Tag: Aberdeen

Looking for inspiration

I like to look across sources for analogy and stimulating ideas. A couple of things have recently caught my eye.

I find it amazing how hard it is for people (including me) to see the implications of new technologies and ways of working. In retrospect, once a change has happened, it’s obvious what the outcome would have to be. But when the change is happening it’s not so clear.

Going up

Ground floor
Perfumery, stationary, and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food. Going up…

Can you remember the theme tune to Are You Being Served?

I’m old enough to remember the lift operators in Aberdeen’s E&M and Watt & Grant department stores. They were replaced by automated lifts in about 1980. The stores have both succumbed – one to the shopping mall, the other a victim to digital retail.

Being a lift operator was a skilled profession, making sure that you stopped the elevator car level with the floor and opening the concertina iron-work doors with the brass handles.  Apparently New York’s last lift operator was only made redundant in 2009 Link

The Economist 1843 magazine just ran a story making the connection between the elevator operators strike and the adoption of self-driving cars. We could probably do the same with roles in the oil field.

The elevator strikes in 1945-47 crippled the city, and led to calls to redesign the city so that only low-rise development was permitted – to reduce the power of unions.

Of course, the answer was – as we know – automated elevators. But a lot of change management was required before people started to use them. Innovations such as emergency stop buttons, telephones for help and recorded announcements all came about in this time.

I’ll wager that we will look back at some of the manual ways of operating an oilfield we use today in the same way was we look back at the anachronism of the elevator operator.

Electricity – who’d want that?

Another story that I picked up on and found illustrated a point was this one [Link]. It’s written by the BBC’s Tim Harford. He asked and answered the question why did it take so long for electricity to displace steam in the factories in the North of England. It was decades after the invention that it was fully adopted.

He explained that it required a redesign of factories before the economics made enough sense for people to abandon centrally powered manufacturing and move to individually powered machines. We’ll see the same adoption economics in oil field operations and technologies such as 3D printing.

Digital Marketing – a lesson for oil and gas?

Today I found another article that resonated. This one is from Marketing Week [Link]

Mark Ritson makes the case that the separation between Digital Marketing teams and Traditional Marketing is ridiculous. What I think he’s saying echoes my point that there should be no separation between “IT” and “The Business”, because IT needs to be just how things are done around here. It’s true in Marketing, it’s true in Oil and Gas too.

“… On the one hand you need to avoid being precious about your digital creds. Signal early you are entirely comfortable losing the D prefix from your title and, for good measure, add something re-assuring like ‘I do not even know what digital means anymore’ or ‘isn’t everything digital now?’.

The merger process means that anyone who is a member of the extreme digerati will be the victim of the new regime. You know the type: obsessed with AI, convinced in the long-term value of VR, boastful that they don’t own a TV. They will be the first to go when the revolution comes.

Digital experience is a prerequisite

But make no mistake, it’s no good proclaiming that digital is wank and it’s time to get back to basics, pull all the money from Facebook and get it back into ‘proper’ media. The post-digital era cuts both ways.

While idiot digerati will be exposed, so too will those who aren’t open to the potential of all the new research and media options that have appeared over the past decade. When Alastair Pegg, the leading marketer at Co-op Bank, noted that that there was “no such thing as digital marketing” he followed up with the corollary that “all marketing is digital marketing”.

I think I can see the parallels between what he’s saying is happening in Marketing now, and what will overtake the world of Oil and Gas operations in the next 3-5 years. What do you think?

Industry 4.0 – Are we there yet?

Something’s up. I was reviewing my web-stats for this site and I found that since Jan 2018 one post has been read 1000’s of more times than any other one. This one: Innovation and Productivity with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

About 3 years ago,  I started to talk about how relevant to the Oil and gas industry were things I had been studying about the 4th Industrial Revolution. At that time no one had a clue what I was talking about. Some thought I may have gone mad. I’m glad to say that things have (mostly) changed.

Who’s talking about it?

Since 2018 I’ve seen the term being used by a number of my peers in Oil and Gas, and when you search on this and combine with the term “Digitalisation” It becomes obvious that there is a major movement underway.

Steve Ashley uses the term in his article: Digital, data and taking control of our own destiny and its also used in this press release from Petrotechnics.

Today this announcement from CapGemini helping Statoil with a 3 year project to create a digital roadmap.

How to assess a digital project

There are still a few fundamental questions that every digitalisation project should be able to answer. Below is your starter for ten, and – yes – you may confer:

Examine the project value:

  • What is the primary business driver;
  • Does this project fulfil the agenda of the CIO or the COO;
  • What is the net cost of this project;
  • When will I see value (hint: the choice is either this year, or 3-5+ years out); and
  • Is this a platform investment or can it ride a set of network effects?

Examine the project risks:

  • What things will prevent me from realising the planned benefits;
  • How much change will be required in the way we work;
  • If I do this, does it prevent me from doing other things;
  • How likely is it to require more money than I’ve budgeted for; and
  • What happens if I wait and do it later?

These criteria (and others) should be considered for every project.

Enterprise level

At the enterprise level there are a couple more  things that need to be considered including:

  • How does this project fit into my portfolio of digitiallisation initiatives;
  • As my business gets more digitalised, how am I addressing digital integrity; and
  • Should my HSSE function be renamed HSSED?

Further reading

I wrote an article for ITProportal for some of this and here is a note on project portfolio prioritisation that I wrote a few years back – Introduction to Prioritisation V 1.0.

Subsidy on the agenda?

Last year I suggested that there were strategic reasons to maintain North Sea production. The system of interconnected assets and their cross-reliance on each other means that it will be in the common good for “UK PLC” to maintain key infrastructure despite it being a poor proposition for individual operators.

For goodness sake – we subsidise the tracks that our trains run on, I can’t see any argument for the creation of economic value there that does not apply to our North Sea processing and export network. [Link]

So I was heartened to see that David Cameron is in Aberdeen with what the FT called an emergency investment package. I was less pleased to see what the promised £250m investment was to be spent on:

The prime minister will promise a new “oil and gas technology centre” in Aberdeen to fund future research, including into innovative ways to extract oil and gas.

The package will also help expand the harbour and support the city’s pharmaceutical and agri-food industries to try to help Aberdeen diversify from its reliance on oil and gas. [Link]

Well that’s not exactly the response I was thinking about – seems to be a rather poor investment case for UK PLC. Luckily we’ve formed another task force.

His visit coincides with the first meeting of a new task force of senior ministers set up to deal with the issue, chaired by Amber Rudd, energy secretary. The group will include Anna Soubry, business minister, and David Mundell, the Scotland secretary.

Together with the OGA there seems to be plenty of civil servants looking at the issue.

True to form – the FT actually got to the nub of the issue with its parting shot:

Many in the industry are also urging George Osborne, the chancellor, to relax the rules around who pays to decommission oil platforms when they reach the end of their lifespan. Many argue that the strict laws making anybody who has ever owned a particular platform potentially liable for its eventual dismantling are discouraging companies from buying up ageing assets and investing in them.

One energy banker said: “One of the things that could really help is if we see more takeover activity, with companies buying either struggling rivals or older rigs.”But the main thing stopping that right now is that nobody wants to take on potentially massive decommissioning liabilities.”

The BBC covers his visit here [Link]

Despite the decline in oil prices there is risk capital available but to take this opportunity irequires a few critical pivots. They are:

  1. Decommissioning liabilities stopping the trade in assets to lower-cost operators
  2. Un-certainty surrounding enabling infrastructure operated by others
  3. Mis-alignment of interests between partners meaning operating committees stopping development plans

Perhaps rather than expanding Aberdeen Harbour we could change the rules and use this £250m to help sort these out? At least it would be a start.

What do you think, is the proposed disbursement the best use of the money?