"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. The administration of the rules of use and access, called entitlements, are contracted between companies, but administering those contracts is very hard because of the nature of seismic data. Blockchain technology presents a very attractive solution, reducing process times to seconds (vs months and years for the status quo).

"You can think of it as like a registry that you can trust. And because it exists on the blockchain, it's kind of neutral. It's not held by one party, and it's not owned by anyone."

Victor Wong is a serial entrepreneur and recognized thought-leader in the blockchain space. In his current role as Chief Product Officer & Founder at BlockApps, Victor has helped define the STRATO architecture to solve key blockchain issues of permissioning, data privacy, and enterprise-level performance.

"The best thing that a startup has, in their complex world, is speed of execution. That's your one advantage, because there are always going to be bigger companies, there are always going to be people that have more resources, but the bigger you are, the slower you make decisions."

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 
• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vic4wong/
• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockapps/
• Twitter handles:
• @blockapps
• Website: 
•  https://blockapps.net/

Gasoline prices have been off the charts volatile for the past several weeks. Excess volatility will be an unpleasant feature for western markets for just 20 more years.

Gosh, but gasoline prices are elevated. Like record-setting elevated.

Car owners grumble about the high cost of fuel, yet people are furiously driving around, rental cars are scarce, new car lots are sparse, and used cars are in short supply. I have yet to even meet anyone in my circle who has put their F150 up for sale.

And so, I see three questions worth pondering:

1. Why did prices rise so quickly?
2. When will prices come down?
3. Is price volatility the new normal?

"You can't really connect the dots moving forward, but you can connect them backwards once you make sense of it."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Christian Retek who is the Chief Revenue Officer at Flutura. The topic is ‘process engineer meets data science’. You can substitute any engineering discipline for process engineering, and the concepts in this episode still hold—how do you introduce data science ideas and solutions into highly risk-averse, change-hesitant industries like oil and gas?

"I describe processing engineering as the understanding and application of the fundamental principles and laws of nature that allow humans to transform raw material and energy into products that are useful to society."

Christian Retek is currently serving as the Chief Revenue Officer at Flutura and is a specialist in designing scalable, replicable sales processes for digital innovations across Education, Defense, Construction & Oil & Gas. Flutura helps refineries, gas processing & chemical manufacturing plants successfully automate the prediction of equipment failures, process upsets and swings in quality using their aggregate plant data & camera footage. 

"Our goal here is to enable people with the insights that they can make, so they get to be the heroes."

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 
• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianretek/
• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flutura/
• Twitter handles:
• @revenuedrivers
• @fluturads
• Website: 
•  http://www.flutura.com/
• http://www.reliability.flutura.com/

“For anyone to succeed in this space, they have to really think about the design for the real world: how it's going day in and day out, how it will survive, and how it will be maintained.”

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Lenny Shaver, who is Director of Strategic Marketing at Advanced Energy, in the critical sensing and control product group. Sensor technology, the source of data for digital business, is rapidly evolving. New use cases are appearing that improve safety and enhance process integrity and reliability. We’ll talk more about where this technology is headed.

"Something that actually is the most exciting is to get Operations' feedback when we deploy this, because for anyone to succeed in this space, they have to really think about the design for the real world: how it's going day in and day out, how will it survive, and how not to be a maintenance nightmare for the operations crew."

Mr. Shaver has been with Advanced Energy (AE) in a variety of engineering, product development, product management and strategic roles for more than 25 years.  Today Mr. Shaver is the Director, Strategic Marketing for AE’s Critical Sensing and Control business unit. AE offers innovative sensing technologies and software used by industrial plants to improve process control and to automatically detect deviations. Taking advantage of AE’s broad experience, he works to guide developments that enable users to deploy sensors with real-world payback.

"You do need to find a champion at the site who really is willing to stick their neck out a little bit, and try something new or get it approved."

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):
  • Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenny-shaver-10a3781/
  • Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10545
• Twitter handles:
  • @AdvEnergy
  • @
• Facebook pages:
  • https://www.facebook.com/advenergyinc
• Website:
  • https://www.advancedenergy.com/

As the world moves to electrify its transportation services, it will slightly turn away from oil, and dramatically towards an alternate range of commodities, leading to new and different supply risks and opportunities.

Electric power plants, motors and generators are well proven technologies, and the techniques for manufacturing electric systems are well understood. Not much novelty there. R&D in batteries continues apace. The problem is that the raw materials for a wholesale shift to battery electric transportation may not be in sufficient supply to meet the potential demand. And it’s not just lithium that may be a problem.

Theres also copper, nickel, cobalt, and other rare Earth metals. 

Resource producing countries face unique opportunities to capture the high value commodities of the future. Or they can face a series of helium-like moments. It’s not too late to chose.

"So you come in with something innovative, right? You come in with with a digital solution. And one of the very first things we hear when you're deploying something digital, again, is, hey, look at it sounds great once you get the data in there, but I'm wearing all this PPE, I'm wearing gloves or oil spray, and all over the place. It's hot."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Rudy de Anda, who is head of Strategic Alliances with Stratus Technologies. The industrial internet of things coupled with edge computing is set to transform legacy oil and gas environments that have been to date resistant to much improvement. Digital technologies that have matured for applications in areas such as finance are now ready for deployment in sectors requiring high availability and high reliability. Rudy goes over a case example in the offshore that shows the power of newer digital infrastructure.

"Where does the innovation fit in with the workflow processes that exist today? I s this really going to help my operators? Or is this just going to be something else that they have to maintain, work around to get their job done?"

Rudy de Anda is the Head of Strategic Alliances for Stratus focused on driving new alliance relationships in the Industrial Automation and Edge markets. Rudy is responsible for driving strategy, go to market plans, and the development of new alliance relationships. Rudy has deep industry expertise in industrial automation, technical sales and business development. He is a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas where he earned a Bachelor’s degree of Business Administration in Economics with a focus on International Business.

"And if the input is digital, from one end of it is digital, but the output is physical, then you're at the edge. Typically, if it's digital in digital out, you've got some more leeway for failures, leeway for decision making time, latency. But really, when you're looking at the edge, and you've got a digital input, and being processed, and then a physical output, the physical world doesn't stop, it doesn't stop working, a pump doesn't stop turning."

Links:

• LinkedIn profiles:
  • Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudy-de-anda-378b7412/
• Twitter handles:
  • @StratusAlwaysOn
• Website:
  • https://www.stratus.com/industry/oil-gas/midstream/
  • https://www.stratus.com/industry/oil-gas/upstream/
  • https://resource.stratus.com/case-study/enginuity-global/ 

With carbon increasingly on the corporate agenda, how can CFOs turn what looks like a huge liability into a fantastic opportunity.

This is the conclusion to a two-part series on the impact that society’s new emphasis on carbon emissions will have on the corporate Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

In Part 1 of this series, I highlighted the many ways that carbon-related issues will have in disrupting the usual nighttime slumber of the oil and gas CFO. Suffice to say, it’s one hot mess. There’s not one aspect of the job of the CFO that is untouched by carbon, which isn’t really a surprise when a new and costly commodity suddenly shows up at the party.

CFOs are being asked to do something they never planned to do, their organizations don’t have the skills to handle the problem, and they’re being asked to deal with it everywhere and immediately. Of course, one company’s problem is often another company’s treasure. How can the CFO turn this huge liability and risk into a growth opportunity?

There is a gap in the energy market for companies to carve out for themselves a carbon-as-positive positioning that is counter to the predominant market narrative of carbon-as-negative. Rather than being scared shirtless, CFOs should view carbon as a transformation catalyst.

Duration: 13m 09s

"The network people are worried about data being stolen. The engineers are worried about a process being affected. This is where our big difference lies."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Joe Weiss, who is the Managing Partner, of Applied Control Solutions, and Managing Director of ISA99. The ISA99 committee establishes standards and practices for defining procedures for implementing electronically secure manufacturing and control systems and security practices and assessing electronic security performance. A mouthful, but a cyber expert. We discuss the impacts that cyber problems are having on the oil and gas industry.

"[Cyber is] electronic communication between systems where people and systems that affects confidentiality, integrity, or availability. The point being nowhere in that definition, is the word malicious ever used."

"Cyber became an IT issue, which is what we’re dealing with, to this day."

Joe Weiss is an expert on control system cyber security. He has published over 80 papers on instrumentation and control systems, control system cyber security, book chapters on cyber security for electric substations, water/wastewater, data centers, and cyber policy, and authored Protecting Industrial Control Systems from Electronic Threats. He is an ISA Fellow, Managing Director of ISA99, a Ponemon Institute Fellow, and an IEEE Senior Member. He was featured in Richard Clarke’s book- Warning – Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes. He has patents on instrumentation, control systems, and OT networks, is a registered professional engineer and has CISM and CRISC certifications.

"Y2K. Because they knew exactly when it was going to end and what it was, there was a law that basically made all officers and directors personally liable. And because of that, a personal silos came down personally liable for what exactly? Anything that would occur from Y2K."

Links:

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business):
  • Personal: https://https://www.linkedin.com/in/joew1
• Website:
  • http://www.controlglobal.com/unfettered
• Book
  • http://www.momentumpress.net/books/protecting-industrial-control-systems-electronic-threats

Carbon pressures are mounting and it’s the Chief Financial Officer who is the most alarmed about carbon impacts on the business. And they’re right to be concerned.

Global interest in all things carbon is keeping CFOs up at night. No, that’s not quite correct—it’s terrifying them beyond reason. And it has to. Every year the price of carbon keeps rising, companies are struggling to hit their carbon targets, and the curve keeps getting steeper and steeper. Miss your 4% target this year and next year it rises to 5%. Just consider some of the implications on the captains of money trying to come to grips with a gas that you can’t see, and you’ll start to feel for them.

Part 1 of 2

"I felt the industry needed a more advanced methods of determining outcomes before millions of dollars were spent..."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Jon Ludwig who is the President and co-founder of Novi Labs,  a data platform for the upstream oil and gas industry. Jon is a serial entrepreneur with a background in finance and oil and gas, who was struck by the challenge facing on-shore oil and gas producers when they allocate capital to well programs. Legacy ways of forecasting well performance and optimal well delivery, based on one or two wells at a time, simply don’t work when operators are aiming for 500 well manufacturing programs. Using new tools and methods to aggregate data and machine learning algorithms to crunch the numbers, NoviLabs helps improve capital allocation and economic performance of the industry. 

"Secure energy independence is really important. It's fundamental. Everyone likes to know that when they flip the light switch, the lights are gonna go on. But for some of us that live in Texas, there is a period where the lights didn't go on for a whole week in 2021. We had no lights, no power, no water. And suddenly people knew what it was like to not have energy independence right or not have a reliable infrastructure."

Jon Ludwig is the President and co-founder of Novi Labs, a software company that develops a machine learning driven software platform that drives improvement in economic outcomes for upstream oil & gas companies and investors.

Prior to Novi, Mr. Ludwig was a Director at Hess Corporation where he founded the company’s data analytics program, which gave rise to a move of critical business systems to the AWS Cloud, and unlocking the concept of a  next generation platform for upstream oil & gas predictive analytics.

Jon has also worked at Cap Gemini as a Principal leading the Enterprise Portal and Search practice, as a Partner for iPath Solutions in Houston, and as Founder and CEO of eLinear, a publicly traded software company based in Boulder CO.

"Our products act, and our data acts as an advisor that informs the design of the drilling program? Meaning, how far apart? How many wells? Do you stack horizontally? How do you stagger them? Or how do you complete the wells?"

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 
• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonvludwig/
• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/novilabs/
• Website: 
•  Https://novilabs.com