TradeLens, the IBM/Maersk venture to overhaul international shipping documentation handling, has been abandoned and will come to an end. Long live TradeLens. Now, if you’re wondering what this post has to do with digital innovations in oil and gas, consider that oil (and increasingly gas) is shipped internationally. The oil and gas industry is also a huge buyer of stuff that is sourced internationally and improvements in shipping are directly relevant to the cost of the industry. The underlying technology building blocks (cloud computing, blockchain, data standards, analytics) are common to many oil and gas innovations too. TradeLens had a lot going for it: A big and global problem to solve A compelling business case for the customers Big global partners with deep pockets able to finance the development and actuate the marketing Deep skills in the key domains (shipping, technology) Alignment with the partners’ respective business strategies (IBM as delivery partner  and Maersk as business domain expert) The timing for the venture was not ideal. Despite being well hypothesized, the pandemic timing was not predicted, nor was the timing of the invasion of Ukraine. The pandemic has hammered supply chains globally, and the invasion has disrupted food movements, energy flows and lots besides. Participants throughout the supply chains likely have their hands full just trying to cope, let along embrace new ways of working. I can imagine uptake wasn’t strong, but that’s the reality of start ups and shouldn’t be an excuse. So here’s to the death of TradeLens the platform, but long live TradeLens the idea of transformation international shipping to be more like Uber and less like Where’s Waldo.

"There were some really important and interesting measurement problems that were non medical, but most venture dollars went into medical than what you'd think from the the market size for the most important measurement problems..." In this episode Ian and I have a lengthy discussion on the challenges of data measurement and management in oil and gas. The industry is heavily dependent on the data it gathers from sensors, and dramatic improvements in telecommunications and analytics has thoroughly upended how companies can approach the management of their data. Topics include data uncertainty, how much measurement is too much, the impact of better measurement for careers in the industry, and much else besides.  "When the original IT infrastructure was built, it was built with the assumption baked in that you had to curate most of your data before it left the field." Ian Burgess is President and co-founder of Validere. He is the technical and innovation lead and has become one of the leading industry experts on commodity measurement, emissions and carbon sequestration measurement, and the emerging carbon markets. "If you think about geoscience and all of the advances that have happened up to and including the shale revolution in downhole, it just seems like it can't be true that the reason why there's a data management problem, whether you're looking at emissions or quantities themselves, is because oil and gas operators don't like technology." Ian is an interdisciplinary scientist whose inventions have been recognized with an R&D 100 Award and featured in Scientific American, Chemical & Engineering News, Nature Photonics, and Materials Today. He has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard and a Bachelor’s in Math and Physics from the University of Waterloo.  "There's not enough emphasis placed on understanding the uncertainty in a piece of data, and accounting for what affects that uncertainty and what doesn't." USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-burgess-35966337/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/validere/ Twitter handles: @validere Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/valideretechnologies/ Website:   https://bit.ly/3Dw7fcF Interesting article by Ian: https://bit.ly/40wwCFc  

Leaders lead by example, but what does that mean for the manager or supervisor of an oil and gas asset tasked with embracing digital? In my book, ‘Carbon, Capital, and the Cloud’, I describe the stages of personal change that people go through as they deal with digital, particularly in heavy industry, such as oil and gas. People are so different—not everyone starts at the same stage, their pace varies dramatically, and many will not progress beyond doubt or skepticism. Their progress is influenced both positively and negatively by outside forces as well as internal influencers. Digital adoption in heavy industry is hard work because it’s about people and culture, but there are many small and immediate steps managers can take to get going.  

"There's a gap currently between the way the small startup companies would think about how to get investment dollars and grant dollars to keep their company alive, and what the big operators need to have a deployable project." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Bradley Wamboldt, who is the principal associate of Hawk and Squirrel Innovation. Bradley specialises in helping industrial companies innovate with hard technologies such as new industrial equipment and processes. Innovations in hard technology have strong parallels with soft technology (digital), and hard technology these days is usually accompanied by some kind of digital overlay. "If you look to move to a more distributed energy generation and consumption model, there's going to be a tremendous amount of infrastructure required. We're talking about 20 terawatts of energy used by the planet. Currently, about 85% of that is fossil fuel. So the scale of this energy transition, we're really just starting to scratch the surface." Bradley Wamboldt is the Principal Associate at Hawk & Squirrel Innovation, a boutique consultancy and technology development practice in Calgary. Bradley has over 30 years of experience in oil and gas operations, project development, commissioning, operations, and technology development with both Shell Canada and Suncor Energy. "Every day you go to work you think about three things, and none of them have to do with change. Number one is safety. Safety is always making sure everybody comes home. Number two is how many barrels did you produce today. Number three is keeping the costs in line."  He is currently focusing his efforts on assisting large and small companies in advancing new energy transition and decarbonization technologies from research through to commercial deployment. Bradley has a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from McGill University and an MBA (with distinction) from Ivey School of Business at Western University. Here are some of the key questions addressed in the episode:  Is there more than one way to roll out industrial infrastructure? What are they? Who is good at introducing change to brownfield infrastructure? What are the key incentives that drive the energy industry? Where should innovation be placed in an organization? Operations? What tactics work well in driving business improvements and disruptive change?  What changes do we need to see implemented to accelerate the pace of change?  USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-wamboldt-54890a16/ LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6962843417353543682/    

The World Petroleum Congress is just around the corner, and it’s coming to Calgary.  n the global landscape of oil and gas events, a few stand out because they are truly global in that they change venues rather like the Olympics, they’re infrequent (perhaps every three or four years, allowing the passage of time to provide for fresh insight on the latest topics), and they’re large. My most recent personal experience at such an event was LNG18, held in Perth, Australia in 2016, with a focus (obviously) on the global liquefied natural gas trade. Australia had arisen, from the ashes of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, to become one of the world’s largest producers of LNG, and Australia’s experiences were the topic of considerable global interest. Well, Calgary is about to experience something quite rare, which is a return visit of the World Petroleum Congress (WPC),  in September of 2023. This is a big deal, and not just because of the inflow of tourism dollars into the local economy. Only four cities have ever hosted the WPC more than once.  Now is the time to get this on your business calendar for 2023.

"Europe is building a bunch of regasification plants on their end. So the demand is going to be high for people to start filling that pipeline, for LNG." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Mark Smith, the President and co-founder of CleanConnect.ai. In a prior life, Mark launched Windows NT Magazine, an international publication about the fast evolving technology called Windows NT. I remember reading the magazine! "Instead of us being able to buy carbon credits from say trees in Africa and offset, the actual suppliers are going to need to prove their provenance and their carbon intensity just to sell into the gas supply chain. It's going to shift from a voluntary to much more of a mandatory deal." Mark Smith is the President and co-founder of CleanConnect.ai.  Our software suite is the only government-approved AI solution that can replace human leak-detection-and-repair operators for oil & gas companies. Mark is also the host of Digital Roughnecks, a video podcast for energy executives.  Mark previously launched Windows NT Magazine, with 1.5M IT professionals subscribers in 160 countries. "[EPA regulations will] add at least 1.4 to 1.6 million more inspections across all the operators, which is a 471% increase. I estimate it'll cost them about $831 million to do that. So that's a biggie, right? 3500 new trained LDAR inspectors." Mark is quite used to putting out predictions about the future, and in this episode we discuss five predictions that Mark forecasts for the oil and gas industry.  Here are the 5 predictions: Energy demand will continue to grow, but some energy products, notably LNG, will experience hypergrowth. Energy regulations coming on stream will drive a huge ramp up of energy inspections, and with it, the need for inspectors. Talent shortages will not only persist but will worsen as US industry reacts to the Inflation Reduction Act, pulling talent into new sectors. Proof of emissions will become mandatory for anyone selling energy products (gas, oil, LNG) Energy companies embrace new technologies, notably AI-enabled computer vision, to cope with the talent shortfall and regulatory growth.  Mark elaborates on these predictions with examples and anecdotes from his ongoing work and experiences in the industry.  USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhoustonsmith/ Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clean-connect/ Website:   https://www.EPACheatSheet.com  

A town in British Columbia can’t seem to muster the business case to purchase electric vehicles. What lessons does this hold for business leaders facing similar technology upgrade decisions? After the usual fiscal deliberations, Administration has recommended to Council that the town stick with the status quo gasoline models for now, rather than plunking down for newer more expensive electric vehicles, based on the acquisition cost of the vehicles. It’s not a big purchase, just two trucks, but the saga illustrates the challenges that await all businesses, not just small municipalities, about facing up to the pressures of decarbonization and digitalization. The CFO, and their organization define the swim lanes, set the rules, dictate the parameters (such as interest rates and carbon prices), and manage the overall process. At what point do you make jump from dirty to clean and from dumb to smart? For businesses, that decision is clearly hard to make. It’s going to be up to the CFOs to change the way capital decisions are taken so that we accelerate our way to a digital energy future.  

"The way we're looking at it right now is to bring balance by not consuming. That means that your car has been planned to charge during the night. But the grid operator says that there's an imbalance on the market. And then by not charging those 500,000 cars, we’re actually delivering energy to the markets and therefore a gas fired plant doesn't have to turn on." In this episode, I’m in conversation with Nick Verhoeven who is the strategic accounts manager for Jedlix. The energy stored in the battery in the average vehicle is 10 days worth of power for the average house if you exclude energy for heat. "Power within your house for a whole day is just 10% of your car battery. And then the day after, you can just ride back to work, charge your car, again, probably solar power from the roof of your office and do the same thing again, tomorrow if necessary." EVs both expand the demand on the grid but also create an entirely new energy customer relationship, which is up for grabs. We talk through what this means, and the implications for fuel retailers.   "Imagine you're a car brand and you want to really encapsulate your customer, and you want to really be close to them, and you sell them an electric vehicle that you want to help them charge as clean as possible. Because if not, he's going to find it somewhere else, and you lose this customer touchpoint." Nick Verhoeven is a Strategic Accounts Manager with Jedlix, a smart meter technology company based in the Netherlands. From his first career in energy sales at an oil and gas major, Nick became increasingly exposed to renewable energy, and transitioned to the world of electric vehicles (EV) which do not use hydrocarbon fuels. "Don't forget, an electric car uses pretty much the same amount of power in a year as a house does. So having a household with an electric car pretty much means two clients [for a power utility]." His energy background is an asset in navigating the world of EV, which is more complex and multi-party than fossil fuel markets. At Jedlix he is responsible for building out the market for vehicle energy management solutions.  USEFUL LINKS LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):  Personal: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nickverhoeven90 Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10317294/admin/ Facebook pages: https://www.facebook.com/Jedlix/ Website:  For businesses: https://www.jedlix.com/ For consumers: https://www.jedlix.com/evdrivers  

An ad campaign asks the provocative question: if oil and gas came with a label, what would it say? The Canadian Energy Center (CEC), a government-owned corporation, is tasked with promoting Canada as a supplier of choice for responsibly produced energy. The country’s energy industry (oil, gas, power) prides itself on its ability to meet the highest regulatory standards, its track record on environmental performance, and the general transparency of its operations, but lacks a means to give voice to these accomplishments without sounding self-serving. The CEC helps solve for this gap, and to counter the many voices keen to sway public and political opinion to oppose the energy industry in all aspects of its business. Fortunately, the wave of digital innovations that have transformed many other markets (financial services, telecoms, entertainment), is about to have the same positive impacts on energy. The building blocks that enable democratic choice for energy products enabled by labelling energy are falling into place. These components—internet of things, cloud computing, blockchain—allow for the tracking and tracing of energy products completely throughout their independent and increasingly interconnected value chains. I ask why energy doesn’t come with a label, and how to give it one.

Digital transformation has been sweeping across society for over a decade now, and has finally arrived in oil and gas. Digital has been a thing in our society now for over a decade. Digital businesses and models have so thoroughly permeated our daily personal lives that we are startled when we encounter the odd business that is still operating as if smart phones and websites don’t exist. For oil and gas companies, the industrial logic of digital adoption is now both economic and existential. Digital pays for itself in cost, productivity and emissions gains, and without it, industry has little chance to attract the talent and capital it needs to evolve and adopt new business models.  If oil and gas doesn’t actuate its culture to embrace digital with urgency, it becomes increasingly difficult to attract capital, and impossible to attract talent. Fortunately, capital markets have not declared any energy company yet in a break out from the pack, so there is time. There is no Tesla yet among energy majors. New business models await. Our sluggish response so far needs a boost of urgency.