Where are oil and gas prices going, and why. That’s the focus of this wide-ranging interview I had with Andrew Botterill, head of Deloitte’s chemicals and oil and gas industry vertical. Deloitte produces a regular price forecast for oil and gas, and we provide the context, covering the turmoil and volatility in global markets, heavily influenced by geopolitical conflicts and policy shifts. 

We touch on the adoption of sustainable practices, including hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels. Policy moves, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, create both challenges and opportunities in the U.S., but with ramifications globally, particularly from major consuming geographies, incuding the EU and Asia. 

We also discuss the future of energy demand in growth economies like India and continental Africa, highlighting the complex relationship between advancing technology and addressing energy poverty. Digital technology plays a key role in enhancing cost efficiency, resilience, and safety within the industry, setting the stage for a more sustainable and flexible energy landscape.

Additional Tools & Resources:

🎬 Go behind the scenes of my studio to see how it works: 👉https://geoffreycann.com/resources/

 🎓 Take my one day digital strategy training course for oil and gas:
👉 https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185

You might find this related article of interest!

👉    https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/my-digital-oil-and-gas-outlook-for

Connect with Me!

🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/
🎧 Podcast: https://geoffreycann.com/broadcast/
📇 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/training-digital-oil-gas/
🤬 X: https://twitter.com/geoffreycann

Contacts for Lectures and Keynotes: 

I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs. Click here 👉 https://geoffreycann.com/contact/

Disclaimer: 

The views expressed in this video are those of the speakers and do not constitute professional advice. 

Contacting the Guest

Andrew Botterill

📧email : abotterill@deloitte.ca

AI innovations are helping transform regulatory processes by providing access to data that has been beyond analytical reach. AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, and CoPilot are revolutionizing how energy firms and professionals tackle complex regulatory data, especially in sectors like energy infrastructure. These generative AI tools ingest the huge volume of documents and commentary associated with energy infrastructure submissions to regulators (briefs, complaints, dockets, applications), providing fresh insight into what makes for a successful application, and why some fail to gain acceptance. These tools also transform the way experts prepare regulatory documents, analyze dynamic regulatory environments, and address energy transition policies like those outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act.

In this podcast, I help you understand the business value from AI gained from analyzing regulatory content and creating new, efficient pathways for submissions and compliance. If you're an energy industry professional, regulator, or advocate interested in understanding how AI can be used in regulatory areas, this podcast will be very helpful.

Additional Tools & Resources:
🎬 Check out my studio and how it works
👉 https://geoffreycann.com/resources/

🎓 Take my one day digital strategy training course for oil and gas:
👉 https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185

You might find my various articles on AI of interest!
👉 https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/how-to-successfully-introduce-ai-into-oil-and-gas
👉 https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/oil-and-gas-wises-up-to-artificial-intelligence
👉 https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/learning-to-live-with-generative

Connect with Me

🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/
🎧 Podcast: https://geoffreycann.com/broadcast/
📇 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/training-digital-oil-gas/
🤬 X: https://twitter.com/geoffreycann

Contact for Lectures and Keynotes:

I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs. Click here 👉 https://geoffreycann.com/contact/

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not constitute professional advice.

Download the Transcript!

Want the actual script that this podcast is based on? You can download the transcript for this podcast here:
👉 https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/how-ai-tools-help-capture-hidden

In the US lower 48 states, between $200 billion and $400 billion are spent in the supply chain every year and are still run with practices designed decades ago. The energy sector's supply chain is broken and needs a new vision to take it to the next level.

In this interview podcast with Joshua Trott from WorkRise, we’ll look at the outdated practices of supply chain management in oil and gas, explaining why many projects go over budget and schedule. Josh is the Chief Revenue Officer of WorkRise, an industry-leading labor business and a leading supply chain platform used by many of the biggest energy companies in the world.

WorkRise's innovative solution is aimed at completely overhauling the industry’s supply chain model rather than just tinkering with point solutions or with narrow scope. This concept emphasizes the power of data-driven decisions and efficiency to revolutionize project management and execution.

We uncover the major issues impacting the current supply chain system, and how WorkRise plans to mitigate these challenges by putting in place a streamlined, cost-effective approach to project lifecycles. Modern technology and methods play a huge role in helping overcoming the obstacles in the industry.

If you are responsible for overseeing end to end operations of an oil and gas company, you have the potential to capture very significant benefits through a rethink of your supply chain management.

Josh is a lifelong soccer player and fan, he lives in Austin, Texas.

Additional Tools & Resources:

 🎓 Take my one day digital strategy training course for oil and gas:
👉 https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185

Connect with Me!

🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/
🎧 Podcast: https://geoffreycann.com/broadcast/
📇 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/training-digital-oil-gas/
🤬 X: https://twitter.com/geoffreycann

Contacts for Lectures and Keynotes: 

I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs. Click here 👉 https://geoffreycann.com/contact/

Disclaimer: 

The views expressed in this video are my own and do not constitute professional advice.

Contacting the Guest

Joshua Trott

📧email : joshua.trott@workrise.com

📇 LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuatrott/

📇 LinkedIn biz: https://www.linkedin.com/company/workrise/

👨‍💻website: www.workrise.com

Business risks and opportunities surface whenever supply and demand go wildly out of balance. 

Energy transition is creating supply and demand imbalances in many ways. For example, the supply of clean energy infrastructure is lagging demand because of slow permitting processes. 

Sellers gain because the price point for green energy will rise to meet the demand. Buyers risk being unable to purchase green energy after they have committed to do so, or paying a much higher price. 

In this solo narration podcast I describe four looming supply and demand imbalances, why they are happening, the impacts they'll have, and what you can do to either manage the risk or take advantage and profit. 

The four are: 

• Slow pace of permitting delays the supply of transmission infrastructure. 
• Supply of oil tankers lags demand, causes prices to rise for shipping oil
• Mergers in oil and gas create a surplus of oil and gas professionals looking for work.
• Demand for commodities for clean energy outstrip supply, making clean energy projects uneconomic. 

If you work in energy this episode is for you. 

You can find the transcript on my weekly substack, 'Digital Oil and Gas'. 

Please hit the share button or leave a comment if you find this episode helpful. 

Contact me at geoff@geoffreycann.com

If you’re working on a digital innovation when your oil and gas company has been acquired, you’re at risk, and you need a plan.

I once worked on a major merger to create Canada's largest oil company, and I know how these mergers go down, and you don't want to be a victim. 

In this solo narration podcast I describe why mergers are happening now and why they'll continue, how to tell if you're at risk, and what you should do if you are working on a digital innovation as part of your job. 

If you're an engineer, IT, or digital professional working in oil and gas, this episode is for you. 

You can find the transcript on my weekly substack, 'Digital Oil and Gas'. 

Please hit the share button or leave a comment if you find this episode helpful. 

Visit 'Engineer Career Pivot' for insight into transitioning your oil and gas career into new energy fields. 

Contact me at geoff@geoffreycann.com

Digital twin solutions are rapidly advancing to a point where the model will be running tightly coupled with the actual asset it models, using live data. It’s not a stretch to see how the digital twin can become the day-to-day supervisor of the actual asset. This kind of work even applies to brownfield assets that predate the internet, mobility, cloud computing, and other modern inventions.

Connect with the Guest:

👉 David Reinhart : https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidreinhart/

👉 Visionaize: https://www.linkedin.com/company/visionaize/ 

You might find my previous articles on digital twin of interest!

👉 Digital Twin is More than a Clone: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/a-digital-twin-is-more-than-just-a-clone

👉 Evolution of Digital Twin Technology in Energy: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/p/evolution-of-digital-twin-technology-in-energy

Connect with Me:

🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/

📇 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/training-digital-oil-gas/

🤬 X: https://twitter.com/geoffreycann

Contact for Lectures and Keynotes:

I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs.

Click here 👉 https://geoffreycann.com/contact/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this video are my own and do not constitute professional advice.

Every year at this time I put forth my outlook for the coming year, with a focus on the digital trends that I believe will have the greatest impact on the fortunes of the industry.

These are not so much as predictions, as they are speculations on the trends that I see marching along, and how those trend lines will play out over the next 12 months or so.

If you’re working in industry, you might keep these in mind as you consider your projects and investments in the coming year.

If you are in technology, you might want to reflect on strategies to pursue that will accelerate your success or help you avoid some of the problems that I foresee.

Timestamps:

0:10 - Introduction

1:04 - Short Term Issues - inflation, emissions, markets, capital

2:54 - Longer Stride Challenges - energy transition, assets, talent, M&A

5:18 - Artificial Intelligence Tools

7:14 - Digital Twin Technology

9:05 - Mobility and networks

10:46 - Data

12:06 - Conclusions

Additional Tools & Resources:
🎓 Take my one day digital strategy training course for oil and gas: 
👉 https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185

You might find my previous annual predictions articles of interest! 

👉 2023 (part 1) https://open.substack.com/pub/digitaloilgas/p/the-trends-to-watch-in-2023-and-beyond-part-1
👉 2023 (part 2) https://open.substack.com/pub/digitaloilgas/p/what-are-the-relevant-macro-trends-for-2023-and-why-part-2
👉 2022 https://open.substack.com/pub/digitaloilgas/p/digital-oil-and-gas-trends-for-2022

Connect with Me:

🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/
🎧 Podcast: https://geoffreycann.com/broadcast/ 
📇 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/training-digital-oil-gas/
🤬 X: https://twitter.com/geoffreycann

Contact for Lectures and Keynotes:

I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs. Click here 👉 https://geoffreycann.com/contact/

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this video are my own and do not constitute professional advice. 

Download the Transcript! 

Want the actual script that this podcast is based on? You can download the transcript for this podcast here: 

👉 https://open.substack.com/pub/digitaloilgas/p/my-digital-oil-and-gas-outlook-for

"First thing you need to connect the assets first and get the data. So that's we call it like static digital twin, and then you can use it for simulation. Then you move to the second version, which having like a shadow, digital twin, which you have an image of what's happening, but you can monitor. But the truly digital twin is monitor and control."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Ammar Sabbagh who is the Vice President Industry and Partnership for Private Networks for Oil and Gas at Ericsson. 5G networks are a huge step forward for telecommunications, offering a step change performance boost over 4G. If you want to run an industrial-grade, resilient, and secure network for your digital devices, you need to be on 5G. 

Here are some of the key questions addressed in the episode: 

1. What is 5G, and why is it better than 4G?

2. What is a private network? 

3. What kinds of problems does a private network solve?

4. What kinds of innovations are enabled by 5G?

5. What are some of the use cases that 5G unlocks?

6. How do you deliver 5G networks where there are no towers?

Ammar Sabbagh is a technology professional specializing in 5G private cellular networks, cloud, decentralized cloud, and IOT solutions for business and industry.

Currently, Ammar serves as vice president of industry & partnership at Ericsson for energy and ports, where he leads business development and global partners management.

Ammar holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Portland State University and an MBA in Management, and has completed various executive leadership training courses, including Design Thinking for Innovation from the London Business School.

AMMAR's QUOTABLE QUOTES 

With 4g, you're getting 100 megabits per second. With 5G you are getting one gigabit per second and even 20 gigabits pers second planned for next year or after. So 20 gig per user device.

A single 5G radio station can connect over a million connected devices at one radio station. 

With WiFi 6, you can stream one gig, but the reliability of the Wi Fi is a concern, because Wi FI struggles to penetrate metallic structure [common] in the industry, for indoor.

You can trust 5G for robotics, for autonomous gantry vehicles, for assets moving.

With 5G we are not planning to replace any [SCADA] wiring.

5G [latency] operation, we are talking about 20 millisecond max. We are dropping it to one millisecond in the next version updates… But the requirements from our Oceaneering partner is only 100 millisecond.

The first question we ask what are the use cases or application you want to use? And then it's a journey. It's like you start today with one thing, and later, you move to other applications as needed.

If you have a worker with a mobile phone or connected, you know, worker, you will know exactly where they are. And you can communicate with them and support them during that session.

We like to call it dynamic  digital twin. We believe the 5g will be you know, hugely valuable, because you don't want to run all these cables connecting all these sensors to the main data center, you're just wirelessly spread them. And they're connected, and sit and analyze and collect all the data and take actions from there.

Wind turbines are virtually autonomous. I mean, we connect them with cellular network, we have several references. With a cellular network, they connect the operator connect cameras and control functionality. And they remotely see what's happening on the outside and inside and adjust accordingly.

first thing you need to connect the assets first and get the data. So that's we call it like static digital twin, and then you can use it for simulation. Then you move to the second version, which having like a shadow, digital twin, which you have an image of what's happening, but you can monitor. But the truly digital twin is monitor and control

CONTACTING AMMAR

ammar.sabbagh@ericsson.com

To break free of the limitations of yesterday’s technologies, the oil and gas industry is accelerating its adoption of private 5G networks.

Some time ago, I helped an oil field logistics company respond to customer feedback that its services were “in the Stone Age”. Its systems were entirely manual, inaccurate, slow, and error prone. Virtually every invoice was disputed, causing cash flow problems. Worse, its multi-year contracts were coming up for renegotiation, and there was a real risk that the contracts would not be renewed, stranding an enormous fleet of 750 vehicles.

We decided to create a fundamentally new business model that would upend the prevailing customer service standards in the industry, dramatically improve the utilization of the fleet of assets, staff, and facilities, and transform for the better its overall competitive position.

Market-leading companies in oil and gas recognize that the status quo industrial network (SCADA) and public networks are simply not fit for the purposes of responding to the pressures. Private 5G networks offer a highly appealing alternative.

As private networks, they eliminate the problem of contention for third party access or bandwidth. Solutions are free to run as designed delivering continuous near real time service. 5G networks run at much lower levels of latency compared to other network technologies such as 4G, and private 5G networks lower the latency further. Private 5G networks offer dramatically improved bandwidth compared to 4G, operating at gigabits per second, versus megabits per second. Private networks are far more secure as network access is under much tighter control. 5G networks can be deployed far more quickly than wired networks, and offer improved future-proofing for assets intended to run for years.

"We really kind of focus on the data and analytics side, really helping identify challenges where innovative data solutions, machine learning and AI technologies can be leveraged to drive more data driven insights."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Clark Lai, the CEO of Motiv Innovation Group. Clark’s team helps businesses apply data analytics, machine learning and AI tools to some of their more intractable problems. A great example is letting generative AI models feast on proprietary company data, such as engineering content, and using those models to create first drafts of new engineered assets. They won’t be perfect, but the speed to get to an editable first draft is the real prize. 

"Our client is able to simply search through unstructured text and the AI will be able to retrieve and reference the associated documents within their workspace."

Clark Lai is the CEO of Motiv Innovation Group—an internationally recognized, award-winning digital innovation and venture building company. Since 2013, Clark has led the strategic vision, execution, and expansion of various business units within Motiv. Under his leadership, Motiv has helped its clients and partners increase shareholder value by over $2 billion.

"Now that you have your documents embedded within this AI model, using generative AI, you can now generate net new content and net new value as a result."

With a commitment to excellence, Motiv has been honoured with several prestigious accolades, including The Webby Awards, W3 Awards, German Design Awards, and Ember Awards. He has over 16 years of software development experience in full-stack development, system architecture, cloud computing, data science, and machine learning. Clark has also successfully launched multiple ventures across a range of verticals, including advertising and PPC, health and wellness, data analytics, e-commerce and social commerce, professional services, and AI.

"We are solving the challenges for our team that actually matter. Rather than just building the next shiny toy."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarklai/

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/motivdigital

• Website: 

•  https://motiv.digital/

"There's been a real reluctance on the part of operators to jump back in to some of these higher-cost opportunities. That's further constraining  exploration and development of supply."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Howard Crosby, the Founder and CEO of LGX Energy Corporation. Howard and a partner acquired an oil company in Indiana and the acquisition included some 400 miles of 2D seismic data that had been shot some 15 years earlier, but never processed. By putting this old data through new tools, LGX was able to reveal oil plays that had been overlooked. The team then shot the highly prospective locations with 3D, which helped pinpoint more precise drilling locations. What was thought to be 15 possibilities turned into 50+. 

"Instead of stringing wires across farmer's cornfields to set up the geophones prior to making the recording, they’re using wireless geophones that don't need to be strung together with the wire."

Howard Crosby is the Founder and Chief Executive of LGX Energy Corporation. Howard was raised in the Pacific Northwest, and is a successful entrepreneur who has founded several companies over the years.  With his background in finance and natural resources, Howard has over 40 years working with mining, gas and oil developments.

"You look at the Lima Peru field where [Rockefeller] had the first 100 million barrel field in Allen County, Indiana. They recovered over 100 million barrels, but they estimate, because of poor technology in the 1890s and early 1900s, they left 100 million barrels behind, stranded."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-crosby/

• Facebook pages:

• https://www.facebook.com/lgxenergycorp/

• Website: 

•  https://www.lgxenergycorp.com/

Halloween. A gory and ghastly night of ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. And as with previous years marking All Souls, I reflect on the latest digital demons molesting the oil and gas industry, how best to exorcise them, and how to speedily return them to the land of the undead.

When you open the front door to this season’s mob of treat-hunting ghouls, just remember that your work world is not only facing its own cyber spooks at the gate. There’s a better than even chance that you have more than one zombie system staggering around, AI Apparitions secretly messing up your performance system, and a cloud vampire sharpening its fangs.

Good luck.

A pioneering application of artificial intelligence at Woodside Energy is finally ready for wider deployment in oil and gas.   

I learned about this use case back in 2016, at APPEA’s annual conference in Perth, where Woodside’s data science team presented their work. Surprisingly, few companies bothered to replicate this innovation, even though it was both proven and easy to execute.

Many oil and gas facilities have been in production for decades, and want to be in production for decades more.

Not only do these assets handily outlast their designers, but they’re now outlasting their maintenance engineering staff, operations, logistics managers, and key suppliers. In short, the complete original workforce.

But the oil and gas industry has long relied on the memory of its people to recall critical information about its assets, information beyond the kinds of data easily found in modern systems. Answers to questions like “why did we design it this way”, and “have we encountered this problem before” depend on the memories of workers.

Oil and gas companies cannot reliably use ChatGPT, as it was trained on the whole of the internet, and is a mix of fact and fiction, science and religion, truth and lies, and faulty logic. However, training a private version of ChatGPT unlocks a huge use case that was proven many years ago.

"Aviation fuel because it is a big amount of emissions, roughly 2% in actual measurement, but about three and a half percent in terms of impact. It's not likely to change because you need high density fuels, so batteries aren't going to work for long haul flights. And 90% of aviation is long haul flights."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with John McDougall, who is the CEO and founder of SynBioBlox Innovations, a company seeking to solve the global emissions problem by applying synthetic biology to the creation of sustainable aviation fuel. Imagine the ability to design, test, and then build, at scale, a biological microorganism that ingests a given feedstock and produces, at scale, a valuable compound. That’s the promise of SynBioBlox.   

"The GHG that's being emitted and being thrown away essentially, is the opportunity to create value by turning it into products."

John McDougall is the founder and CEO of SynBioBlox Innovations Ltd.  A fourth generation Albertan, he spent two decades as President of the Alberta and National Research Councils following leadership positions in real estate, engineering consulting, manufacturing, oil and gas and technology businesses.  He is a former Chair of APEGA and Engineers Canada, the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, and many other social and not-for-profit organizations. 

"Rather than waiting for them to evolve on a hit or miss basis, with the tools that exist today, we can actually explicitly design them and make them."

He has been an appointed member on numerous agencies and advisory committees related to trade, education, innovation, engineering, economic development and employment at the local, provincial, federal and international level.  The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, he continues to support the community with his time and resources in education, voluntary and not-for profit agencies, advisory and philanthropic roles.

"If you really want to make a difference in greenhouse gases, if you're not looking at things that are a billion tons a year or more, you're not going to make a difference."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mcdougall-049280124

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synbioblox

• Website: 

•  https://www.synbioblox.com/

If you want to be a successful digital leader, you need to be able to sell your ideas to a reluctant oil and gas buyer. 

Selling is so innately human we don’t even know when we’re selling or being sold. Have you ever been to a restaurant and found yourself ordering something you would usually not ever have at home, like some decadent dessert? The end of the main meal arrives and the server kindly brings you a fresh menu already open to the dessert page. They innocently ask “can I tempt you with some freshly brewed coffee?” Next thing you know you’re scarfing 2000 calories of cheesecake drizzled with butterscotch sauce. You were sold.

Selling your digital ideas to a manager in oil and gas is more complicated. Virtually everyone in oil and gas start out as digital doubters. This is a structural feature of the industry, part of the culture, linked to its safety and process adherence needs, and rooted in how the industry trains its people to manage risk.

Here’s some tactics to consider.

"Turnover and mergers are one of the biggest disruptions in companies. So when you have that factored in, if you have someone who leaves the company, then everything that they've ever done, that human brain of knowledge as well and experience within that company is gone."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Wendy Hamelin, the CEO of Astraea Energy, an advisory firm in the area of high performance organizations. Wendy notes how there is a significant loss of organizational know how when we adopt new technologies that displace human capability (think of how the lowly calculator has eroded our ability to do math by hand). Extend this to an organization scale, as we are now doing with tools like AI, and our organizations are at some risk. 

"I use an iPhone, for example, an iPhone is the actual device itself. And then we add our apps to our device. So the hierarchy of information and device software, if we add a hack, or add a hacked app to our iPhone, then that violates the entire phone."

Wendy Hamelin is the President and CEO of Astraea Energy, an advisory firm founded in 2014 to provide consulting and advisory service to oil and energy projects in Northern Alberta. Wendy provides safety training and performance improvement consulting services.

"If we're onboarding a contractor, we need to remember to off board every single part of that contractor when they're completed."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyhamelin

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/astraea-energy-inc/

• Facebook pages:

• https://www.facebook.com/astraeaenergy

• Website: 

•  http://www.astraeaenergy.com/

"Those who are working in any energy sector right now are best place to be working in that sector in another 10 years, even if it's going to be on a different technology."

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Corinna Frye, who is the National Head of Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, with LVI Associates. As a recruiter focused on the energy industry, Corinna has seen first hand the demand pull from the energy industry for talent, and the best positioned to satisfy that demand are professionals already working in energy. However, it takes foresight to see the opportunity, and not all professionals anticipate the coming changes to the talent landscape. 

"Clean energy is employing over 40% of all energy workers in America at this stage."

Corinna Frye is the National Head of Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, LVI Associates, a Phaidon International brand in Boston, Massachusetts, US.

"We're going to end up pulling from the traditional oil and gas backgrounds, because there aren't huge numbers of people with an anaerobic digestion background specific to biogas here yet."

USEFUL LINKS

• LinkedIn profiles (personal, business): 

• Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinna-frye-5b577858/

• Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lviassociates/

• Twitter handles:

• @PhaidonIntl

• @lviassociates

• Website: 

•  https://www.lviassociates.com/

Canada’s largest private oil company, and operator of the largest oil refinery, is carrying out a strategic review, which includes the possible sale of the company. Why would they do this?

I grew up in Saint John, and had the privilege to work at this company for a few years. My extended family members who still live and work in the area, have reached out to me for a perspective. They are naturally concerned about what the sale of the largest business in town means for their future.

Setting aside any private reasons that the family might want to sell out (from the complexities of intergenerational wealth transfer to family taxation strategies), the most important reasons involve upcoming market changes.

My advice: keep calm and carry on refining.

In case you missed it, WPC24 took place recently in Calgary, Alberta, for the second time in its history. WPC itself was established way back in the 1930s as a forum for the global industry to discuss common themes on a triennial basis. As a global event, it attracts an audience from around the planet..

The voices discussing the global energy industry’s challenges included the Energy  Minister from Saudi Arabia, and the CEOs of Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Repsol, WestJet, Accenture, Pertamina, KNOC, Kuwait Petroleum Corp, ONGC, NNPC (Nigeria), NOCK (Kenya), Oil India, and managing directors, presidents, vice presidents, and board chairs from Cenovus, Petronas, Petrobras, Petronet, Suncor, Deloitte, Brookfield, Platts, S&P, Shell, and many others. 

You never know who you’ll meet at such a gathering. As I ascended the escalator to the event floor for the opening ceremonies, I found myself standing beside a trade ambassador from Libya, who shared some personal details of the immense tragedy stemming from the floods from his country. My fellow panelists hailed from Calgary, Houston, and Saudi Arabia. I have a collection of business cards from Tema (Ghana), St. John’s, Midland (Texas), Bogotá (Colombia), Pittsburgh, Berlin, Washington, and Uruguay.

Under the broad theme ‘path to net zero’, the range of topics under discussion were in equal parts bracing and confronting, taking in supply and demand, energy transition, decarbonization, industry growth and/or decline, financing strategies, infrastructure challenges, energy security, hydrogen developments, carbon capture and storage, net zero pathways, indigenous engagement, and talent issues.

It is impossible for one person to summarize the conference because there are multiple parallel tracks, a full poster and paper show, and dozens of talks and panel discussions. You simply can’t take it all in.

Then again, you can always form a point of view based on the dialogue you did take in, so here’s mine.

Markets are starting to show interest in commodity products that are produced more responsibly, notably natural gas. The key is to be able to prove it, and that requires some changes. Customers and markets are starting to demand evidence that energy products such as natural gas are making a positive contribution to buyers’ emission reduction goals. Responsibly sourced gas will experience demand growth, rewarding gas producers for their efforts at reducing emissions in the industry.

Digital innovations have unlocked many businesses’ ability to offer variations of tracking and tracing services. Tracking is by far the easier of the two, and Apple, as one example, has created its AirTag product to exploit this opportunity. AirTags connect up with passing iPhones and relay their coordinates via the cloud to the AirTag owner, pinpointing the tag’s location. 

Tracing is decidedly more difficult as it requires a date, time, and location log of the events, changes of state, and changes in ownership of the item that is being traced. There are few examples of full item tracing in industry for this reason. Tracing is doubly hard for commodities that are fungible (how dto you tell one organic tomato from another), or blended with other similar products (such as green energy).

Tracing of energy is coming to the commodity industry as market participants express greater interest in energy provenance.