 calories of cheesecake drizzled with butterscotch sauce. You were sold. Selling your digital ideas to a manager in oil and gas is more complicated. Virtually everyone in oil and gas start out as digital doubters. This is a structural feature of the industry, part of the culture, linked to its safety and process adherence needs, and rooted in how the industry trains its people to manage risk. Here’s some tactics to consider.

"Turnover and mergers are one of the biggest disruptions in companies. So when you have that factored in, if you have someone who leaves the company, then everything that they've ever done, that human brain of knowledge as well and experience within that company is gone." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Wendy Hamelin, the CEO of Astraea Energy, an advisory firm in the area of high performance organizations. Wendy notes how there is a significant loss of organizational know how when we adopt new technologies that displace human capability (think of how the lowly calculator has eroded our ability to do math by hand). Extend this to an organization scale, as we are now doing with tools like AI, and our organizations are at some risk.  "I use an iPhone, for example, an iPhone is the actual device itself. And then we add our apps to our device. So the hierarchy of information and device software, if we add a hack, or add a hacked app to our iPhone, then that violates the entire phone." Wendy Hamelin is the President and CEO of Astraea Energy, an advisory firm founded in 2014 to provide consulting and advisory service to oil and energy projects in Northern Alberta. Wendy provides safety training and performance improvement consulting services. "If we're onboarding a contractor, we need to remember to off board every single part of that contractor when they're completed." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyhamelin Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/astraea-energy-inc/ Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/astraeaenergy Website:   http://www.astraeaenergy.com/  

"Those who are working in any energy sector right now are best place to be working in that sector in another 10 years, even if it's going to be on a different technology." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Corinna Frye, who is the National Head of Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, with LVI Associates. As a recruiter focused on the energy industry, Corinna has seen first hand the demand pull from the energy industry for talent, and the best positioned to satisfy that demand are professionals already working in energy. However, it takes foresight to see the opportunity, and not all professionals anticipate the coming changes to the talent landscape.  "Clean energy is employing over 40% of all energy workers in America at this stage." Corinna Frye is the National Head of Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, LVI Associates, a Phaidon International brand in Boston, Massachusetts, US. "We're going to end up pulling from the traditional oil and gas backgrounds, because there aren't huge numbers of people with an anaerobic digestion background specific to biogas here yet." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinna-frye-5b577858/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lviassociates/ Twitter handles: @PhaidonIntl @lviassociates Website:   https://www.lviassociates.com/  

Canada’s largest private oil company, and operator of the largest oil refinery, is carrying out a strategic review, which includes the possible sale of the company. Why would they do this? I grew up in Saint John, and had the privilege to work at this company for a few years. My extended family members who still live and work in the area, have reached out to me for a perspective. They are naturally concerned about what the sale of the largest business in town means for their future. Setting aside any private reasons that the family might want to sell out (from the complexities of intergenerational wealth transfer to family taxation strategies), the most important reasons involve upcoming market changes. My advice: keep calm and carry on refining.