Thanks for the insight. I'm pretty sure university geology departments are still touting the "most of the workforce will retire in the next 10 years" mantra they were almost a decade ago trying to...
Thanks for the insight. I'm pretty sure university geology departments are still touting the "most of the workforce will retire in the next 10 years" mantra they were almost a decade ago trying to get students interested in a geo career. The 2014 crash scared me away from the industry and I went to pursue other things (and ironically ended up in machine learning research, but for other disciplines).
Which is really a shame, since it's very interesting.
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret the degree. I make a lot of money and feel like 60% fulfilled in my role. But if I was tasked with speaking to a senior highschool class, "Geology" would not be my suggestion.
Which is really a shame, since it's very interesting.
Wow. That's super interesting. Do you have any idea why the 'old guard' is the 'science-be-damned' type despite oil extraction being one of the most technically challenging and knowledge-heavy...
The oilfield is in a pretty big cultural transition right now. There's the tail end of the old guard, dominantly boomers, that are used to the old way of doing things. You know the oilfield you see in the movies, started straight out of highscool and made their way into management with thirty years of experience, drill baby drill, slinging pipe by hand, put-a-hole-in-the ground-science-be-damned types. Real Act 1 Armageddon, There Will Be Blood shit.
On the other end is the new guard slowly leaking into leadership. Late Gen X's and whatever early boomers aren't anti-oil. This group is highly educated, very data and tech savvy and they are ready to shake things up. This group is pushing more and more technological reform into the industry.
Wow. That's super interesting. Do you have any idea why the 'old guard' is the 'science-be-damned' type despite oil extraction being one of the most technically challenging and knowledge-heavy things to do in the last 200 years? I would expect someone working high up on big oil to be like a stereotype shareholder: really smart and informed but morally indifferent to nearly anything.
Almost every major company is pushing "Oilfield 2.0" which is one of those cringy marketing terms that basically means the operators like BP, Exxon, Shell, etc want to automate as much of the process as possible. To date it's been dominantly service side oil companies making the push so the process has been slow. Focus is largely on digitization of grunt work that have been human for much too long. While there's a lot of smart people working for us we simply can't match Silicone Valley's expertise in terms of machine learning, AI, automation etc.
The issue the operators have all come to the realization that $100/bbl oil is never going to happen again. So how can they keep making those insane profit margins? Well oilfield workers are paid abnormally well so why not cut them out of the equation and lower OPEX?
Good question.
What is shocking about this video, to me as a former geologist, is that Silicone Valley isn't turning their massive resources towards automating the grunt work but instead they are targeting the education-intensive exploration process. A lot of geologists, geophysicists and reservoirs engineers could be made redundant depending on the success of this automation. Those were not the jobs that were "supposed" to get eliminated.
Maybe that's the answer to your question above. Those are the 'smart' oil workers who are paid well, thus dumping them (you?) Will indeed make OPEX cheaper and turn them a larger profit.
From a personal "the sky is falling perspective" it's mildly disappointing to see. The oilfield was one of the last industries outside of Silicone Valley and Finance that paid their employees well. With theae jobs on the cutting block its just another industry where all the money will flow straight to the useless shareholders and C-suite.
Yeah I agree. This is a quite practical demonstration of automation being an important issue.
This video seemed astroturfed over on r/videos. There were a lot of shitty arguments about why this isn't a problem, like saying this is equivalent to Microsoft letting Shell employees run Windows...
This video seemed astroturfed over on r/videos. There were a lot of shitty arguments about why this isn't a problem, like saying this is equivalent to Microsoft letting Shell employees run Windows on their laptops.
The most annoying bad argument though was the "If X doesn't do bad thing, then someone else will, so it doesn't matter if X does bad thing." Infuriatingly dumb.
Consumption is inherently tied to the cost though. These companies are actively working to keep costs down, so are partly responsible for increased consumption.
Consumption is inherently tied to the cost though. These companies are actively working to keep costs down, so are partly responsible for increased consumption.
Inevitable pinging of @Loire because they're an oil worker. Got any commentary?
Thanks for the insight. I'm pretty sure university geology departments are still touting the "most of the workforce will retire in the next 10 years" mantra they were almost a decade ago trying to get students interested in a geo career. The 2014 crash scared me away from the industry and I went to pursue other things (and ironically ended up in machine learning research, but for other disciplines).
Which is really a shame, since it's very interesting.
I don't know much about it so I'm curious why you think the price of oil won't go up again?
Wow. That's super interesting. Do you have any idea why the 'old guard' is the 'science-be-damned' type despite oil extraction being one of the most technically challenging and knowledge-heavy things to do in the last 200 years? I would expect someone working high up on big oil to be like a stereotype shareholder: really smart and informed but morally indifferent to nearly anything.
Good question.
Maybe that's the answer to your question above. Those are the 'smart' oil workers who are paid well, thus dumping them (you?) Will indeed make OPEX cheaper and turn them a larger profit.
Yeah I agree. This is a quite practical demonstration of automation being an important issue.
This video seemed astroturfed over on r/videos. There were a lot of shitty arguments about why this isn't a problem, like saying this is equivalent to Microsoft letting Shell employees run Windows on their laptops.
The most annoying bad argument though was the "If X doesn't do bad thing, then someone else will, so it doesn't matter if X does bad thing." Infuriatingly dumb.
Consumption is inherently tied to the cost though. These companies are actively working to keep costs down, so are partly responsible for increased consumption.