Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

I accept the science of climate change and that  human activity  is having an effect on the climate. I also observe that the fossil fuel industry has been instrumental in  bringing prosperity  to much human existence. If your goal is to  tackle climate change  with all the tools at your disposal, what  digital tools  should hold a spot in your arsenal? Duration: 11m 27s

Analytics  are now  de rigeur  in many industries.  Alberta's oil and gas sector has all the  characteristics  to make it an ideal place to apply analytics to its key problems.  In my view, there are  eight big categories of performance optimisation available by applying analytics. Duration: 11m 21s  

With the  Canadian pipeline industry  struggling to gain speedy approval for new infrastructure, the  oil industry  is turning to  rail transportation . The rail  network  is very  extensive , with lines reaching out into every nook and cranny of the country. Could  digital innovation  make a difference to rail's performance? Duration: 10m 20s

We don't trust machines…and we will need to change that. Kevin Frankowski, a  specialist  in helping companies with  innovation , and I are exploring the evolving  world of work . We see the early signs of how  work is changing  as we increase the level of  automation  in the work place. We question the  readiness of industry  to address these changes and the attitudes of workers towards rising le...

How  susceptible  is the  Alberta business model  to disruption from  digital innovation ? Much of my  professional career  has been spent toiling in Alberta's oil sector, and the sector is facing a  compounding set of headwinds  that show few signs of eventual abatement. A few  digital technologies  will be key to helping the Alberta business model react to  primary disruptions  by targeting cost...

Data  is emerging as the new  unspoken battleground  for oil and gas  supremacy .  The oil and gas industry is exceptionally  data rich , and generates terabytes by the minute. Why is this happening and should it be a concern ? I clearly see the emerging outline of a  war for data. Duration: 10m 52s

How do you know if your  organization  is  ready  to embark on changes enabled by  digital innovation ? Why not collect some data? As you work on a digital strategy, you need to get a handle on how ready your organization is to cope with the outcomes of the digital strategy, and for this  you need data .  Duration: 9m 26s

Algorithms , a kind of  artificial intelligence , are going to struggle to get off the ground in oil and gas. New technologies introduce  fresh uncertainties  into this stable world. Here's why , and what management can do to give AI wings . Duration: 10m 10s

Oil   is used by some  nations  to  project influence  and power, and is a  national security concern  for most others. I can see  digital  playing increasingly into the  geopolitical world  of oil and with unpredictable effects . If you don't pay that much attention to the shadowy world of  oil politics , here's a short primer of the kinds of things that international  oil analysts  consider, wit...

What if a  sensor  could not only record  purely visual  activity in the real world, but could also  interpret  and then  take action  based on what it sees? Could this capability be exploited in oil and gas? Where would such  visual analytics  find a home in oil and gas? I see the key benefits in  improving safety  and  compliance  at  lower cost , improving operational  effectiveness  at lower c...

The oil and gas industry is clearly into  digital innovation , but if this was like a  baseball game , what  inning  are we in? I was invited to address  ARC Financial's CEO Summit  on the impacts of  digital innovation  in oil and gas. They asked me how I would compare the  adoption  of digital innovation to a  baseball game ; well, I know a thing or two about baseball, so game on!

What is the  future  of  oil and gas  in an increasingly  digital  world? This technology paints an  exciting  and  teasing  future, but we need to  embrace  several  difficult   changes  laid out in front of us. In today's podcast, I will present a keynote address that I gave to the Alberta Internet of Things Conference in Calgary this past week. In it, I talk about where IoT fits in to the Oil a...

What can  small and medium-sized upstream oil and gas companies  do to take advantage of a more digital world, if anything? D igital innovation  is often portrayed as the purview of only  very large  oil and gas concerns, who have the  big budgets , large teams and ample resources to devote to digital. It's time to challenge that image.     Duration: 10m 46s

Digital  innovations  are upending some of the most  deeply held  and long standing  orthodoxies  of our modern life . Uber is just one example but there are many more . Many of the orthodoxies in  oil and gas  are ready to tumble too.   Duration: 10m 39s

When I was  growing up,  I always wanted to get behind the controls of some piece of  earth moving equipment . I also recently watched training videos  featuring  augmented and virtual reality , and concluded that the  training simulator  in the video above has it  backwards  now .  It teaches humans how to  manipulate  the arms of the  machine,  rather than having humans  teach  the  machine  how...

Once a week (it seems), someone asks me how they can  transition  their oil and gas  career  into  digital . The upturn in  prices  has not translated into more  jobs  or industrial  expansion  the way it used to. By  marrying  your current deep  know-how  and skill set in  oil and gas  with the scarce skills of  digital,  you can create a unique  combination. Duration: 10m 51s

This week I sit down with Brad Raabis , VP of Pipeline Enterprise at Metegrity Inc. Metegrity specializes in quality and asset integrity management solutions from the wellhead to the shipping terminal . In this episode we discuss the kinds of challenges facing the pipeline industry and some of the solutions that the industry needs.  Duration : 39m 13s

Along with my co-author, Rachael Goydan , I've written a new book about the impact of digital on oil and gas . Called " Bits, Bytes, and Barrels: The Digital Transformation of Oil and Gas ", it is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca . It's already been recognized as the #1 Best Seller on Amazon.ca in the Energy and Mines segment.  This podcast is a summary of the book, what issues it addresses a...

Pipeline companies lag other network asset operators in adopting the digital innovations that lead to greater autonomous operations. That could change. Duration: 11m 25s

I've been working at the intersection of Digital and Oil and Gas for over 2 years, and certain patterns keep repeating themselves— sensors generating so much data that they outstrip human-level tools to analyse, robots working optimally with high quality operational and commercial data , and cloud computing environments appearing virtually everywhere in tandem with digital innovation.   Duration :...

This week I sit down with Todd Luker , founder of Zeel GIS Solutions ,  in a conversation about pipeline integrity , pipeline monitoring and the challenges of managing large scale geographically distributed assets .  Duration : 27m 21s

So you've been asked to carry out a review of a digital strategy , but you have no idea where to start. What makes a strategy "good"? That happened to me recently when a company asked me to do exactly that. Here's how I approached it.   Duration : 10m 23s  

This week I sit down with Nav Dhunay , one of Calgary's leading technology entrepreneurs , innovators, mentors and company founders, on the power of ecosystems and why they are so important for start up success .  Duration : 18m 13s 

Are you wondering what a bot is and whether the bots are gunning for your job ? A category of digital technology called robotic process automation (or RPA ) is finally making its debut in oil and gas. It's not like this is a new invention—these kinds of tools evolved in the late 1990's. But now they're here.  Duration : 9m 56s

Artificial intelligence is already having three pretty dramatic impacts on oil and gas. First, AI is being applied to subsurface data and petroleum engineers are confidently expanding the amount of oil and gas that is recoverable. Second, AI is helping reduce demand for fossil fuels by transforming transportation markets . Third, AI is reducing costs and improving productivity throughout productio...