What if your wells or pipelines could call you up and tell you they were sick before they went down?

If you’ve ever gone to the doctor to get some medicine at the first sign of a fever—to try to shorten the illness—you understand what I mean.

Most of the time now, in the oil patch, the first we know of a problem is when the pump breaks down, the compressor slams on the brakes, a valve gives way or there’s some other catastrophic—and expensive—problem.

What if we could use Big Data to start detecting the lead-up to a problem and fix it before it became a shutdown or, in the case of a pipeline, a big leak? It could help our people work smarter by doing small jobs in time to reduce the major ones.

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I always love a good conference—one where the speakers not only have good information, but where they also dream a little bit about how the new information will improve the future. It always spurs my own imagination about how we can better use technology to partner with our clients and help them achieve their goals.

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Albert Einstein, as you may recall, was pretty good at understanding complex stuff like, say, the makeup of the universe, quantum physics and the like.

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If automation for you conjures up images of complexity along the lines of The Matrix or something, I have some good news. It doesn’t have to be that complicated.

As an example for me personally, I love looking at all the ways well-site automation can improve the bottom line and generally make life simpler. Or the way something simple like automating tank levels with alarms can actually save lives - all the possibilities are very exciting!

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It’s pretty amazing to watch the pace of mergers and acquisitions these days. Oil and gas producers are working hard to maximize investments in an economy that’s better than it was, but still not where everyone would like it to be.

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