Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

Oil and gas companies are finally confronting the huge communications and stakeholder challenge they face with their asset owners and stakeholders. Production assets such as oil and gas wells almost always have many part owners (land owners, JV partners, interest-holders, trusts, first nations tribes). Managing these hundreds or thousands of parties across tens of thousands of wells is really dema...

Latin America is entering a period of rapid economic growth , urbanization, and industrial expansion. Unlike North America and Europe, where primary energy demand has been flat for more than a decade, the region's energy consumption is rising sharply . A young, increasingly urban population is pushing electricity and fuel demand higher, placing new pressure on infrastructure and supply. This deman...

Electricity powers nearly everything in oil and gas, from pumps and motors, to compressors and digital systems. But while production engineers obsess over volumes and temperatures, the quality of the electricity driving their systems is often overlooked. Most teams only discover power issues   after equipment fails, leading to unplanned downtime and costly repairs. Unfortunately, traditional power...

In all my years of experience in energy , I rarely worked in pure regulatory areas, but regulations loomed large over everything I touched. The energy sector is very highly regulated , and for very good reasons. From environmental standards to carbon pricing , energy companies are held to a high standard and must demonstrate that compliance to operate locally, regionally, and globally. The regulat...

In the UK oil and gas sector, the record on major accidents looks encouraging. Serious incidents are very rare , and the industry appears to be operating safely . Beneath the surface, the data tell a different story. One-third of safety inspections fall below the legal standard , and more than half of process-safety professionals are expected to retire within the next decade. At the same time, age...

Unconventional oil and gas is massive . Every year, over $100 billion is poured into steel, sand, and water just in Canada and the US. Yet, most of the planning behind these extraordinary investments still runs on Excel spreadsheets . Spreadsheets were fine in the 90s, but today they struggle to handle the complex interdependencies and real-world constraints of modern tight plays. The hidden cost...

Oil and gas operations rely on heavy machinery and equipment that perform critical tasks , yet most of this equipment remains disconnected from the digital landscape of cloud computing, analytics, and autonomy. This lack of connectivity leaves operators with higher costs , inefficient maintenance , and limited visibility into how their assets are really performing. The traditional approach to equi...

Scheduling in oil and gas has long been a weak link . Wells, rigs, frack crews, contractors , and regulators must all line up in precise sequence, but too often the "system" is stitched together with Excel spreadsheets , siloed tools , and a lot of human memory . The result is inefficiencies , costly delays , and endless arguments in daily meetings. That model is no longer good enough. The complex...

The oil and gas industry generates extraordinary amounts of data from millions of sensors, yet only a tiny fraction , at most  8%, is actually used to inform decisions on complex and valuable assets. Decades of building analytics and machine learning solutions have helped, but they've also left companies with a patchwork of siloed systems and "industrial gridlock ." The arrival of foundation model...

Water is the unsung workhorse of the oil and gas industry. It's instrumental for generating steam , driving b, lubricating drill bits , flooding reservoirs , and separating oil from oil sands . Historically it's been cheap, plentiful, and overlooked. As climate pressures mount and scarcity becomes real, water is now emerging as one of the industry's most critical resources . Water isn't just anoth...

The  industrial sector faces a growing challenge: how to train a rapidly evolving , inexperienced workforce to safely and effectively operate aging and complex infrastructure . Traditional training tools like PowerPoint presentations and passive classroom learning no longer cut it, especially in high-risk environments like oil refineries and offshore rigs . Enter immersive training platforms —tool...

In energy and manufacturing , vast volumes of unstructured data (think  OEM manuals,   maintenance logs, shift notes, correspondence, procedures), sit largely untapped. For decades, experienced technicians have compensated by carrying critical knowledge in their heads. But with retirements accelerating and fewer seasoned workers on the front line , this model is breaking down.  New large language...

Why is a pug named Phoebe likely more qualified than your frontline crew?  In the oil and gas industry, online training and certification have become the norm. Let's agree it's convenient, cost-effective, and scalable. But what if the people taking that training are subverting the training using AI , or aren't people at all? Digital tools, especially generative AI, are now being misused to automat...

The oil and gas industry has   invested heavily in  new  digital technologies,  but  too many e fforts   fall short in value delivery. However compelling digital initiatives may seem, they will assuredly flounder if workers are unable or unwilling to adopt them.  The c hallenge  lies in the way  asset centric  organizations   tend to  approach change .  Leaders  o ften seek  rapid results   that w...

The energy industry is having a moment . As assets become digitized , operations increasingly automated , molecules displaced for electrons , and capital more discerning, the biggest challenge is now people , instead of engineering. Specifically, where will the next generation of digitally fluent energy professionals come from?   At the same time, academic institutions , whose mission is to delive...

Heavy industry runs on complex systems and distributed assets, but frontline workers are often still armed with paper manuals and radios. It works, but yields an unacceptably high level of i nconsistencies , safety incidents, and productivity bottlenecks . And as experienced workers retire, critical knowledge about systems, assets, and good practice disappears. The shift to digital work execution...

The traditional model of hydrocarbon exploration has transitioned in much of North America, replaced by exploitation of known shale and tight resources. For shale players, exploration is seen as more risky, expensive, and slow than pursuing resource play.  Classic geochemical methods , reliant on sample collection and lab analysis, can't keep up with the need for real-time decision-making. Helium...

In the world of  oil and gas operations , edge devices are  mission-critical. These compact, intelligent sensors operate in  the most extreme of environments, such as remote drill sites, deep wells, and hostile landscapes, where they continuously collect operational data. Best in class operators don't just throw digital at the field. They prioritize efficiency , reliability , and integrity at the...

The global upstream oil and gas sector is confronting a mounting crisis —access to capital . For over a decade, international producers, especially small- and mid-cap firms, have faced shrinking pools of funding as banks exit the space and public equity markets falter. Traditional sources of capital have dwindled, leaving many promising ventures stranded without the financial fuel they need to gro...

In the upstream oil and gas sector, frontline operations have long depended on manual methods for information management, such as clipboards, spreadsheets , and disconnected tools. These outdated processes persist despite mounting pressure to improve efficiency and cut costs. But with today's margin compression , regulatory scrutiny, and demographic changes , that operational model is no longer su...

Mid-sized oil and gas companies are now at a digital crossroads. While supermajors have pushed forward with large-scale transformation programs, many mid-market firms are only beginning to explore how digital innovation can improve performance. Their operational processes—budgeting, forecasting, asset planning—tend to mirror those of larger firms but constrained by fewer resources and less interna...

The oil and gas industry is sitting on a ticking environmental and financial liability. Around the world, millions of wells have been drilled to date, many more will be drilled, and all will eventually need to be plugged and abandoned . Today, the US alone has thousands of orphaned and marginal wells, many leaking methane , a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. With underfun...

The  oil market is once again bracing for change, with OPEC signaling their interest in unlocking supply that has been withheld. For  producers , this looming oversupply translates into a fresh imperative: cut costs . The  oil and gas sector , long accustomed to volatility , must now sharpen its cost control strategies in the face of intensifying pressure on margins .  Matthew Hatami , a professio...

For decades, hydraulic fracturing—or fracking —has relied heavily on water and sand to crack underground rock and release oil and gas. Fracking is safe , proven, and reliable , and in collaboration with horizontal drilling , has resulted in the huge growth in hydro carbon production in the US and Canada.    But fresh water is a scarce resource particularly in arid settings, and in many places unde...

Despite covering over 70% of our planet , the oceans and seas remain largely unmapped and poorly understood . Collecting useable data about the oceans is hard and expensive--reliant on specialized costly vessels, old-school technologies, and plenty of labour . The comparison to land mapping technologies (like Google Earth) is  stark --we have near-total visibility of land-based infrastructure, con...