Industrial Talk is onsite at PowerGen 2025 and talking to Efrain Garcia, President and Co-Founder at Allstream Energy Partners about “Emerging Technology in the Power Industry“.

If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation.

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EFRAIN GARCIA'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efrain-garcia-a5220527/

Company LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/allstream-energy-partners/posts/?feedView=all

Company Website: https://allstreamep.com/

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On this week's Industrial Talk we're talking to Erick Bartusek with Apache, Tom Bonny and Nate Clark with Deloitte Consulting about “The Challenges and Value of Digital in Oil and Gas”.  Get the answers to your “Oil and Gas” questions along with their unique insights on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2022. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

ERICK BARTUSEK'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickbartusek/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apache-corporation/

Company Website: https://apacorp.com/

TOM BONNY'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-bonny-7bab94/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deloitte/

Company Website: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en.html

Last Barrel Standing:  Upstream Oil and Gas Energy Transition | Deloitte US

NATE CLARK'S CONTACT INFORMATION:

Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielafclark/

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NEOM:  https://www.neom.com/en-us

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CAP Logistics: https://www.caplogistics.com/

Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/

Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/

YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX:

LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/

Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link

Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

digital, people, organization, digital transformation, tom, important, operator, conversation, Erick, industrial, small victories, business, deloitte, operations, solutions, industry, field, apache, trust, strategy

00:00

Hey, Industrial Talk is brought to you by CAP Logistics. You want to minimize downtime. Absolutely. increase reliability, you bet ensure operational profitability. Yes, you do. That means you need 24/7 365 insights into your supply chain, look no further CAP Logistics, go to caplogistics.com Or just call them. They're great people 800-227-2471 Also, AiDash, AiDash is on a mission to create a greener, cleaner, safer planet from space. AiDash helps core industries become more resilient, efficient, and sustainable through the power of satellites and AI. Go out to AiDash.com Find out more

00:56

welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots.

01:13

And let's get around once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk. And definitely thank you for your support of this platform that celebrates industry heroes all around the world. You're bold, brave, and you dare greatly. And it is important that we collaborate more and more each and every day. Industry, technology, innovation is happening so fast, and you need to be a part of it. We're all about education. We're all about collaboration, and definitely all about innovation on this platform, and you got to be a part of it. So go out to Industrial Talk.com. All right, we're talking digital transformation, we're talking about the energy sector, oil and gas, and how that looks, whatever that journey looks like we've got a Apache Corporation, we've got Deloitte, let's get cracking. Yeah. Whether you like it or not, you got to be in the digital game, you got to find trusted people to be in the digital game. Because it's going to it's not going away. And if you want to have a business that's resilient, that has some sort of long term, ability to succeed, you need to be in the digital game. And and that's the decision, you need to be finding somebody a Sherpa of some sort to help you on that journey. And that's why we're having this great conversation with Deloitte and in Apachi and talk about how digital transformation is helping the energy space. And once you got to consider and all of the the wonderful, exciting future had has in us in the energy space. So anyway, this is going to be a great conversation. So you don't it's a paper and pencil. It's definitely a paper and pencil conversation. All right. We've got some conferences, the one conference that we have coming up, I think, well, next week, middle of October, it's the SMRP 30th anniversary, our annual conference. And, and it is about you know, it's a symposium of maintenance and reliability professionals, we're going to be broadcasting live, and getting the latest catch on what's taking place within the reliability and maintenance space, most definitely going to be excited about that. That is in Raleigh, North Carolina 30th Annual Conference go out there, it's all out there, you got to be a participant in that one. The other one that I want to put on your calendar is Fabtech. Now we just did IMTS. But Fabtech is just every bit is just amazing. And that is we're talking about November 8 through the 10th. This is in Atlanta, Georgia. And we're going to be broadcasting live there. And if you're going to be there, if you're going to, you know, pitch a tent there. Come and see me, I'm going to have all the my I'll have the booth number out there most definitely so that you can connect with Connect with us get on the calendar, let's have a conversation. Or better yet, if you have a booth and you want somebody to do a on the spot, technology speed date. Yep. Industrial Talk is where it's at. All right. Let's get cracking with the conversation. Again, digital transformation is here. Whether you like it or not, if you're in the energy, space, you're in it, you got to figure it out. And you got to figure out a plan to be able to do that and walk through that journey and be a success. We need you to be a success. That's what this platform is about. We want you to succeed. Everything that we do on Industrial Talk is geared toward your success, whatever that might be. And it is geared toward the collaboration with professionals that can truly help you succeed. So digital transformation, oil and gas, the energy sector, enjoy this conversation. All right, James, welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule to talk to the best listeners in the whole wide world if not the universe. How're you guys doing? Great See, I'm pretty geeky about this particular conversation. And I've had the conversation around digital transformation, all that digital journey when it goes to the manufacturing and all this oil and gas listeners, we are going to talk about that digital journey when it applies to oil and gas. All right, before we get into that topic, and then some Erick, I would love for you to share your little 411 on who you are. And then we're just going to go round robin on that. So give us a little background.

05:31

Yeah, sure. Appreciate it's got. My name is Erick Bartusek. Apachi is director of global digital enablement. I've been in that seat for a little under a year now. My previous experience prior to joining Apache was all in the energy industry, mostly either in consulting or the software space. So been doing this stuff for a little bit and excited to chat with the group today.

05:52

And when you say energies just for clarification, we're talking oil and gas, are we talking that that energy as opposed to some people say generation and that's energy and all of that stuff? So yeah, absolutely

06:03

my, so my prior experience kind of covered all aspects of it. But, but the focus here today is oil and gas. And that's what Apache does.

06:11

All right. Thank you, man. All right, Tom, give us a little background on who you are.

06:15

Tom Bonny with Deloitte, I head up our core operations practice for with an upstream, which today, none of that happens without talking about the role of digital improvement, how we work out anywhere from the office to the field.

06:29

A lot of work out there in nature. Next, give us a little background. Nick Clark,

06:34

I'm Deloitte’s lead partner for oil, gas chemicals, digital globally. And so my job is to help us all have the maximum impact on our clients with the all the exciting stuff you can do with digital. So it's fun job.

06:46

So the reality is with this panel, if if we have a digital conversation, that has not been, I guess, invented, it doesn't exist, because these guys are in the thick of it big time. We'll go with that for sure. All right. With that said, this is gonna be to you, Erick, sort of lay out why. And it's a big one. And you and Tom need you can join in to lay out why a digital strategy is important to the oil and gas market. Yeah, sure.

07:19

I think we're I always like to start is like, why are we doing this period, whether it's digital or not. And so, you know, the exciting thing for the oil and gas industry is, you know, producing safe, efficient operations for for an energy producer, it's the most important thing we can do. Right? Be safe, be efficient. And I look at digital as just being, you know, a component of figuring out how can we do that better, faster, cheaper, right? You know, digital transformation is going to cover a lot of different aspects for data process a whole bunch of different ways you can kind of slice and dice this. But you know, the idea behind digital is we're not, we're not here inventing software, you're not an operator, we're here kind of leveraging the best tools and technology we can to go back to that main anchors, safe, efficient operations.

08:11

Yeah, what always pops into my head is where do you start? You know, I just, these are not these are complex. Manufacturing, entities are big, they're complex things are moving. Tom, in the world of Deloitte and others, what do you start? If you come in, and you're saying, hey, let's, let's look, because it's, pretty much everything could be sort of, to a certain extent, digitize, tell us sort of walk us through that a little process.

08:41

But I think that's probably been some of the challenges the industry has faced is not knowing where to start. So they started kind of everywhere. I'd say the good news is, we do this annual digital benchmark survey. And this past one, which I think we released the beginning of the year, what was different from this time from previous times, we always ask this question of, you know, is digital impacting the industry in years past? You'd always have some people go, maybe? No, this time? 100%? Yes, no one, everyone's on board now. So that's been a shift. The other thing, though, that the higher the report highlighted was, everyone's kind of given this big picture vision. But after that, it's maybe I went to production, maybe I went to drilling. So I did a functional focus. Or maybe I took my one asset in the Permian, but didn't focus ever. That's been the challenge. Now, we've gone off piecemeal, there is no real enterprise strategy that brings them together, say, big picture, what are we trying to solve for? And I think that's the challenge now that I see operators in general trying to tackle is create much more holistic picture. We did some some, you know, some goodness, some random acts of digital who got the content that that delivered value, but how do we think about it more strategically? I think that's still an option a proper

09:58

Yeah, because I would imagine how They're there. It's like, hey, hey, this digital things great. Yeah, I can put a device out on this asset and start pulling data. Yeah, I can do that. And it's sort of in the in the conference rooms. Now, one of the challenges also outside of the like, where to start with all of this, Nate. It's trust. If I go out and I Google, like Google, digital transformation, I'm gonna get a gazillion hits. I don't even know. This, like, not only I don't know where to start, but who do I trust? Who is that Sherpa that I'm going to put my arm around? Again, thank you very much for helping us because we know it's important. Tell us a little bit about

10:42

that.

10:43

I mean, I don't even know. Well,

10:45

I think the first thing, Scott is that they're Digital's pretty broad. And so I don't think there's just one Sherpa that can help with anything. And so the first thing I'd emphasize is trusting yourself. If we're certainly in the professional services business, we're here to be the people who get a phone call to help with things. But even with that in mind, I'm telling you, you need to own your own transformation. If you have a bunch of people like Tom and I come in and help and do it for you, or do it to you, it's not going to be as successful as if the leadership team owns it themselves. So who Who do you need to trust, you need to trust yourselves, you also have to make sure this is a leadership team discussion. And then people like Tom and I can help out to focus that conversation and say, where can you get the biggest bang for your book? What should you stay away from what's the fastest path, but you've got to own it yourself. The other piece is that there are different areas to digital. And so to wait those things around process definition, software, acceleration and change management, it's a long list. At the same time, there are hardware companies out there that do things we don't touch me way whatsoever whatsoever, which are also just as important. So you got to be comprehensive, and the partners you bring in to think through this with you. Also, very, it's also the industry too. And so the lines between you where your company starts and ends, and where the next one starts an answer getting grayer, something that we talked about the digital, the digital report that Tom was just referring to, is how the ecosystem plays together. So as an example, for any oil and gas company, they have a very, very healthy partnership with their field service providers, with drillers, with suppliers. And so digital allows you to make those relationships a lot more efficient, and share savings on all sides. They have been part of the conversation too. So no one Sherpa trust yourself.

12:33

So that that brings up the question to you, Erick. I mean, there's that decision. Your company said, Yes, let's go down this road. Are you trusting in yourself? Are you trusting in the people around you saying, Yeah, this is where we need to go? Because to Nate's point, where are we it? You know, what's going on? You know, so he's gonna say, don't go there go over here. This is where we have a problem or a challenge or an opportunity. So take us through that that sort of dialogue that you're having internally?

13:06

Yeah, I think one thing that I've observed a lot of operators is figuring out how can you anchor those digital use cases back to you know, a value proposition, right, or a real problem to solve. Sometimes, if they're done in a silo is sort of that ideation process happens in a vacuum, you know, any of us can go out on Google and read the latest white paper on a really interesting bit of kit that got deployed out in the field, and you start thinking, You know what, maybe we should try that here. Right? It seems like a thing that's been done. And maybe we can find the same value here. And ultimately, that you might find some hits. But you can get a lot of distractions to write because which ID is going to be the one that really adds value for my organization. I think it's always been much more valuable for for an operator to take a look at those strategic objectives for their entire organization, and sort of decompose them down into opportunities for digital to help enable those, right. So if you're, if your organization as a whole is looking at trying to, you know, be better at drilling, increase production, minimize costs, you know, there's some very macro level themes that an organization is trying to support and then work with those asset teams to figure out what are some of the bottlenecks, or maybe it's not even a challenge, maybe it's an opportunity you want to exploit, we already do something well, but we want to do it better. I think that's where a digital partner, whether its internal or external, can really come to the table and say, Okay, I now understand what you're trying to achieve. I have some ideas on either the problems you're facing or the opportunity to exploit. Now, I'm gonna bring either my past experience or if I don't have past experience myself, I can work with partners, vendors to come in and bring some best practices, but then at least you're anchored to that sort of macro problem to solve as opposed to doing it in silos and pockets. And again, I think when it's done that way in pockets, that's where you're at the most risk for not being able to scale it later. Because you may have that initial success. And it may look just like the white paper you read, but it becomes very difficult to figure out if it was ever anchored in something more valuable to the organization. And so I think that's been a big piece of trusting yourself means kind of staying, staying honest with what you're trying to do as an organization and making sure digital is not off doing its own thing that's not in support of those, those macro objectives.

15:31

I might add to that, just quickly, Scott, yeah, no,

15:34

don't go. You know, when

15:35

he asked the question, you know, earlier, when we were having a sidebar was about like, when did these types of roles become more prevalent within an industry? I mean, I can't exactly remember all the time, because COVID make me forget timing of these days. But in the last five years, it seems like this is where you've seen people like Erick much more come into play. And really is it was all about that building the trust? What's the connectivity between the folks who know how to develop and design some of these solutions, but the folks who live and breathe and day in and day out who need these solutions, the core of the business? Well, that's the role of these digital leaders is really about how do I bring that connection together? How do I build better trust between these sides of the business to basically enable and sustain these for the longer run?

16:21

Yeah, you're spot on, I just my mind is, is just sort of juggling a lot of things just because, one, you, you want to do it, right, you want to pull in the right people and white organizations, you know, you want to have that, that dialogue, and tackle the real opportunities that exist in your organization. Nate, is there is there sort of like this necessity to, you know, you define the strategy of saying, Yeah, we're gonna do this, we're, we're embracing this, this digital thing, and then be able to go out and mark it and say, Hey, we're doing it. Now we just need help, is there there's zero necessity, because a lot of people in the field are just saying, Hey, I don't have that. I got it. I got this over here. And I got this over here. And I gotta do this. And I got that they have a lot to do. You're adding you're adding more work to them?

17:13

Well, we're dealing with a lot here is a little bit what is the strategy, but also what you're grounding us on Scott, which is that this is all about getting it done. And so a phrase I frequently use is our clients don't want digital strategies, they want the results of digital getting done. And so let's put that let's use that as the anchor point to this, this this piece of thought, what we want to see when a client works on their digital strategy, and where we try to help them is to start with what their ambitions are, and also what they don't want to do. There's so many things and upstream company could take on, they could say, we're going to be the best producer, we're going to say we're the best, most fast reactive driller, we could say we can handle the most amount of environments, it say that we're the best at being able to scale up and down based on economic conditions. There's a lot of things that all based on their business strategy that are rational ways of picking this up. But they can't do is they can't do it all. They need to make some choices. And so the first step is taking the business, the areas of your business that are unique to you, and it can make you successful, then double click, the double clicks are okay, if we want to be the world's best driller, what does that look like? What would that bestseller look like? And be unconstrained. So really, could we go to completely lights out operations on some of these areas can be completely automated can we can have everything concentrated in one global drilling center, etcetera down? And what happens if you do this? Well, you keep double clicking and saying, Okay, well, we know what that looks like, what are the projects we need to get done to get that done? And spec that out? And then go even deeper? And say, what would that costs who from our organization do we need to take out of the day to day to go make that happen? What partners maybe we need to bring in to help make that happen as well. And only at this stage, we're getting to what you refer to Scott about what you need to bring into this, because I'd rather have a client start with business strategy, all the way down to how we're going to get this done, and that specificity and then bring the partners in. And this is very, very simple reason. When I've talked to clients about this, I used to maintain a slide which had about 400 Digital terms on it, and every one of them was actually quite important. But when you're looking at that mess of all the things that can be important, you get lost and you can't concentrate on what makes sense to do first. And so here's mine doesn't make a decision. That's for doggone. Sure. So that order of how you pick this up can be very important. At least that's how I think about it.

19:36

Again, it just seems daunting, and it does require an organization to sort of be real and candid with the objective, the objective out there their strategy, but I like the fact that that strategic objective is to get done to do it to show results. In light of that, Tom, do you find it important for an organization? You know, for the naysayers out there? Because there probably some naysayers out there to have small victories, small wins?

20:15

A great question, because one of the most interesting things that came out from our last benchmark study was this value. Everyone's like, how are you capturing value? How are you measuring value, and you have different degrees of success. And I want you to keep that word small victories in mind. Because those that score tended to score the lower ranks, were those that were overly methodical, wanted very detailed charters wanted a bunch of give me numbers and date, and I want to be able to point to a line in a p&l and say, show me that value that actually slowed them down. So oil and gas companies love stage gates, you know, maybe not for onshore unconventional, but when I develop offshore, all these stage gates, well, they're applying that methodology, some of them to how I actually deliver digital, so that's actually slowing you down. The ones that scored the best, were the ones who had folks who are focused and working with the core business, the core operations and what's delivering value to me. And it wasn't organizationally, sometimes, you know, there's different org structures, but it's not about where the person sits. But it's how those people work together. And you we had one conversation with an ops manager who was basically like, I completely trust the value. Because I talked to the folks in the field, they say, are you seeing value from these things are saying I get it, it's helping make my job easier. I can then point to those small victories. The reason I say small victories are important that if I do something on improving how my artificial lift performs, I can go to use cases or examples of say, at that point, these analytics, self adjusted, brought up production or warned me that something was happening. So we did we change the behavior. But look, seeing that in a p&l is very difficult. But seeing those cases are very easy to pull out. And those resonated more and better with more senior leadership than the night those organizations scored better than those who tried to be micromanaged to the to the an individual number in a p&l.

22:13

Yeah. And Erick, there's, Tom brings up like, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, I

22:18

was, I was thinking about his way he was describing it and sort of thinking about, there's a time and a place for the moonshot digital projects, right, that are very, you know, transformative in nature, multi years to accomplish. Maybe that's what people's minds gravitate to when they think about digital transformation is some of those big broad scope things. But my goodness, there's so much opportunity on call it like the baseball analogy, the singles and the doubles, where you can make real impact in operations. And quickly, right. And at the end of the day, especially if an operator is in a position where they're trying to build some trust, build some credibility for their their digital program, getting this singles and doubles, getting people on base with achievable digital projects that make a material difference, you know, in our in our field operations, or any of those situations, that can be just as valuable, if not more valuable than sort of those those moonshot projects. So I think having an appreciation for where an operator is, and sort of their lifecycle and maturity, would be really important. And just recognizing that there's a, there's a lot of value to be captured in some of those calm, safer bets that you can get something usable in a month or two versus, you know, the six to 12 month projects. Go ahead. And

23:41

Erick, certainly picking that up. And I agree with everything Erick, and Thomas said in terms of you know, you want those small wins, and they're more reliable, they're easier to sell, they build momentum in the organization. But there's another hidden advantage. We don't know what is actually going to transform the organization. And so when you take one of those big bets, it's a very, very big bet. I'd rather see a client, make some progress and improve this and improve this and improve this. And then once they have that higher level of knowledge and capability, then they know where to go next from there. So it's time so when we think about a digital transformation, we're not just thinking about the transformation, but also the transformation machine. What kind of things are we putting in place within the client so they can continuously improve and do it rapidly? It doesn't take two years to do something. It takes months, two weeks?

24:25

Yeah. And I there's there's one side of me that says yeah, and I liked that internal knowledge. You know, this is still new to some Ryan, you're, you're trying to build that internal capability of saying, yeah, now we know what now we're thinking a little bit different. Yeah, that can be digitized. Yeah, whatever it might be, be able to have that embedded in your organization. The question I would have and this is to you, Erick, is is a great got a little victory here got a little victory here. How do you sustain that and sort of make sure that people still see those little victories right and, and they always sort of come together in a much bigger Randers, you know, strategy, right? Just like, yeah, leave that one alone out

25:06

there? Well, sure. And it goes back to we were talking earlier about scaling things and making sure that they're not pocket proof of concept projects that go nowhere later. I think it ties back into the resource dedication, we kind of touched on a little bit earlier, but ensuring that there's there's ownership on the functional side of the business to bring these solutions to life and understand how you're going to take something that may feel like a small victory, but then scale it for the future, in my, my observation from from multiple operators has always been that if you can get those functional resources kind of out of the day to day, and dedicate the time to say, look, I'm going to take, maybe it's a production engineer, out of there, monitoring a specific set of wells in the Permian. But now I'm going to take them and say, Look, you're going to think about just how we monitor wells period, that that whole process and the tools and technology required to do it, then they can help figure out both those immediate near term use cases that may be seen as small victories build up that muscle memory of how we go about solving things digitally, but then they can then carry it forward and scale it right, you can also help them figure out how to go, don't be so heads down on just this one asset. Think of you know, global operations, right. And many operators don't just operate in one area, they may operate internationally, I mean, making sure you have someone whose remit is to think about how you can scale something beyond even just a particular business unit or asset level, you got to have that functional dedication, you got to be able to get them out of the day job, let them focus on identifying those near term wins, but also give them the remit to say you're not just gonna roll straight back into the business. As soon as that one use case is done.

26:53

It's all the time, you know that it's hard time to you in it, no doubt about it. Like it or not, you need to be in the digital game, you need to figure out how to be able to begin that journey. And I agree with it. 100%. But it always gets down to is sort of the challenges. It's always human, right? It's always churn, there's people coming and going and all of this stuff. And I, I liked the fact that if you elevate the digital journey, the transformation and the digitization of your business, and you have an at a high enough level, then there's some stability with the strategy, but how do you deal with this sort of how do you educate, read, you know, re educate whatever the terms are out there? What do we do?

27:42

So the biggest thing that I think we've opportunity, whenever I think about things, is you actually go out to the field, and you work with them hand in hand to deploy and do the change management. It's not about headquarters sending things and just saying, hey, adoption, you have folks who have been working this and I mean, I've done these, it's called you take a ride along out one of these assets and all that and they're like, Well, I've been doing this 20 years, 30 years, that's how we've always done it, why do I need to change it, I get my nice little paper book and I up there and I write numbers on it. And we did work with one client, call it five years ago. And we did a bunch of these ride alongs. And the very first one I did the individual says I was like, alright, you know, let's see a day in the life of what is it like for you out there? And I was like, Hey, if you think about everything that you've got, how can we do things differently? And you know, eventually get straight to the what type of tools or anything like that. And he's like God, nothing. So people, that's all I need more. I'm like, alright, well, that's not, that's not the main way to solve this. But then once you got to other people could think a little differently. Because he was he's an example of the old school mindset. But then we start working with a few other folks who also realized that technology is changing. The ability to capture data and use data is changing. Those folks are the ones same exact folks. But those are the ones you work on and say, Well, what do you need? How could you think differently. And a lot of these are, even if some of them who've been working there for 20 years, or some who have only 10 years, and some of them only five years? It's just a matter of saying, Well, if I do this in my everyday life with Amazon, with Google, all these other tools I have, well how can I apply that same thought to here, those are the individuals you target. Those are the individuals who need to be part of your solution. And then when you go to deploy and all that we created sometimes, like digital champions who did some stuff on an offshore platform for a few of them for an operator and it was like on every platform, we had back to back Digital Champions for the solutions that we're deploying. Make sure that hey, if you need to phone a friend or in this case, you can you tap on the on the platform, there's the person you're gonna go.

29:48

You're almost have to just make it that simple. I don't want friction, right? I'm secure and I'm warm and fuzzy with my little clipboard and piece of paper. I've done it for years and all of that With that said, Nate, how do you? And Tom brought up some good points? But how do you start to take in all of those legacy back of the envelope data points that are so important to that asset, and begin to pull it in to create that analytics that give that picture of that? Right there that one? Because you know that there's, there's file cabinets full of this stuff. What do we do?

30:28

I remember a long time ago, I took a course I worked for General Electric for a long time. And when this course, kind of reflected that it was on negotiating with unions, and I'm going somewhere with this. And the interesting thing is they had a video clip, and it was a union leader who was like, I was talking about working collaboratively with the field and headquarters. And the statement from the union leader was that for 20 years, you've had my back. And if you just come a little further, you could have had my mind as well. And that's, that's how I personally pick it up. Then nobody knows the field better than the field. Nobody knows. The equipment and the person who's worked on it, listen to it knows literally how things are supposed to smell. And so the other piece of it as we think about it, I've rarely met the people who sit there and say, you know, I've got my clipboard, and that's good enough, right, I'm able to go home and border anything in my kitchen, by speaking a few magic words, and Amazon makes it up here. And I think my job shouldn't be like that. So that I find it more helpful. And people know who the people are, who are innovative, who want to change, you're interested in new stuff, this advances their careers, this makes things better, these people wouldn't be in their jobs, watching the most important assets that companies got, if they didn't care, and they didn't want to do good things. It's good point. So I think the easiest thing is you have to talk to them, show them how this works. There'll be some doubts, there'll be some questions and those deservedly so. But those are actually be questions to get, because sometimes half those questions meet lack of knowledge, half this question is going to be like, Oh, we didn't think of that. That's a good point, we really should incorporate that as well.

32:04

I think it has to happen now. And I, you know, I can't speak for the workforce. I can't i All I know is that I've heard the term silver tsunami, right? We're getting ready to retire, there is a movement in that direction. And, and we're trying to backfill it with young professionals and passionate about it. To that extent, Erick, we know it's a human equation. What are the challenges like? Like, what are the roadblocks in that sense? Like, I got it, I'm all in man. I'm all in. But there's always going to be that roadblock?

32:38

Yeah. Me know, play off what Nate said that maybe just a different aspect to it is, I feel like it's a lot easier for somebody in the field to have a new digital solution brought to them by a peer, right? In our own life. How many times have you been sold something by a third party or, you know, somebody who doesn't truly understand your situation, you're always on guard, you don't quite understand if they're really have your best interests at heart, or if there's some angle that they're playing. And, and I think no matter how well intentioned, say, an external consultant or an IT organization can be, there's always a little bit of on guard that someone maybe in a production operations role might might have. But that's where I go back to pulling in, you know, their peers into the process. And whether it's making them, you know, the Digital Champions that Tom talked about, or just having their full dedication to the delivery of the solution. You know, if you see someone who walks, talks, acts like you bring a solution, say, I vouch for this thing, you know, this, this meets our requirements, it's a it's a we as opposed today. And I think that makes a bit of a difference. It's, it's all wrapped up in that change management process. But really having your, your counterpart be part of the process of defining the solution. It definitely accelerates the success probability of anything you're planning to bring out to the field.

34:05

So from my perspective, it's an exciting time. There's just so many interesting, and there's a philosophy there, right? There's a speed at which all of this stuff is happening. Right? And for me, it's hard for me, is that good? Is that is that good? It requires that that that leadership would be saying, Okay, this is where we're going, let's bring some people in, let's get the you know, the victories hear the small victories which let's get it let's start building and the bottom line is that companies need to do this. Just do it's not a it's not a it's not an option. So you do need to do this okay, we're gonna have to wrap it up. Before we depart. Let's say somebody wants to get a hold of you, Erick, how would they do that?

34:49

Yeah, I can share my my work email, but it's Erick.bartuske@apachicorp.com

34:55

Excellent, Tom, how did they get a hold of you?

34:58

Tbonny at all. I've come or you head online and look at any of our articles there on this project here, you'll find my email as well as Nate's from with me share his

35:10

most digital solutions. Just Google, and I'll come up but any corporate

35:14

add your name? Well it's digital solutions

35:18

not that but you know, if you look Tom Bonney digital you're gonna find Tom You can google Erick Apache digital you're gonna find Erick and same for me so and I'm sure the same for you scout we're gonna turn you into Mr. Digital here as well

35:30

Oh yeah, yeah. Yay because I'm telling you I love it I do I love I just love where it's going I love the conversation I you know and and for me personally there's a speed and it's exciting, right? If I was young had more hair I would be all in man I'd be all in. All right you guys were absolutely spectacular. I really appreciate it. All right listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side, we're gonna have all the contact information for Tom, Nate, and definitely Erick, out on Industrial Talk. So stay tuned, we will be right back.

36:06

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

36:12

All right, once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk and for your support. A hearty thank you to Nate, Erick and Tom. And talking about digital transformation in the oil and gas and energy space important you need to be in the digital transformation game. You need Sherpas, you need trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. That's what this platform is about highlighting people like Deloitte and Apache and and making sure that you have everything you need to be successful, at least have a direction of some sort. So thank you to Deloitte thank you to Apache for being on Industrial Talk. Again, next week. This is I want to say October 17, through the 20th. It's a little short turnaround. But this is SMRP 30, of annual conference, and we were going to be broadcasting there. And if you're in the reliability and maintenance space, and you're finding yourself at the SMB RP event, look us up. You can't miss us. We'll have all the lights and the cameras and everything like that. So let's have a conversation. And the other one is of course, Fabtech, which is next month. Let me sort of pull this up. This is in Atlanta, Georgia, November 8 through the 10th. Yeah, November 8, through the 10th. We couldn't be you're going to be in Fabtech. And in fact, we're going to have out on Industrial Talk the booth number and all that good stuff. Look us up. Let's have a conversation. Let's and if anything at a minimum say Hey, Scott, we have a booth. Can you come on by and talk about our tech? Yes, we can. And that'd be a lot of fun too, as well. We'll just get that turned around. All right. Be bold, be brave, daring, greatly hanging out with people like Tom, like Nate, like Erick, and you're going to change the world because we need you. We need you to be a success. You need to collaborate, you need to innovate and definitely you need to educate as much as you possibly can because we need you. That's what this platform is all about. Thank you very much. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So do not go away. We will be right back.

The post The Challenges and Value of Digital in Oil and Gas appeared first on Industrial Talk.

On this week's Industrial Talk we're talking to Tom Bonny, Partner and Managing Director with Deloitte Consulting about “Last Barrel Standing”.  Get the answers to your “Oil and Gas” questions along with Tom's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

collaborate, oil, companies, gas, digital, industrial, listeners, operators, tom, cost, deloitte, upstream, industry, talk, conversation, hydrocarbon, differently, nimble, work, focused

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go

00:22

Hello, and welcome to industrial talk, the industrial ecosystem focused on your success by featuring industry leaders, companies that are solving problems and who are passionate about collaborating. You know why they're bold, they're brave, they're Daring Greatly each and every day. And they're changing lives, and they are changing the world. That's why we here at industrial talk, celebrate them all the time. That's what we do. All right, in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Tom Barney, he is a partner and managing director with a Deloitte, we're going to be talking about oil and gas. And I'm telling you, this is a podcast for you to take notes down because he's just nailing the bullet points. He's just saying, Do this, do this, do this. This is what we say, blah, blah, blah. Let's get cracking. Yeah, so I sat down with Tom. And we had a great conversation. This is last barrel standing is a blog or article that he wrote, it's out on industrial talk, of course, it's out on Deloitte. And it really just nails down tremendous steps on on what's taking place within the oil and gas industry what to do, where it's going, I am just telling you a paper and pencil on this particular conversation, he brings the truth lumber in a big way. Couple of items. One, we've got a hashtag called we are industry. And that is just a celebration. And it's just a hashtag that is a culmination of all the stories out here that are featuring true human successes that exists within industry. And I just think inherited as a shirt if you want one of these shirts, if you're looking at on videos with hashtag, it's a it's a black shirt with white lettering called we are industry. But I'm telling you right now, industry is what it is. It's human, it's people. It's solving problems. And it is truly wrapped around education, collaboration, and innovation. So that we all succeed, we need it more than ever, we need to be able to collaborate that as my soapbox, make it happen, make it so hashtag, we are industry. The second item, industrial talk, we'll be broadcasting from IoT solutions World Congress, that is in Barcelona will be broadcasting their live. So be on the lookout for that, as well as broadcasting from a distributor tech live there too, as well featuring incredible, incredible companies and individuals that are again, solving problems, innovating, making our lives better. And then finally, we're going to be at the manufacturing, digital manufacturing summon that's in Chicago, same thing. They're incredible companies are all going to be there. A lot of fun, a lot of great opportunities to learn, educate a lot of great opportunities to collaborate. That's what we need to do. And definitely innovate specially today. All right. Now, again, I go out to Tom Barney stack card out on LinkedIn. Yeah, you'll be impressed. And the conversation you think, oh my gosh, we're gonna be talking about oil and gas is going to get down into the weeds. Now. My notes, the article itself. Very, very strategic, very focused on this is what this is it this is it point, point point, the way I love to rock and roll, and it's all out there, go to industrial talk.com Find out more. There are some backlinks there. So let's get on with the interview because I don't want to waste your time. This is Tom Barney, Deloitte as the company. Let's get cracking. Tom, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule to talk to the best listeners in the world. How are you doing?

04:15

I'm doing well today. It's a nice sunny day in Houston. So can't complain.

04:19

I'm in New Orleans right now right outside of New Orleans. And I'm sure you're getting a great weather too. I'm doing the same thing. It's sort of weird because I got spring fever.

04:29

We should probably do this outside next time.

04:33

Yeah, but you know how it is. It's the same thing in Houston. Same thing in Texas. Same thing, Louisiana. Today's good. Tomorrow, we'll probably you know, sweater tushies off, you know, it'll be completely different and muggy and then you want to stay inside. All right. For the listeners. Let's get the sort of level set. I've looked at your stack card out there on LinkedIn, massive skills. But without me sort of yammering on give us a little background on who Tom is.

04:59

So I won't tell you the number of years I've been doing this type of work because I've run out of digits to say how long I've been in this type of business. It's a combination of both industry, I was at a service company before and consulting as well. For Deloitte, I head up our core operations practice. So by that, you know, it's like, how do you actually manage the oil and gas platforms and things like that? How do you maximize potential etc. And then a lot of that today means also applying digital different types of solutions for them. And so I lead up a group that focuses on those types of aspects and capabilities.

05:37

So you're focused on digital stuff that is impacting oil and gas, right?

05:42

Yeah, that winds up being a lot of what we do today, just because it's, it's not about doing things, traditional ways of working, and just lean six sigma and process flow. It's actually how do you reimagine and enable that with leveraging different tools such as digital?

05:57

Yeah, that's a that's a hot topic. And now, listeners, we're going to talk about an article or a report that was generated by Tom. And it's an interesting report, and I liked the title of it is catchy. It is pithy at the same time, last barrel standing, give the listeners a little background on on on the premise behind that particular article.

06:20

Sure. So essentially, if you think about it, so I can, in every energy scenario people are talking about now in the future of oil and gas, and that analysts will still say that, you know, oil and gas is here for for the foreseeable future, it's still part of the energy mix. Now that said, you know, it's not about a debate of if the energy transition is happening, it's more discussed around pace as to when that will happen. So in a world where we still need oil and gas, and there's but there's also this energy transition happening, we kind of see four different types of upstream operators evolving over time. And those will have to evolve to say, if you really want to be, you know, last and fit for any oil, price, etc, like that. There are going to be operating model implications across these four different types of archetypes, as we've called them, and how are operators going to adjust their operating models to essentially for those who decide to stay in oil and gas be that last barrel standing? That's essentially the premise.

07:24

You mentioned briefly? Four points four. Can you sort of expand upon that, please?

07:30

Sure. So the archetypes is essentially it's, you know, start at the book end. On one side, we have one that we call the hydrocarbon Staller. That's essentially the operator who says, You know what, I'm fundamentally an oil and gas company, this is what I do, I'm not changing my portfolio, I'm sticking to this, on the opposite side of that is what we call the net zero pioneer. So it's exactly right is the opposite of it. It's someone who says, You know what, I'm actually getting out of oil and gas, and I'm pivoting to new energies. So that's the book ends in the middle, we have those who take a little bit of flavor of each. So the one after hydrocarbon stalwart is the one that we call a low carbon producer, similar to the stalwarts, and the fact that they're still saying, Hey, I'm raising my hand, I'm an upstream player, but they recognize that there's a need to decarbonize and are making intentional choices to do so. They're balancing the economics of whatever play they're in with the environmental impact. And then the next one, which rounds out the four is what we call the green followers. So just before the net zero, and those are those who are saying I'm gonna go a step further than low carbon producers, I will slowly start pivoting out of my oil and gas portfolio, especially those that start not necessarily top of my revenue generation, margin generation, etc, that I'll start pivoting and I'm going to start pivoting a bit more to new energies. But I'm not going to jump head deep the way that net zero did, but I will overtime start adjusting my portfolio that's essentially the spectrum

09:08

of what was number three. I didn't really catch it, I got it. But what was what's the title, the number three, green follower green? Uh huh. Now I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm a if I'm a stalwart, the hydrocarbon stalwart, right, I'm, I'm all in. Do you foresee the necessity eventually, because I'm stubborn, for lack of a better term? Me then dipping my toes into low carbon and then then going down that do you think that it happens? What's that sort of culture taking place?

09:47

So what I'd say is across all four archetypes, you know, there are some very obvious operating model aspects that need to be considered and some of those obvious are is hey, if I'm not drilling in completing wells or managing oil anymore, I'm one of these. What's it called netzero pioneers. And I'm, let's say, my portfolio is full of wind, well, I don't need a reservoir engineer anymore. So that's the obvious, we're going to change capabilities that we need based on it. But then there's three things that we see, regardless of which one you choose, you're gonna have to do a flavor of this. And when I say a flavor of this, how far you go in depends on how much you're sticking with oil and gas, or you're moving to, to new types. But the three things that we talked about is, regardless, everyone needs to lean out based business and drive capital efficiency. This is fundamental to being the last federal standard, the economics will change, you want to be the one that is fit. If I'm the hydrocarbon stalwart, and I want to be fit for any bike, I need to make sure I have a very nimble, agile organization that can run at multiple different cost layer. That's going to be the first one. The second one is decarbonizing the EMP value chain, that was kind of your question, everyone, to some degree, is going to need to show that we're at least doing our best to minimize our carbon footprint. So the hydrocarbon stalwarts, hey, I'm not gonna flare as much, I'm going to take certain things out. Now, as you go across that spectrum. Well, I'm changing my portfolio, I'm moving into clean energy. I'm doing things like that. So that's part of that decarbonisation. But the spectrum of what you go with depends on where do you fall on that? The third thing that is if I think about it, like so, I'm leaning out, I'm going to be more cost efficient, and everything I do, I'm going to make smart decisions. And then I'm going to be better at understanding my carbon footprint and how to prep. So that means the third thing is, I need to be intentional about how I leverage digital as a coordinator, to monitor execute, optimize all of these things. So those are kind of the three aspects around the operating model that we think we'll have, you're gonna have to deep dive on more.

12:00

Yeah. And I think that I think the creating efficiency being a lot more nimble requires a digital conversation, right? I guess you do, I don't think you can achieve whatever that objective is without a concerted effort into your digital conversation, right? Yeah,

12:21

I so I'm, what I'd say to is, there's probably no, sorry, you're gonna get more numbers, we start with four. And then we go to three things and but under that first one, that lean out the base business and drive capital efficiency, what we what I share in more detail in the in the article, though, is around to do that. There's three areas you need to focus on and mentalities you need to change. And so if I'm really going to lean out drive capital efficiency, what does that mean? First thing is this balance between value versus cost, I need to change my mindset around that. And when I say cost, in historical times, oil and gas companies were like, hey, market cycle happens. You know, market price is down, just slash my cost, just got. And I wind up making sometimes decisions that will bite me in the rear later in, in the future. But I mean, it's like, here's an example of one operator I worked with, in the height of 2015 2016. They're cutting all their facilities costs out on a pad. And the problem with doing that is a few years later, they're like, hey, I want to work differently. I don't want to touch every Well, every day, I want to be able to do more remotely, you didn't invest in the automation or the OT that you needed to be able to do a lot of that because you were focused on cutting down costs. So you have to be Yeah, this is where the value aspect comes in, you have to rethink and take time to do kind of what I call a structural reset. So I will still do some of those traditional cost taker. But instead of looking at just Lean Six Sigma, because that's the way to cut my processes, it's going to be about reimagining that process, streamlining and automating it, but also challenging how I currently work. So sticking with the unconventional since we I was just mentioning it. There's an approach called Agile manufacturing. Yep, not the factory model type thing and how I deliver wells, etc. So when I say, hey, we do this and unconventional Well, why wouldn't I think about that in my conventional assets as well? Are there aspects of how we iterate short cycle doing MVPs? Can we apply that to the traditional long lead that it takes to do a well design? And we've seen some companies starting to do that outside of unconventional portfolio applying it to a conventional so we need to see that happen. So that's the value versus cost. Then the other aspect of this lean out and capital efficiency is collaborate versus compete. So me, I've worked for a service company. I, I know this mentality of it's us versus them. We need to change that dichotomy. When oil prices are typically high A service companies come along and they're like, we're charging you more in low oil prices, operators beat up the service company. I don't see that working in the future. So the last Pharaoh standing, you need to drive every efficiency, you can drive everything you can to improve your margins. So that means rethinking this partnership. So can you create a structure where we want to jointly, you know, work together for each other's benefit? That it's not about just contract incentives that say do XYZ you get this dollar amount? It's actually you know, what? We both realize we have some inefficiencies in a process. What if we did a as an example, joint study, and we work together to figure out what those true bottlenecks are. And then along the way, maybe I figured out that as a service company, these are 10 things I'm giving you, the number eight on that list, you never actually use, you never get any benefit out of it. So what if I just said, I stopped doing that, too, I'm going to reduce my cost for you. So maybe you benefit me back by saying, Okay, I'll, I'll give you a bit of that savings, or I'll give you a little extra work to incentivize you these other ways. That's creating more of a mutual trust and, and collaboration. And the other thing we need to see is where I kind of call it a 360 degree ecosystem suppliers knots working together type area where we're regardless of what's happening across all my field and all my assets, we have this seamless visibility, to collaborate, hey, don't send a truck up to that, that pad to pick up the tank or anything like that right now. We have issues your we don't, you don't need to encourage emerge here, we'll send yourself more dynamically collaborating to each other's benefit, not just to each other's pocketbook, so to speak. And then the last one not taking nice, big deep breath is you know, if we talked about value versus cost, collaborate versus compete, well, the last one in this lean out theme is capabilities versus size. So in the old traditional sense, downturn happens, I just kept my head down.

16:59

It's you know, but maybe I need to rethink what the true structure of my organization needs to mean. I need to challenge what work needs to get done, where that work needs to get done, and who needs to do that work. And I mean, front office, back office roles. I think the industry already understands we can do things differently. But there's a key learnings in COVID, and remote work that I think a lot of these operators have started to get a sense for companies, service companies start to get a sense for, actually, you know, what if I take advantage of very smart folks who work in different countries in different regions, and use them to collaborate with me to deliver work, I don't necessarily need everybody to sit here in Houston, or whichever country you're based at, we can we can find different ways of working together. Also, what oil and gas companies need to do is if I look about what it takes for you to drill, complete, manage production, all that? Do all those core engineers near worlds always need to be on my book. Or can I say, Hey, there's this concept of a gig economy, there's this concept of service companies are other ways of outsourcing. So to speak, some of that traditional work that we say has to be ups, you still need somebody in house, but as a way of creating a base load that I always do. And then I manage the rest differently. But that's not what I saw on the downturn was the minute you need to start cutting. It's like, okay, you get rid of all external services. And then I make everybody my own folks to work. But it's like, maybe if you use service companies and others in a different way previously, can you not continue to do that by really challenging what those core competencies really are for you internally that you must always have on your books? A pause, so that kind of describes the lien. Now,

18:43

this is this is rich information. Definitely a couple of things that I want to point out, did you find that the pandemic as a whole sort of facilitated this type of a conversation because what you're touching on is a human element, right? It's all great to balance value versus cost. But you have this whole traditional legacy thinking over here that we don't do it that way. We've done it this way for years and years, right. But now I've got this pandemic, I've got to, I got to be more nimble. I've got to be more agile, I've got to be, I've got to be flexible, your your your point on collaborate. That is like that's, if it was four letters, it'd be a four letter word. But it's not four letters. It's a longer word. But do you find that there? This is all good, but do you find there's a resistance or reluctance from a human perspective to do any of this? Yeah.

19:42

So the Collaborate versus compete was two different CEOs. And one of them more recently said the service companies know me the best. The only way I'm ever gonna Really get better than that is I have to work with them. So that's one side some see it. Then there was another one. We were doing a workshop and all that, and I was chatting away. And I'm saying, Okay, what about this theme here. And his perspective was, that sounds good on paper, at the end of the day, I just don't trust them. Not gonna happen. And it's that, that trust, that lack of trust is the hard thing. And it's really going to, it's on both sides. By the way, it's it's not like it's just one direction. But it is a matter of like, who's going to be that first person to say, I'm going to dip my toe, I'm going to take a shot at doing that, I want to think a little differently. I think that that person who does is going to be the company will be the trendsetter and be the one that then delivers that to be that last bear standing actually squeeze out every single cost that I can, I can deliver more value more revenue as I can. And that doesn't do it by just using my own brain. So

20:58

you're, you're you're hitting on all cylinders. And I really like and yeah, we can we can say, hey, this is an oil and gas. But I find this this approach applicable to manufacturing, not just oil and gas, but manufacturing and absolutely streets where, hey, you don't have all the answers. And if there's a way of being able to work with you, in some way, shape or form where I'm more efficient, you're more efficient we have, we're sharing information that's meaningful. That's a that's a that's a hell of a homerun.

21:29

It is. I mean, I won't know the manufacturing business as well. But it's, you have case studies out there today, I think, can do it. What sometimes feedback from their own gas side is like, well, that's much more cutters the wrong way. But it's like, you know, what you're building, you know, the pieces, well, we are sometimes drilling and doing things differently. And we need to be a bit more nimble. So I'm not sure who I need to work with. And I'm like, okay, but that doesn't mean this is a barrier to being able to try it. And to create a different type of partnership with someone, it just might be a bit easier for an auto company than it is for you. Because it's not as simple as I'm only gonna rely on this person to give me parts. But yet right now, it's all I hear is the the bots. And it's like, we need to think a little differently. But the downturn, I think the more recent one and all that. And 2020 is getting people to rethink a little bit, because you also have to think 2008 2015 2020 It's not, that's not been very fun for oil and gas, it's been a bit too short in between all these cycles.

22:33

And honestly, you bring up another good point I being in oil and gas and, and seeing the changes. And I mean, these are swings, these are massive market swings that just go up and down. me if I was king of oil and gas, I would want to create something a little bit more one predictable, a little bit more collaborative, and more mutually beneficial type of thing. Because this this up and down pump handle, that's a tough way to do business, and it's tough way to live.

23:06

Yeah, you know, it's, it hasn't been a fun time. So

23:13

you wake up and you're saying, Well, I didn't see that one coming. But now what do I do?

23:18

I think my wife is getting sick me going, Oh, no, not another one. And so but you learn to live with it. And the last two are markedly different than 2008 in the sense that 2008 was a very quick down and then backup. But 2015 was the when the whole expression lower for longer started coming out. And just as we thought things were getting better COVID And all that came along, and then that, that derailed certain things, and it's but I will tell you, those operators that are very successful are the ones who have been using this time to say, I'm gonna start challenging, I'm gonna start enabling myself through digital other things, drive a better cost structure a better revenue, or evidence that will maximize everything I can,

24:04

I think there's some regulatory pressures as well on on reducing the carbon footprint to so you can meet that stalwart. But, you know, eventually, you're gonna have to play that game and you're gonna have to reduce that footprint in some way, shape, or form, or it's gonna cost you

24:20

and that's why it's I was saying, like one of our elements is decarbonizing, because regardless, even if you're like, you know what, I'm here to stay, and I'm just going to keep playing, you will have people looking over your shoulder, you will have people calling you out. So as long as you're saying, Hey, I'm doing my part doesn't mean I'm going to stop drilling and bleak completing wells. But you know, I'm not just needlessly flaring. I'm trying to find ways to reduce my emissions, the large sum the larger independents and all that I think are the ones you're going to focus more on like, alright, carbon capture and different techniques and things like that. So moving a little bit more, but you will, you're gonna have a spectrum.

24:57

But again, it's And I can't say this enough, it is a, it is a digital conversation, how do you then capture that data? How do you mind that data? How do you make tactical decisions from the data to be able to achieve all these incredible points that you point out? I mean, it just is. And one of the questions I have for you is that with this with all of this focus, this was great. And the need for that ability to be able to start reaching in doing that digital side. There's, there's, there's a trust factor, there are two, because there are stories out there of people trying to deploy some digital strategy, and it failed, or its cost or it didn't work the way it needs to. We've got to get past that too, don't you

25:47

think? So for me, that means it's success. Because if every single digital project you do works, then you're not trying hard enough, you're not really trying to do anything that's a setup there. So but it's, that's what they'll tell you is like, the whole point is experiment. You need to do the the easy, obvious ones to know, I need to do production authorization, can I use analytics to control my artificial lift? Absolutely, then you're gonna have to experiment and try out some, some new types of techniques. And I was on a call with a client earlier who said, you know, they have an idea, I can't share all the details. But let's say hey, we want to try this. But I'm getting some pushback within the organization, because they're saying, well, we don't see anyone else doing this. Okay. So, you know, is it a good idea, you your asset base, and what you have, it's essentially they they're looking at maximizing the value of the hydrocarbon from upstream, midstream and downstream. Yeah. And it's like, by the way, there are people trying this out, but it it's a hard one to solve, because traditionally, I fit fix upstream and I and downstream worries about downstream and we don't necessarily work together. Well, they have a unique situation where they own a lot of that, and they can feed themselves in that, like, Can I think about differently, that sometimes Guess what? downstream, maybe you're gonna take a hit on your numbers, because it's an a benefit upstream, but as a company overall, that's the right thing to do. But it's that mentality of saying, just because it's hard, doesn't mean you shouldn't try it. And you should try some of these. But if every if everything you illustrate complete success, you're not trying harder.

27:26

See, that is the first time I've heard that spin. I like that your abs spin? Well, no. It's not a negative, it's a positive. Because you, you point out something that I'm a big fan of, if you're not, if you're not pushing the envelope, you're not failing, you're not trying, you know, even from an incremental perspective, this start small scale, whatever, whatever thing you do, if you're not failing, when I say fail on a negative, you're not learning and you're not being you're not creating value as you continue to get your awesome that is I'll have that link to that record. Right. Your your last barrel standing, right?

28:12

Yes, I'll shoot it over here. It's obviously on our deloitte.com website and easy one to just type in their search last barrel, and it will come up and we can give listeners a direct feed on your website as well.

28:29

Okay, so you're gonna have that backlink listeners. That's going to be a must a must read. We've just sort of scratched the surface quite a bit. But man, talk about a rich conversation. I've got a lot. My notes were overflowing with numbers. And I liked them and I like the fact that I can do that. Oh, number one. Oh, yeah. Okay. A stalwart. Okay, I'll get that low carbon. I'm okay. I got that. Makes it easier for me. How do people get a hold of you?

28:56

You can go ahead and just give me an email at T as in Tom, obviously, Barney, B O N N y@deloitte.com. Got any questions? You want to have a Richard chat? Always happy to connect with folks.

29:09

All right, listeners. That's Tom. Tom, you are wonderful. Thank you for the time. Thank you for being on industrial talk. Alright listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. I'm gonna have all the contact information for Tom and as well as the link and go out to industrial talk.com and get it and just get that backlink get you got to start learning. And I think that Tom is hitting on all cylinders here. Thank you very much. We will be right back.

29:34

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

29:43

All right. Thank you, Tom for being on industrial talk, absolute joy. I love the bullet by bullet solutions that are taking place from your last barrel standing article. absolutely exceptional. Thank you. And I'm telling you Right now you need listeners. You need trusted individuals trusted companies to help your journey into this digital transformation. Top body, Deloitte absolutely spot on trusted. That's what industrial talk is all about featuring trusted professionals that are solving problems. All right, again, we're going out to IoT solutions World Congress will count for those live conversations with Google best around the world as well as distribute tech. my wheelhouse utilities, love it. It's going to be exceptional. And we're all talking about the innovation. We're all educating. We're all collaborating. All right, people be brave Garrett, greatly hanging out with people like Tom and you're gonna change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. Do not go away.

The post Tom Bonny with Deloitte Consulting appeared first on Industrial Talk.

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The post Mr. David Reid with NOV Talks About a passion and need to innovate in the energy market appeared first on Industrial Talk.

In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Ron Gusek, President at Liberty Oilfield Services about “Leveraging Technology and Innovation to Reduce the Cost of Energy and Minimizing Environmental Impact”. Get the answers to your “Oil and Gas Innovation” questions along with Ron's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!

You can find out more about Ron and the wonderful team at Liberty Oilfield Services on the innovative solutions that reduce the cost of energy while minimizing the impact to the environment by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!

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Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-gusek-3b27232/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liberty-oilfield-services/

Company Website: https://www.libertyfrac.com/

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Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/

Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/

Safety With Purpose Podcast: https://safetywithpurpose.com/

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

oil, people, gas, ron, industrial, oilfield services, world, drill, industry, technology, liberty, north america, energy, produce, important, alberta, emissions, impact, innovation, big

00:04

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots,

00:21

and let's go. Alright, welcome

00:22

to the industrial talk podcast, the number one industrial related podcast in the universe. I'm not overselling that I don't think I am. Thank you very much for joining. We celebrate you industry heroes all around the world because you are bold, you are brave. You dare greatly you solve problems, you make people's lives better, and you're changing the world. I don't think there's anything else better to celebrate than you. Thank you very much for what you do. And joining the industrial talk podcast. All right. in the hot seat, we got a gentleman by the name of Ron Gusek, President of Liberty Oilfield Services, we'll be talking a little bit about fracking 101 pretty cool topic, as well as technology, the advancements of technology and how it just makes the world a better place. Gosh, you guys are great. All right,

01:17

let's get cracking.

01:20

Ron,

01:22

go out to a stat card, big time stat card, you'll say Wow, he's uh, he's got some skills, I've got some mad street credit, as well as he's a super nice guy. As is a lot of people within industry, super nice people. I don't know, it's, I'm living the dream, I'm living the dream. Before we get in the interview, let's just talk a little bit about business. We have a new, well, I can't say we're in the process. Industrial talk 2.0. And, and what we're doing there is we're just sort of redesigning, we have the podcast, we have videos, we have training, we have everything. And now we want to be able to begin pursuing and having greater educational opportunities for industrial professionals, greater and easier collaboration opportunities with industry professionals, like for example, if you want to get involved, let's just say you want to reach out to Ron here, you can you can see what he's doing, what his team's doing at Liberty, oilfield services, and so on and so forth, and be able to create these great opportunities to be able because I'll tell you right now, Ron, others are really into this whole education, collaboration, and innovation. I think that's, that's where we have to be. That's where we're going. And that's what's industrial talk to dot o is we want masterminds, we want to solve problems, more problems using and connecting with the individuals that make things happen, which is everybody, and then be able to put it together because I think me and I just got done talking with Intel, that the same thing exists, we we just don't have pre pandemic. Yeah, maybe we have the solutions during this pandemic, during this next normal during this new normal, whatever it might be. I think what we're looking at is a necessity and people's willingness to collaborate and solve problems. Because that's really where it is. And I think that more and more people are just doing that. And that's what this is all about. I'm just telling you right now. That's what this is all about. All right. That's industrial talk. 2.0 Be on the lookout for that. All right, another thing?

03:36

Not,

03:37

there's not I'm gonna hold off on that. Let's talk a little bit around. Ron gooseneck. All right, Liberty oilfield. He's been there for about seven years little over. He's got oil and gas pedigree like nobody's business, and just all around great guy, Canadian, just like my parents. So he is a nice guy. But we're talking about fracking 101. And I think that it's really interesting for us to have that realization that energy is very important, especially today. And companies like companies like liberty. They're doing everything they can to deliver the energy to deliver the products at the lowest possible price. And and do it in such a way that it minimizes the impact to communities in the society. They have a really beautiful purpose. And then you can tell man a they've got that desire to do it and do it right. Gosh, Liberty oilfield services.

04:38

Alright,

04:38

let's get on with the interview. Ron Gusek is in the hot seat. He spells his last name g USEK. Reach out but you know, it'll all be out on industrial talk.com everything that you need to know to be able to connect. Alright, enjoy the interview. Ron. Wow. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute honor Howard. Are you doing today?

05:00

Very well. Thanks, Scott. Excited to be here with you. So thanks very much for having no idea

05:05

how excited I was looking forward to this interview. I, of course, I was looking on my, my calendar and I'm going all right Ron's right around the corner right there. And I, I might as well just sort of sit here. Just be excited about this conversation. All right, listeners, we're gonna be talking a little bit about what Liberty frac does, you can imagine in their name. Yep. They're in the oil and gas industry. And they definitely help a lot of companies do a lot of great things. And we're gonna go into that particular conversation. But before we do that, Ron, little 411, because your stat cards great out there, but little 411 on who you are.

05:40

All right. Ah, yeah, quick, quick history on me. I grew up in Canada, just outside of Edmonton, Alberta, and ended up going to engineering school I love taking apart cars and things like that. So mechanical engineering was, was in my, in my nature, my dad was a carpenter, pretty handy guy. And so I was hands on sort of person. And, and, and so engineering came pretty natural to me. I swore I'd never saw a store, I'd never work in the oil and gas industry. You know, I grew up in Alberta and a crazy time, and thought that was too volatile and industry for me. And so I started working in heating, ventilation and air conditioning figured everybody need that all their lives, that's a safe place to go to work, but our oil and gas in Alberta so it didn't take probably four years after I got out of school and I ended up in oil and gas have been in it ever since. So I'm I'm almost 25 years in the oil and gas industry now seeing a good chunk of the world as a result of it. But most of that based in Calgary, but packed up and moved down here to Denver in 2014. And been here with Liberty ever since.

06:42

That is amazing. That's it? I mean, it's it's hard. Yeah, you're in Alberta, it's hard to avoid that. Oil and Gas. It's, it's it's a big deal up there.

06:53

It is a big deal. 30% of the GDP or something like that.

06:58

Yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's hard to avoid, and it's but but being in the business for 25 years, you've seen a lot of a lot of changes a lot of technology, a lot of advancements, and and from my perspective, all pretty benefit, you're not sitting out there trying to say, I'm going to make it as as inefficient as I possibly know you guys are always pursuing that technology, the efficiencies and being able to achieve that as much as you possibly can. Now, for the listeners out there, and for me, too, because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed give us a little tracking 101. And what Liberty frac does just just give us a little basis, and then we'll just sort of springboard from there.

07:38

Alright, sounds good, a little basics on exactly what we do. So, you know, today, when we drill a well, it's something called a horizontal well, so we're going to drill down maybe 7000 8000 10,000 feet into the ground vertically. And then we're going to turn that well horizontally, and we're going to drill out a mile or two or three inside the rock that we are interested in. And then the problem is the rock that we're drilling into the natural pore spaces in the holes for the molecules to flow through are so small that oil and gas wouldn't naturally flow out to the hole to the well that we just put in. And so it needs a little help. And so we do something called hydraulic fracturing, which is creating cracks in that rock radiating outwards from that wellbore that we drill. And that provides a better pathway for oil and gas to get to the surface, I kind of liken it to creating a city. So you know, if everybody wants to get downtown, you know, we have major freeways on which all the cars can get from their little neighborhoods, then you get out onto a big freeway and then ultimately end up in the place you need to get to fracking is just like that we put, you know, we put a big wellbore down there, which is the major freeway, and then we create all these arteries into it, which are the hydraulic fractures. And that gives those little molecules a path to get to serve where we can use them.

08:58

So the question I have somebody had to come up with this thing, this fracking solution, how long has it really been around?

09:07

It's been around a long time. Well, more than 50 years, we started fracking in North America back in the 1940s or 1950s. It looked a lot different back then, of course, but but fundamentally the exact same idea that we do today, we just do it at a different scale.

09:24

See, I never knew that. The way I sort of look at it, it's like, hey, this came out it's relatively new and they're doing this and and but but it's it's a it's a technology that's been

09:37

Jeez.

09:39

Yeah, that's a long time. It

09:41

It's Yeah, you know, it's evolved for sure we we do it at a different scale. Today, we do a lot more of it. The reservoirs we work in require more stimulation, more fracking to to produce oil or gas but, but still exactly the same principle that we started decades and decades ago.

10:00

So in this particular case, the benefits of fracking are obvious you can get greater yield from a specific location. And, you know, it's I guess, and correct me, Ron, if it's like low hanging fruit, I can pick it, but maybe there's some fruit that's a little higher up, and that tree can yield more from that that analogy, which is, I admit very weak, however, it is for me and the listeners anyway. From from a yield perspective, what what, what can we see from an existing location greater yield? What are we talking about?

10:41

Well, I would guess that most of the wells we drilled today, if you didn't frack them, they wouldn't produce a drop of oil or gas, you would get almost nothing out of them. And so, hydraulic fracturing means the difference between a well that does nothing and and a well, that will produce hundreds of 1000s of barrels of oil, or or millions and millions of cubic feet of gas over its lifetime. That wasn't true. Historically, it used to be you could drill a well, and it would flow on its own, and it would flow that way for years and years and years. But today, the reservoirs we work in, that's not the case, they they require stimulation to produce at any economic level.

11:17

Amazing. And, and you get to a point, and once again, I would imagine, a driver is a cost per barrel, and the solution needs to sort of be within that economic benefit. If it's outside of it, then it makes no sense. But if it's within that, so you're constantly driving, to the point of trying to make it more efficient, better cost effective.

11:41

Yeah, I mean, of course, oil, oil and gas are commodities. And so they are driven by a supply demand curve, to to at least some extent, and so you know, there's a, there's a price out there that we can get for a barrel of oil. And ultimately, you know, if a company is going to be a success, they have to find a way to produce a barrel of oil, for less money than they are able to sell it for same is true of any business, and ours looks no different than that. Now, of course, you know, the great thing about having low oil and gas prices is that is that everybody benefits from that, you know, we all, we all consume hydrocarbons in some way, shape, or form that might be directly in the form of your furnace, or hot water tank or something like that, that might be a little less directly in the form of gasoline in your car. But we all consume those less expensively, we can ultimately find a way to produce a barrel of oil or a molecule of gas, less expensive energy is for humanity. And so, you know, we have to continue to be innovative and find ways to lower the cost of energy. And we also have to find ways to lower the impact of producing that. And

12:45

when you say impact, what do you mean by that?

12:48

Well, I think there's a lot of ways you could think about that certainly the the most talked about one is is the thoughts around impact co2 emissions in the climate. So that's a, that's a very, very big picture one. But you could also drill down to a much, much smaller level than that, you know, here in Colorado, the majority of the, or the core of the field that we work in is right up and down the front range of the Rockies here, which also happens to be where the vast majority of people are moving into Colorado. And so we find ourselves in a situation where we are going to be working in very, very close proximity to a place where somebody is living close to a backyard close to a park or a playground or a school or something like that. And so as you know, when we put that pad in place, and ultimately go out there to work through the exercise of drilling and completing those wells before they they produce, there's some impact to those folks. There's there's noise and some dust and some truck traffic. And and we recognize that as a as an inconvenience to the people who are nearby there. And so it's incumbent upon us, as industry to find ways to minimize that impact for the time that we are there. So we don't want to keep them up at night with loud engines, we don't want trucks coming and going at all hours of the night to the extent we can avoid that. We want to find ways to minimize the dust in the air so that they don't, they don't have their enjoyment of the outdoors taken away from them. So we continue to focus on solutions to try to get that local impact small as possible.

14:15

See, that's interesting. Because, you know, of course, your business wants to do that. Of course, you you want to minimize your impact, because the value of what you're doing is important because beyond the the natural gas component and beyond the the obvious one gasoline, petrochemicals I mean, it's a it's an everything. I mean look, it's everywhere, right? And without it I mean you're just like my speakers. I guarantee you right? But it's we forget the the the massive impact, but then you've got this desire within let's say Liberty frac to To really minimize the local impact to the community and people, because that's important, too. And I'll set you live in you live in beautiful country. Do you do it, but but there's the resource, and you're going to be challenged to do it in a way that is that makes sense. And you guys accomplish that. That's how I look at it.

15:22

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, having worked in this industry, now I've grown to truly appreciate what what energy has done for humanity and what it will continue to do for, for the future. And so I think what we do is incredibly important, you, you made a lot of great points there. Oil and gas is everywhere around us, there are the obvious things like transportation, fuel, and whatnot, but plastic medicine, and the list go fertilizer for agriculture, the list goes on, and on and on. There are lots of great videos out there that show what life would look like without oil and gas. And it is a shadow of the, you know, the world that we enjoy today. So, you know, we we view what we do is incredibly important. And while a lot of people maybe don't recognize exactly how critical oil and gas is to their world, we know that but we take very seriously our responsibility to produce what we view as an as maybe the most needed industry in the world, to do so as responsibly as we possibly can. And yes, to your point, that means continued investment in technology and innovation to find new and better ways to do things.

16:28

So speaking of that, you touched upon it, it is a it's a bullet point on my some on my my sheet right here, Rod, is, let's talk about technology. You're constantly investing, you're constantly applying, you're constantly looking at the technology that can produce the results that you need to produce, minimize whatever it needs to be minimized, make it more efficient, and so that the cost points are constantly being what recent technologies. Can you sort of point to? That says, Yeah, this is this is this is cool.

17:05

Yeah, sure, I'll I'll point to a couple, there's the list is long. And we've got all kinds of ways with that. But let me go back to that, that whole idea of reducing impact in in a local area, you know, we take, we take a lot of equipment out of to a location to frack a well, if you if you ever have a chance to go visit a location, it is something to see, we will, we will drive out there, you know, your average car is maybe 200 250 300 horsepower in the engine, we will take 50,000 horsepower out to location. So you can appreciate that a lot of engines out there running at the same time. And they make a lot of noise. And so we work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to produce energy and, and so you know, if we're out there making a lot of noise, and somebody's trying to sleep through the night door, that's not a good combination. And of course, that frustrates them. And so we worked hard to find a way to quiet down that equipment to make sure that even if we were running at two o'clock in the morning, if you were 500 feet away from where all of that equipment is running, you would not be able to hear it. And so a few years ago, we rolled out something called the quiet fleet. And it takes the hit for our equipment down at 500 feet to less than 65 decibels which is which is you know, just in common terms, quiet conversation. So if you're 500 feet from our frack location where all of those big compson engines are running, you can listen to the birds chirping now. And that was important for us, particularly here in Colorado, in the northeast, for example, they do a lot of work around residential areas there. And even in even in Texas, we find we're doing work closer to cities there as well. That's, that's one example. Another good example just might be evolution from an emissions standpoint. You know, we of course those are those are big diesel engines and and if you've driven around behind a diesel truck, you know that they they emit black smoke, sometimes particulates. And so we've continued to invest in the in the best engine technology to make sure that our emissions profile will follow. And so, you know, when we first started the company 10 years ago, that was those engines meta, a tier two emission specification, we now have moved to the latest and greatest which is year four, that's like a factor of an reduction in in those particulate emissions versus what they used to look like not that long ago. So the the emissions are getting cleaner. Our next step that we're working on right now is actually an electric, frankly, be driven by electric motors instead of by diesel motors. We'll have that out for tests this year, but ultimately commercialized I think next year, that'll be a dramatic step forward and what one of those locations sounds like, looks like and operates like so. Yeah, lots of lots of big investments. And I mean, these are these are not inexpensive things measured in millions and millions of dollars to deploy technology.

19:46

I'm I'm done to buy the quiet equipment that I know I've seen it I if I come to Colorado, I expect a trip to one of your locations but Sirius Sirius equipment. And I'm I'm amazed that you're able to achieve it's amazing the the innovation that can be applied that that equipment is that quiet. I mean, it just amazes me, I don't know how you do it.

20:15

I appreciate the creativity of our engineering team when they dream things up like that, you know, it took us a couple of years but but I kudos to our team for having the initiative to do that, for having the vision to think that that can be accomplished and ultimately getting there. And but I think that just speaks to the level of innovation that exists inside our industry, I never cease to be amazed by

20:37

itself funny when I have conversations with individuals within the oil and gas industry, the market.

20:43

It's

20:45

it's like, it's innovation on steroids. You have to constantly think of innovative ways of doing your work. And and it and yeah, you may be you guys put your money where your mouth is you make that investment you do it. It's one thing to chirp about it. It's another thing to make it happen. Kudos, I just think it's in that in that in that admissions. So that electric, the electric option. I mean, I've been having a lot of conversations about just electric everything, right? There's a lot of lot of horsepower. And and solutions there. I mean, it, it could be that that's amazing.

21:32

Maybe a big step forward, you know, not a small undertaking. Of course, if you looked at if you looked at the equivalent of that, just thinking about people, I guess one frack leads probably the equivalent power draw of a town of, I don't know, 15 or 20,000 people. So it's, it's a major undertaking to get that electrified, we probably don't take that power off the grid, at least not to start with maybe that's a long term goal, we probably have to generate that power nearby ourselves. But but it will still be a meaningful step forward from where we are today. I

22:02

just you just sort of glossed over that. That little statistic of the power requirement of a 20,000. You know, population community. I grew up in that town in California, and you just sort of roll about that and go, are you kidding me? That is stunning. That is that? How many Meg's would that be? I don't even know

22:29

about about something between 15 and 18 megawatts.

22:32

So you're looking at a GE type of deal. You're looking

22:35

at a on one side? Yeah, you could use a gas turbine, that's certainly a solution that you'll find out there for generating that kind of power, we're gonna take a little bit different approach that maybe the equivalent of a hybrid electric vehicle where you have natural gas engines, but we're going to use Recep engine, so kind of like a car engine, but run on natural gas, together with a battery pack. And and that will allow us to, to, to deliver a bit of a hybrid electricity approach and run the engines as little as possible. So we're aiming for as low in emissions footprint as possible with that solution.

23:12

I'm telling you, man, that's dead sexy.

23:14

I don't even know where to go. You smile everyday getting up to do this stuff.

23:19

Yeah, I see. I'm sitting

23:20

there. I'm just geeking out on everything. They're just saying, because my mind's going a gazillion miles per hour. But I love that. And you know what's interesting? Speaking for you, you're talking natural gas out of that. That last solution? Well, I mean, you guys, you guys know a little bit about natural gas. Right?

23:41

A little bit. Yeah.

23:44

Good, fit, good fit. Now, let's, let's sort of put on our future hat. Where do you see it going? I mean, there's a lot of a lot of activity going out there a lot of uncertainly. I mean, come on. I mean, I haven't. I think I went to the gas station. What, once in six months or something ridiculous. And so a lot of people are in that, that sort of, so that that consumption, where do you see it going? So future?

24:14

You're absolutely right. Last year, I can't remember what demand came off by at the low point, but it was pretty significant. Pretty meaningful dip in in demand for our products. It's come back. Not all the way of course. But it might be off three or 4%. Now from where it was before. But, you know, going into going into the whole downturn as a result of the pandemic, the world was consuming, Ah, look just a little north of 100 million barrels of oil a day. We're still up in the 90 million plus barrels of oil a day. And I'd be very surprised if we didn't get back up over 100 million barrels a day in the foreseeable future and and the story is not much different for gas you know, if you if we live a fantastic life here in North America, I mean, you look around and we are absolutely spoiled. In terms of the world that we enjoy, there are still a billion people in the world that lack basically any access to electricity. There's another billion people in the world who have intermittent access to electricity. The demand for energy is still growing dramatically. And while we are working our way through a transition to add different forms of electricity generation to our world, we are still some ways from being in a place where I think that displaces oil and gas, particularly for transportation, fuel and whatnot. I haven't seen the statistics for 2020 yet, but 2019 was a record year for total energy delivered by oil and gas in North America. And so and I'd be surprised if 2020 wasn't another record year in terms of percentage of total energy provided by oil and gas. It's, it's a massive number. And so it continues to grow for a while yet simply because we don't have an easy replacement for it. You know, battery technology has come a long ways. But it is still a long, long ways from being able to provide grid scale power to us for a meaningful period of time. And we're not in a place where batteries put a fixed issue that happened a couple of weeks, but we're not there yet. And so I see it continue to grow for some period of time, I'm kind of in the camp that we don't see Peak Oil and Gas demand out, you know, for another two decades, probably a decade and a half, for sure, well into the 2030s, maybe into the 2040s. And so for at least as long as I'm going to be working, we're going to be working hard to produce oil and gas as cost effectively and with as little impact. Awesome.

26:33

So yeah, that's that's passion, baby. That is what I do, man. So here's, here's the funny thing, one of the things that just sort of stuck, and we once again, and you brought it up, we take it for granted, we live here and in where we live, we have access to pretty much anything, we take it for granted, and will complain about something and, and and yet, there are billions of people who do not have that type of luxury. And we forget, we forget that there are large portions of the world's population that don't have access to it.

27:11

Yeah, that's it, you know, so we have that global focus, but But even here in North America, you know, you can look at a map of folks who still have to dedicate 10 plus percent of their household income to paying their energy bill. And so I think it's incumbent upon us to still continue to work here in North America to find ways to lower the cost of energy delivered into somebody's house. And so that's important to me out on the coasts, it's, it's the worst, you'll see significant portions of the population on the eastern West Coast, challenged by paying their energy bills, just given the cost of living in those areas. It's a little less prevalent through the middle of the country, but it is a it is a big issue for people to afford energy, even here in North America, despite how well off we are. That is an interesting segment and we're talking you know, I don't like it when I when summer hits Louisiana.

28:06

My my, you cannot live in Louisiana without an AC, you just can't just me, you can't. And if you think you can, well, your line, and and my, my, my bill is substantial. And, but when it goes down, when there's adjustment, whatever it might be, that's real value to the bottom line, that's real value to individuals and their and what they did, so that's important. You know, you're you're clicking on all cylinders wrong, just FYI.

28:36

Well, I, you know, we when when you when you work in an industry that just plays that bigger role in our worlds, you, the people here are passionate about it. And you know, I think having having worked in it as long as I do, and, you know, I I've come to gain an appreciation for exactly what oil and gas has done for us. And, and, you know, while we're, while we're not always the, you know, the most favorite thing to talk about. It's important and so, you know, for as long as I'm here in this industry, I'm going to do all I can to make sure we're doing the best we possibly can to to do what you do every day.

29:13

Awesome. All right, we're gonna have to wrap it up. Are you out there on LinkedIn?

29:19

I certainly am. Are you active? I'm, I'm pretty active. Yeah, I you know, I there's lots of great things to share out there. And social media is a wonderful avenue to get to people. So I do what I can to share what I think are valuable contributions to that

29:32

community. A unique guy, he's just a unique guy.

29:37

I've tried to tell my girls I'm an influencer, but they have a different definition of influencers.

29:46

Yeah, you influence me. We could just say, Hey, tell your girls I've been fluid Scott. about right. Yeah, no, you're not. Those influencers are influencers. They're they're amazing. All right. So we're gonna have everything just FYI you listeners out there. I love this conversation. I will keep on going. But we're gonna have everything out on industrial talk.com. And you need to get a hold of this gent and great topic. candidate. I truly enjoyed it. A lot of good stuff out there

30:25

as well, Scott, really a chance to get on here with

30:27

you. Yeah, you're dropping value bombs. It's so cool. All right, innovation is on the gas, oil and gas innovation, what they're doing the investments. They understand it. We need energy. Ron's right in the thick of it. All right, listeners, Ron Gusek, who is on it. Thank you, Ron, you all of a sudden need to be staying tuned, because we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast. We will be right back.

30:57

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

31:06

All right. That's Ron, told Jim, great guy. Great purpose, great focus. All those people at Liberty Oilfield Services definitely served a purpose. And trying to deliver that energy as low as possible, as efficient as possible. leveraging technology and everything in between. Yep, that's team liberty. oilfield services reach out to

31:29

all our

31:31

industrial talk.com. All right, one last thing. Remember, industrial talk 2.0. We're creating a plan that is all about the collaboration. Continue to do this. It's going to require heavy lifting on our side, but we're going to be able to do we're excited about it. And it's all about education and collaboration and innovation. We need to spread that good word. So anyway, thank you very much. All right. Be bold, be brave, daring greatly. But my challenge to you is hanging out with people who are bold, brave and daring greatly. You're gonna change the world, just like Ron and team. Liberty oilfield. Thank you very much. We're gonna have another great interview right around the corner. So stay tuned.

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