Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

Heavy industry has long known that intoxication and some kinds of work simply don’t mix. Digital technologies are helping overcome the risk of hard-to-detect intoxicants on the job site. Worker safety is a VERY BIG DEAL in oil and gas. Moving equipment, pressurized vessels, high voltage, dangerous gases, hot surfaces, sharp objects, dark and wet conditions, drops from height, slippery surfaces, falling objects… the risks in the industrial workplace are manifestly greater. Employees need to have their wits about them at all times. Relative to other substance challenges, alcohol is easier for employers to manage. Other impairing substances, such as cannabis, are much more difficult to pick up. Cannabis doesn’t behave like alcohol in the body. It binds to fat cells, and is detectable for weeks, well after the intoxication effect has vanished, whereas alcohol washes out of your system relatively quickly. Unlike alcohol, the amount of cannabis you consume, and the resulting level of THC in your body, is not correlated to your level of impairment. What if we were able to supplement the industry standard law enforcement eye exam, normally administrated by a highly trained professional, but using digital technologies such as a camera, to capture eye behaviour in response to stimuli, and an algorithm that interprets the eye behaviour?

A quick trial of ChatGPT reveals its considerable strengths and its worrisome weaknesses in generating energy talking points. One of my many contacts asked me a rather simple question earlier this week: Why does Greenpeace not like LNG? My contact is from Germany, and presumably has lots of family members and friends there who have been living through Germany’s recent natural gas energy angst. As a thought experiment I wondered how a modern digital solution like ChatGPT might answer the same question, so I asked it the same question. ChatGPT did not disappoint, but neither did it impress. I would be cautious relying on ChatGPT to help with understanding the complex world of energy security. This little episode is a fine illustration of the perils of this kind of technology at this early stage of its life: ChatGPT’s grasp of the technical facts around LNG, a 60 year old technology, is weak. That does not bode well for its understanding of more modern and complicated technologies. ChatGPT’s responses are quickly generated, which is value, but we need to be very sure we are asking the right questions, and we take the time to quiz the responses to see if interesting and relevant contradictory information is being unintentionally withheld. Many in society lack the patience, the skepticism, and the inquiry skills to push back on the narratives produced by generative AI. Fortunately, that’s not the oil and gas industry. We’re a skeptical bunch.  

"Hydraulic fracture is not just about breaking new rock, it's about fundamentally rejuvenating the existing natural fractures and bedding planes that are in the rock fabric itself." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Andrew McMurray, the CEO and Co-Founder of ShearFrac. Andrew and his team are using cloud capabilities from AWS to deliver complex calculations to frack teams that improve the performance of frack jobs (lowering the cost of fracturing operations and improving the yields). Interestingly, by giving frack teams a new actionable KPI that is geared to outputs (yield) and not solely inputs (water and sand pumped), performance improves.  "Anything that you can do in real time to respond in real time is going to add more value than if you make a bunch of decisions, look back at them and realize they were the wrong decisions." Andrew is a Mechanical Engineer with a passion for responsible hydrocarbon recovery and technology development. Throughout his career, Andrew has been successful in developing and executing disruptive completion technologies in the industry as an operator with Shell or as part of a service company, STEP. Before Co-Founding Shear FRAC Group, LLC, Andrew was the General Manager of Canada for Darcy Partners, focused on identifying, developing, and accelerating innovative technology across multiple petroleum verticals. "I'm so proud to be a Canadian engineer, because on a global basis, we're very respected for our understanding of the subsurface and our ability to do things environmentally friendly and responsibly." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-mcmurray-78b4521b/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/28831831 YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@shearfrac2019 Website:   https://shearfrac.com/  

I’ve written hundreds of articles and podcast episodes about the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, and I’m still learning stuff I didn’t know. At an LNG conference recently, I heard speakers share perspectives on a range of topics that warranted a reminder of the nuances of this fascinating industry. LNG is a wondrous fuel with loads of potential for humanity, but it does have its quirks. The next time you hear some magical story about how LNG will save the world, or some equally gloomy review of its potential to destroy the planet, dust off this podcast for a sense check. Here’s eight things about LNG that you probably didn’t know.

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Mike Procee, who at the time of recording was the Manager of Enterprise Innovation, Enablement, and Culture at TC Energy, a large oil and gas utility. Mike’s background in entrepreneurship and engineering came together at TC who wanted to accelerate their ability to deal with energy transition and digitalization. The company created an innovation hub that could provide its business units with facilitation, coaching and guidance to improve its ability to embrace positive change. It’s proof that big energy companies can change their stripes.   "Everyone's heard the stories about Kodak. Everyone's heard the story about BlockBuster. Nobody wants to kind of follow in their footsteps." Here are some of Mike's quotes from the podcast...  "These little collisions, with HR combining with engineering, your marketing team combining with sales, these groups that don't typically work together getting together are seeing these innovative solutions, and then actually driving more value out of them." "The argument can be made that you don't want to define innovation. Sometimes you want to create a very open space to let the horses run free." Today, Mike is the Manager of Project Enablement at TC Energy.  Mike is an experienced Mechanical Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in hydraulic design and leveraging those skills to help facilitate discussion for optimization. He is passionate about innovation and employee experience while exploring their connection to bottom-line impacts. USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-procee-mba-p-eng-06860478/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tcenergy/  

A large integrated oil and gas company has invited me to address their global center for data excellence. That such an organizational creation is necessary is both telling for some and enlightening for others. Data has been central to my work on digital innovations in oil and gas from the very beginning because digital innovation is almost always about capturing value from a reliable data asset. My simple digital innovation formula includes data at its very core: Sensors generate data Analytics (AI and machine learning tools) interpret the data Semi-autonomous and fully autonomous devices (robots, drones) carry out real work using that data Cloud computing is where data lives Trusted ledger services provide confidence in the data. In hindsight, it’s rather sensible that a center for data excellence is now part of the organization structure of a big oil and gas player. Without better data acumen, oil and gas companies are like street brawlers showing up for a fist fight only to discover the opponent is equipped with a pistol. We’re seriously outgunned in the fight for talent, the battle for capital investment, and the latest race called energy transition (which has a huge data theme to it). The work culture of oil and gas is the basis for why our industry lags other sectors in how we think about and approach data.

“It's extremely frustrating to have to make decisions on our multibillion dollar assets, with only a piece of paper in your hand, and a radio on the other side of your hip.” In this episode, I’m in conversation with Andrea Hine, who is a Product Owner within the Connected Worker Program at Suncor Energy. Working with Otterbox, Andrea and her team have developed the world’s first iPhone UL safety case, which means workers on industrial sites can now have a consumer-grade phone with them. This is absolutely ground breaking. The connected front line worker has been the hardest problem to solve in industry, but Andrea and team have done it. “We're making really big decisions about worker safety and in keeping our assets running with a piece of paper that may have out of date information. You don't have subject matter experts available to you. it's incredibly frustrating.” Andrea Hine is as a Product Owner within Suncor’s Digital Innovation and Development team.  Andrea leverages her extensive front-line experience and creative mindset to drive technology initiatives. With a decade of field expertise and a fervent dedication to empowering workers, Andrea plays a pivotal role by delivering tools that enhance safety and efficiency. “If you make workers lives easier for them by giving them software and interfaces, and a piece of hardware that's easy to use, and really intuitive, workers will be on board” USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-hine-45884928/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/suncor Twitter handles: @suncor Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/suncorenergy/ Website:   https://www.otterboxbusiness.com/ccrz__CCPage?pagekey=Industrial https://www.suncor.com  

As we work through energy transition, market forces are poised to create asset discontinuities. They are already wreaking havoc with the oil supply chain. Today’s news from the shipping industry brings energy transition into sharp relief.  An industry monitor noted a collapse in the order books for very large crude carriers (VLCCs, ships that carry two million barrels or more of crude oil). You might not think this is a big deal, but if your first name is Greta, you probably think it’s great news. Which gets us to the following problem: if the capacity to move tidal crude oil to market declines by more than the demand for tidal crude oil declines, then we will eventually have a shortage of crude oil carriers. Prices for moving tidal crude to market will have to rise. In addition to the shortfall in capacity from a lack of orders, a number of ships have gone over to the grey market, carrying sanctioned Russian oil products, effectively being withdrawn from general service. Extend this kind of industrial thinking to all the assets in the oil industry value chain and a number of eventualities become quite real.

A banking collapse was not likely on the long list of worries that plague the digital entrepreneur. What are the kinds of risks that digital startups face in oil and gas? March 15 stands in infamy as the day that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Roman Senate. The conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were ratted out by a seer, who ominously warned Caesar that harm would come to him that day, advice that Caesar pointedly ignored because: he was arrogant, popular and successful—precisely why the Senators chose to off him, and the seer was not unhelpful in clarifying exactly when the harm would come, where in Rome, and what form the harm might take. With hindsight, ‘Beware the Ides’ was sound advice from the seer, who apparently derived his insights by consulting the entrails of recently deceased animals. I too have ‘gut instincts’, but generally I’m more data driven and not in the business of conducting colonoscopies of goats and sheep for clues about the future. The Ides did not disappoint this year, as it turns out. The big event of the week was the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank, who stands accused of ignoring an iron-clad law of financing—they were inadequately hedged against rising interest rates, and lost a bundle when forced to sell a bond investment at a huge loss.

The biggest new supply of energy after renewables will not come from a new oil and gas field, but from virtualized energy. A few years ago, we bought a mobile battery booster pack (itself includes a lead acid battery) for just such emergencies, but we had never plugged in it, it too was dead, and worst of all, beyond recovery. We called around only to discover that there’s no publicly accessible mobile battery boosting service in our little town. And now both that little vehicle lead acid battery and gasoline tank are about to give way to a much larger lithium ion battery in an electric vehicle. A vehicle battery will store enough power to run much of your household needs (short of heat) for 10 days or longer. No more visits to the gas station. Instead, all those vehicle batteries will have to plug into the power grid to get power (or to the home solar panel system if you have that kind of money) called ‘grid to vehicle’ or G2V. Power utilities have conveniently strung copper wires to virtually to every street corner. Through that same plug, power can be dispatched back to the grid, or ‘vehicle to grid’, aka V2G. Plug in all these vehicles to draw power at the same time and we’ll bring the grid to its knees. On the other hand, plug in enough vehicles with some software smarts at the same time, and an enormous amount of that battery power can be simultaneously dispatched back to the grid. The biggest oil discovery of my generation was in Detroit in the form of a technology shift. The adoption of battery electric vehicles is unlocking the largest new supply of power in the form of virtual power plants, and at the same time, hammering gasoline demand, natural gas investment and power generation.