Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

"It is very similar to what we've been doing an oil gas for many years, in an exploration sense. The mindset is there's risk. At the beginning... you look at data." In this episode, I'm in conversation with Patrick Ng, the CEO and Founder of ShaleForce, a geothermal company, on generative AI and how it has been used by ShaleForce. If we drill deep enough, we will find geothermal resources, but not...

I admit it. I'm an energy industry junkie. My news feeds are chock full of energy stories, I chase down obscure items that interest me, and I scrutinize energy industry changes to understand their hidden meanings and bigger implications. It's for this reason that every year around this time, I step back from the task of satisfying my daily energy news fix and focus instead on the many bigger swing...

"There's a move towards digital transformation. And there's two aspects of that. There's digitisation and there's digitalization." "If it's digitized, you're simply taking, like a hardcopy, and you're scanning it near attaching it to a record of some sort." "By digitalizing, it, I'm actually putting it in a format that the computer can process. It's much more efficient..." In this episode, I'm in...

There are a handful of oil and gas industry conferences ( ADIPEC ,  Gastech ,  CERAWeek ) that are distinguished by their global nature, the topics being discussed, the scale of their trade show floors, and their enduring focus.  Gastech  is one of the biggest and best of the lot. I first came across Gastech in 2015 when I was living in Australia, and the Gastech conference was then being held in...

The world is getting a stark lesson on energy geopolitics and energy security in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It's useful from time to time to view the decisions that major energy exporting nations are making that impact the energy security profile of consumer nations, and the risks of man-made catastrophic supply disruption, including the aftermath of the pandemic and the Russian invasi...

"The kind of customer centric focus, despite the industries being so different, [means] that the customer has a need for an easy to use interface and fully supported software as a service that has no downtime, because the people have no downtime either." In this episode, I'm in conversation with Kate Allen, who is the Product Manager, PetroChemical Division for TruSolutions. Kate's team focuses on...

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 internati...

"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 i...

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...

"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 compani...

"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 rememb...

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 vehi...

"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 conversati...

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 enviro...

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 a...

Plug And Play, a well regarded technology incubator from Silicon Valley has announced a new cohort of Sustainability start ups that they will guide through their process. They help run innovation programs for corporates and accelerator programs for startups, across a suite of industries, including energy. You might recognize some of the small brands that they've nurtured — Google ,  PayPal , and ...

My first book, ' Bits, Bytes, and Barrels: The Digital Transformation of Oil and Gas ', set out the business case for the oil and gas industry to adopt digital innovations to lower costs and improve asset productivity. It described a way for oil and gas companies to develop digital strategy, but was relatively light on the how of digital adoption, reflecting the industry's relatively low level of...

An oft-identified barrier to adopting digital innovations in oil and gas is that the data is too 'dirty'. But is it true? It's not at all surprising that the data assets of oil and gas companies are viewed with suspicion by those tasked with figuring out how to exploit digital, and by extension, data. Much of that data originates in places that are cold, dark, wet and muddy. It's easy to assume th...

" For emissions in the sector that we studied, the 80/20 rule really applied, because it was 80% of the emissions coming from 20% of the facilities...For those 20% it was generally not the case that there wasn't an easy fix—better maintenance programs, or just even having an operator drive by and unstick a valve." In this episode, I'm in conversation with Austin Mitchell, the CEO and co-founder of...

Hydrogen is suddenly the sexiest commodity on earth, with even staid German statesmen visiting Canada of all places to ask for a piece of the action. For regular readers of this podcast, you'll know that I'm an advocate for energy in general, and a pragmatist or realist when it comes to energy planning and delivery. I don't pick sides as I believe we need all of all when it comes to meeting the pl...

The front line worker in oil and gas has been overlooked in the drive to bring digital innovation to the industry.  The career success for this group of employees is likely linked to how well they stay abreast of important developments in the industry, from the impacts of new regulations dealing with climate change to the changing energy demand and supply patterns driven by the war in Europe. To a...

" We estimate that potentially 25 to 30% of the overall effort on  smaller brownfield projects is in just trying to find reliable records that can be edited and updated to address whatever project you're trying to do." In this episode, I'm in conversation with Scott Mussbacher, who is the Systems Integration Business Unit Manager at Vista Projects, an engineering, procurement and construction comp...

Incoming waves of new digital innovations promise to transform a hidden but important business model embedded throughout oil and gas—the ERP platform. You might not know this, but many years ago, when I was on my way to becoming a partner with  Deloitte , I studied how to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) technologies, specifically PeopleSoft. I took a number of courses at their offices...

Is Canada really a plausible supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European markets? I spent four years working on the Australian LNG export businesses, and wrote 200+ articles about the global LNG trade, how it works, what's needed for success, and how to be competitive. An LNG supply window has just opened but how well is Canada equipped to supply? The enthusiasm for Canada to step up and b...

" We don't lead with Blockchain, we lead with the value." In this episode, I'm in conversation with Victor Wong, who is the Chief Product Officer and Founder of BlockApps, on the problem of seismic entitlement management for upstream oil and gas companies. Seismic data is long life, frequently changes hands, very high value, multi-format, and gains in value as interpretation technology advances. T...