First oil

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”—The late Yogi Berra, legendary baseball player, coach and everyday philosopher.

Yogi was certainly right. Most of us expected crude oil prices to continue to climb upward and onward forever. How do we survive and thrive in today’s low-price environment? In the short term, one has to cut costs and improve efficiency. Over the long term, technology has been our industry’s savior. In the 1920s, the rotary drilling rig and the Tricone bit enabled the industry to drill efficiently through hard rock and produce one gusher after another. In subsequent decades, the industry has made quantum leaps through offshore drilling, 3D seismic and, most recently, horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracing.

We don’t have a crystal ball, but we can gain some insights into the future. I had the opportunity to attend a recent Emerson Users Exchange, where global futurist Jack Uldrich described 10 technology forces that could shape the future, as we know it. Adopting some of these technologies could help us jump the curve for the oil and gas industry, as Uldrich suggests:

1. Wearable computing technology. An example would be Google glasses. This technology is being used to mentor complex operations at remote locations.
2. 3D printing. This concerns the printing of physical objects. About six years ago, a 3D printer cost $100,000. By 2016, the price is expected to go down to as little as $100. GE has announced that it could be printing an aircraft engine by 2017.
3. Oculus Rift. These are glasses that immerse the wearer into a 3D environment. Developed by a teenager, Facebook acquired the technology for $2 billion last year. Tesla is combining Oculus Rift and 3D printing to manufacture car parts.
4. Nanotechnology. Five years ago, this was a $500 million technology. Within a decade, it is expected to be worth $100 billion. Nanomaterials are being used to develop superconducting transmission lines, efficient solar panels, self-healing materials, etc.
5. Robotics. This technology is being used in the medical industry and industrial manufacturing. An example is a self-driven robotics car being developed by Google.
6. Industrial internet. In time, there will be billions of sensors embedded in our physical environment to monitor a variety of processes via the industrial internet. This is expected to become a $15 trillion business.
7. Gene sequencing. Seven years ago, it cost $150 million to perform gene sequencing for one human being. In a decade or so, this will cost just pennies. By sequencing genomes of bacteria, it will be possible to create bioreactors for biofuel production.
8. Supercomputing. IBM Watson supercomputers are being used by different industries to make better decisions. iPhone’s Siri will soon become a thousand times smarter. For example, nanosensors in the bloodstream could work with Siri to warn us of an impending heart attack.
9. Big data. This is the collection of multiple streams of data. For example, Amazon is collecting data, such that the company will be able to deliver anything we want, as we’re thinking about it.
10. Collaborative consumption. Young people are no longer interested in ownership. This concept is being implemented in our industry with geoscience software that is resident in the Cloud for leasing on demand.

The world today ain’t what it was a few years ago. Innovative ideas, blowing across the technology landscape, are shaping the opportunities for tomorrow.  

About the Authors

Pramod Kulkarni

World Oil

Pramod Kulkarni pramod.kulkarni@worldoil.com