Transcription:
Introduction
Cameron Croft:
Let’s go ahead and let’s get started on this. Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today on this webinar. I’m very excited we’re kicking off this series of saving money in operations.
Cameron Croft:
In this series we’re going to be interviewing a lot of subject matter experts, bringing them on, they’re going to be talking from their perspectives of what do they see are key things that we need to focus on. Today is the kick off of the series, so I got my Director of Engineering, Chris Smithson, Challenges in Oil and Gas. We sat down, this is our way of coming together and figuring out what are the big challenges that we see.
Cameron Croft:
This series is going to focus on ongoing operations, all the way from conceptual design to plug and abandoning facilities. We’re going to be bringing on a lot of guest speakers for that. The audience that we really wanted to key on were anyone that couple benefit from it. That’s pumper, gaugers, field technicians, field engineers, engineers in the offices, upper management. It’s kind of a wide range of information we’re trying to uncover.
Cameron Croft:
All right. Little bit of housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions please submit them in the Q&A box. A lot of people haven’t been on Zoom, but just put them in the Q&A. They’ll be submitted anonymously. We will answer as we go when we can, and then there’s going to be a Q&A at the end. Once we answer those questions or we’ll address them, they will go live in the Q&A box.
Cameron Croft:
If something goes wrong, power outage, if you’re working from home, a kid walks in, you’ve got to step away for a second, don’t worry about it. What we’re going to do is we’re going to be posting this on our blog and our YouTube channel after this so that way you can have access to that. Without further ado, what I want to do is introduce Chris Smithson, our Director of Engineering. He got his engineering degree from the University of Houston. He has been working with Croft for the last 10 years and worked himself up to the Director of Engineering position. I am CEO, Cameron Croft with Croft Production Systems. I also got my engineering degree from the University of Houston along with my Masters in Project Management and my black belt in Six Sigma which is statistical quality control.
Cameron Croft:
All right. The topics that we’re really wanting to cover today is challenges and tips, our resources, what are the things that we like to utilize, and then we’re going to have a Q&A at the end. We’re going to try to answer questions again, as we go through, but a lot of the Q&A will be at the end.
Cameron Croft:
Before we get started on challenges and tips. We sat down trying to figure out, there’s a lot of challenges in oil and gas. You’ve got Covid going on, so you got high supply, you got low demand. It’s an election year, you’ve got riots, we’ve got a lot of things, but those are challenges outside of our control. What we did is we sat down with Chris, me, and then our subject matter experts that we’ll be guest speakers in later shows and we tried to figure out what are some big challenges that we’re facing that we can control? That’s what we wanted to focus on today. Chris, can you kick us off on the first challenge.
Challenge #1: Knowing Your Numbers
Chris Smithson:
Sure. A big challenge is knowing your numbers, and then from that we mean where are your costs going, where are you spending your money, and the different places that are the big expenses for you. LOE expenses or tracks normally on locations and you take those numbers and maybe you send them off to corporate, maybe they’re reviewed as part of large lump sum numbers, but really diving into the numbers of the locations and seeing how much is that one specific site costing you? How much is that one specific dehydrator costing you? Amine plant, things like that, if you dig in a little deeper and really take a look at what those cost areas are, it really gives you a much better view of operationally what it’s costing you, and it’ll also give you really good red flags for the areas that maybe something that could have broken.
Chris Smithson:
The tip for this one is evaluating large expenses, like a glycol loss. If you’re spending a ton of money on glycol for one specific unit, that can be a really big red flag that you may have a leak. That’s something that if you have visibility those kind of numbers and you can see that, it can give you a good warning ahead of time and let you know that’s something you should target and try to mitigate that issue so that you can save some money.
Cameron Croft:
Deming is a famous statistician, but what I like his quote without data you’re just another person with an opinion. You can say, “We’re losing money on that whole location,” but unless you’re actually tracking with data, you don’t know. You’re just making your best guess. It’s all about data. Having the right information. I mean, we’ve done a number of projects where we’re sitting in a meeting so we can start tracking all of these things, and it gets to a point also on the reverse end is knowing what numbers not to track. What are you going to do with it? If you track so much data you almost get desensitized to the data in itself. That’s kind of the big thing is knowing what to track and knowing where the high levels to track. The quick tip on this one, so boiling it down, there’s a lot of it, but evaluating large expenses such as glycol loss.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. Just taking a look for where these bigger red flag issues that maybe you can attack first and just give that visibility in there so you know what you’re trying to follow up.
Cameron Croft:
That came from a tip. One of our subject matter experts, he was saying track glycol losses, because from that he’s saying it almost boils down to pumps, leaks, vents, something’s going wrong if you’re having large losses, carry over, so it’s a good number to track as almost a red flag later on.
Challenge #2: Vendor Communications w/ Operations
All right. We’ve got challenge number two. Vendor communication with operations. It’s a big thing. Push us on that.
Chris Smithson:
On that one, especially when times are really busy and we all got a dozen different things to do, coordinating with your vendors to make sure that your schedule’s properly aligned can be really difficult. Now is a really good time, we have a little more available time and stuff that we can take that extra effort to reach out to your vendors if you have scheduled work for them, if your lease crew’s coming out, making sure you’re optimizing their time, I mean, most of us when we have vendors, especially on a time and labor type thing, you’re paying for their time to be there.
Chris Smithson:
When we have service crews, or they go out and do maintenance outside of the routine stuff for our rental fleet, if they’re billing that time and they’re waiting for a compressor to start up and you’re two days on location while a compressor mechanic tries to figure out how to fix the thing, that’s all wasted time. Being able to have that open communication with the vendor, explain what you’re trying to get accomplished with it and maybe they can help you out with that and really focus in on what’s going to be the most efficient and optimum use of their schedule and your schedule to get the job done.
Cameron Croft:
We had one example the other day. Our instrumentation engineer, and this is six months ago, it’s not the other day. Six months ago, but he sent it down with one of our vendors and he spent two hours with him, having a meeting with him, got a lot of good information, found out the controls and we found out that this vendor had a lot more capabilities than what we thought.
Cameron Croft:
He had a good meeting with them, and then at that point it just kind of died. He had all the information but he didn’t share it with our service techs, so when they were having troubleshooting issues, failures out in the field, honestly they should have had that information to be able to call the vendor. We were talking with one of our partners, and it’s fascinating to me, they boiled it, actually I think that’s your quick tip. Refocus comms around what the employee needs.
Cameron Croft:
I saw what their information was, so helping out with the vendors, there’s a lot of capabilities, a lot of information, but what they did is they created a quick vendor directory out for their front line employees, pumper, gaugers, and what they said is, “If anything goes wrong, you call this. If anything goes wrong over here, you call this person.” This vendor issue. They created a quick directory. I thought that was a very slick way of making sure vendor communications work throughout the organization.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. We’re the vendor for a number of clients and for us, it’s knowing what they’re trying to accomplish can help us better offer services for them to meet heir schedule and then optimize for it. If you’re going kind of blind, then you’re just stuck with what ever they’re asking for. You can’t help or offer suggestions or anything. Even that communications with your vendors is really important.
Challenge #3: Cost and Time REquired for training
That kind of leads us into the next one which is cost and time required for trainings. What do you got on that?
Chris Smithson:
This was a tricky one when things are really busy. It’s really hard to find time for training. A lot of us, they call it job shadowing, but it’s just like go follow the guy that knows what he’s doing and then try to learn the best you can and hope that he’s a good teacher. It’s difficult to schedule it and to pull people, pull service techs out of the field and then send them off to training. That’s a big loss for when you’re trying to run optimized routes and taking gaugers and stuff and pulling them out of the filed. They’ve got wells to operate, and hiring people just to fill in for their time, that’s a difficult thing.
Chris Smithson:
Now we find ourselves a little more time and being able to maybe get some of that training, schedule that up and see what there is out there and be potentially free training. That goes into our tip that we have for this one is utilizing your vendors for free training. The vendors that are out there, they’re willing to help. The sales guy’s maybe a little bored right now, so they’re more than happy to come and talk about whatever gets them into the door to your building. Making them getting training in for guys. Your plunger lift vendors, your downhole pump vendors, your burner management system. All these guys, they’re more than willing to help.
Chris Smithson:
They may want to show off some of their new products, too, but maybe they can show you optimization stuff, optimization, that guy that only ever followed that guy around learning the true way that that product works, that can really help them in growing their experience and really making them a more valuable part of your organization. If your guys have the proper training and understanding of this stuff, then repairs are going to cost less because maybe they can fix it themselves. They’re going to be able to troubleshoot those problems faster and get production back online.
Cameron Croft:
They said training’s not a one time deal. It’s ongoing. No matter what, good or bad you’re still influencing and training your employees. It needs to be ongoing. That’s why they got cross-training, shadowing programs because what we found out is for our NCRs, an NCR is a non-conformist report. In our organization, we do NCRs, we have project debriefs, and what we use those as learning moments. Those are trigger events to help the stakeholders, anyone to try to understand and learn from that and talk to employees or people that need training as a way of broadening their horizons.
Cameron Croft:
Utilizing your vendors right now. Vendors are wanting to go out there and talk. If anything you might get a free lunch out of the deal. They’re really wanting to come in and set up and do a lot of their training.
Challenge #4: Asset Management
Cameron Croft:
The fourth challenge we got is Asset Management. What do we have on that?
Chris Smithson:
When we talk about Asset Management, we’re talking about the big fix assets that you may have in your field, things like separators, GPUs, dehydrators, the larger asset stuff that has a long life span. It’s not really a throwaway item. That’s a big issue that people have is they pull out assets that weren’t needed or got replaced, downsized, upsized, and then they just stick them off to the side and they never track them. They have an Excel sheet that was last updated by the intern two years ago. They have no idea where those things are or what condition they’re in or if they even still exist as part of your inventory.
Chris Smithson:
Knowing if that’s stuff idle, knowing what condition it is, so they could be potentially reused could be a huge cost saving for a company. If you have a separator that the internals break or something, or mist pad falls out of it, and you have to replace that, if you can just grab one from another location and move it over and knowing that you readily have it instead of you know your vendor has it, they got one some sitting in the yard you can buy it from them, but if you know that you have those assets, you can grab it, you can bring it over, you can get it installed. It’s a big cost saving for that if you know the condition it is, you know if it needs refurbishment or not, you have an idea of what that’s going to cost you. Being able to track that is tricky. Cameron, as you know, we’ve gone through a number of asset programs and the default’s always Excel, but it’s not always the best option for you.
Cameron Croft:
Excel is by far the worst. As soon as you get it done, you feel good about it and then you go do a cycle count and it’s all wrong. Everything’s wrong and you have no confidence in it, no trust in it and then you start losing it. A number of our clients saved already some money this year because they found, let’s just say they found an old TG that they had. They said, “Can you all fix it?” They shipped it back to us, we did a refurbishment and shipped it right back out. They saved 75% of what they would have done if they’d bought a new or used one from someone else. They had it, they knew where it was. Again it was in the trees, but they got it to us and it really helped out.
Cameron Croft:
Optimizing the life cycle. Surplus energy equipment, we have 2200 pieces of equipment in that company right there. It’s just a lot of information to track. I did want to say that there is the five biggest risk of assets, this came from one of our subject matter experts, I thought it was interesting, they said biggest risk for assets is not knowing what you have, which you already talked about, over or under maintenance, improper operation, improper risk management.
Cameron Croft:
In risk management, what they were saying was like low-pressure stuff, tracking that it is low pressure, having a red flag on there, so that way that one guy doesn’t pull a separator, throw it on there, and not understand that it’s high pressure. Sub optimize enterprise asset management systems. Some of them said they got such great systems, SAP, the big system, it got so complicated it’s too hard to utilize. What they found out, the guys actually out in the field that should be tracking it, they’re not because it’s too complicated now. Those are big things on asset management that you need to watch for. Kind of goes into the big tips. It’s a lot of information, it’s a lot of things to track, but the first thing on the quick tip that I think you had is determine what idle-
Chris Smithson:
Determine what’s idle and then what you can use that stuff for and what you can work with. Even if it’s granular, as far as production form and level where they know a dozen items sprinkled across their locations, then at least they have an idea. Obviously it’s better if it’s lumped together organization-wide, that way you know one field can pull from another if they ever need anything, but just determining, just having that quick list at least for a reference is beneficial.
Challenge #5: Reevaluating Goals
Cameron Croft:
This next challenge was actually pretty good. Reevaluating goals. Before you get started, this came from one of our subject matter experts that talked really about morale-boosting, especially during this time. That’s why they really focused on re-evaluating goals. Chris, can you kick us off on that?
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. The big challenge with current goals is our January, even into February, our goals were not what they are now. Expectations, what our salespeople thought they were going to hit, those things, it’s out the window and it’s like that for everybody.
Chris Smithson:
A big downside though is when goals change or when situations change and goals aren’t reachable, it can be a huge morale killer for people. If they think they can’t achieve that anymore, then they’re not going to try, because production targets were increased 10%, and you have no money to spend on anything, so one well goes down, it’s like that’s out the window, why when we’re not going to meet the goal, I don’t have to try that hard. That’s a big morale killer for people.
Reevaluating the goals and saying are they still realistic in the current time with what you have to work with? Are they still achievable? As a boss, are you setting up your people for failure, or as an employee are you setting up your boss for disappointment because you know you’re not going to be able to get that done?
Cameron Croft:
What you’re saying, it really goes back into communication. You’ve got to be able to communicate through the organization on what is everyone agreeing on? I do the executive coaching every quarter and it focuses on smart goals. We have to do it every quarter. A smart goal is specific measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. It has to be assessed, have to have internal communication throughout. That’s kind of what you’re saying, everyone in the organization needs to agree on what the goal actually is.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. Opening that communication. That’s our quick tip for this one is having that open communication with both the uppers and the lowers. As a boss, setting goals is one thing, but now’s a good time instead of saying just, “Save me 10%,” it’s, “Save me this 10%, look at our chemical cost.” Where within that … Give them something that people can help to focus and attack is really good, and as someone with a boss, going back to them and saying, “Hey, this is our targets, I don’t know if this is achievable anymore.” Just keeping that open so that they’re not disappointed, you’re not setting yourself up for failure.
Cameron Croft:
I talked with an operator in Oklahoma and he said, “The uppers told us we got to cut expenses by 10% across the board.” I said, “I can understand that. It’s COVID and all these other things going on.” He said, “No, no, but we got to maintain production, we got to maintain all of our hours, our guys are having to work harder because they already did some layoffs and stuff like that.” It’s 10% across the board but they still want them to do everything. He goes, “It’s unrealistic.” He has to talk to his 20 guys below him and he said, “All of them are angry at this.” I think that communication would have helped them motivate them to figure out we’re in a crisis mode. Let’s figure out what we can do, what’s achievable, and let’s get this thing done.
Challenge #6: Prioritizing Optimization
The sixth challenge is prioritizing optimization. That is a mouthful, but it’s pretty well boiling down to what to focus on first, right?
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. The first thing we have is to know your numbers. That gives you a really good idea of where are you spending your money, where are your costs going? Potential red flags. Obviously prioritizing, you’re like oh, this is a huge expense, maybe I should attack this. This one’s also a big expense. Really looking at those different things and saying, “what’s the likelihood of the problem and what that problem’s going to cost, and is that going to fix this thing?”
Chris Smithson:
Something simple maybe causing a big problem. The example that we used this one would be glycol units. Let’s say that your glycol units, you have the high glycol losses. Maybe you just need to turn your pump down, maybe you have a small leak, maybe there are some foaming issues and that’s where all your glycol’s going? That’s a fairly simple thing to troubleshoot. If someone knows what they’re doing they can go in there, they can take a quick look at it and fix that problem.
Knowing what to spend your time on, what’s going to cost you the most. A generic thing like increasing production by%. Oh yeah, that’d be great, you make 10% increased revenues, but that’s a really hard thing to do. There’s so much involved in it, but really finding, prioritizing what’s going to give you that improvement. Something like, and this goes into the actual tip for this one, is making sure your pumps are at the optimal speed.
For a glycol unit, everybody goes and they turn the pump up. It’s the first problem to solve,h, you’re not meeting dew point, just turn the pump up. Maybe that’s your answer, maybe it’s not, maybe it works, but you never turn it back down. Maybe your unit’s flowing half of what it used to. You’re still not going to turn the pump down, because everything was working fine. Why change it? That pump running, if you can turn it down half of what it is and you’re still meeting specifications, that means you’re using half the fuel gas, you’re changing your filters half as often, your pump, you’re getting half your wear and tear on it, which means your rebuild is going to be twice as long from when you’re going to need to take that thing get it rebuilt. That’s a lot pf cost savings just by turning that pump down.
That’s just on that glycol unit. If you’re looking at H2S scavengers, chemical pumps, stuff like that where your rates have changed and you don’t need that injection rate, you can turn that down, save a bunch on chemical. Looking at things like that. Pumps, I mean, if they’re running, they’re costing you money. That’s something it’s an easy target thing. There are lots of little things out there like that.
Cameron Croft:
What I liked about that is it’s knowing your numbers. Figuring out what your big expenses are and then trying to figure out, even in our organization, we went through all of our big expenses because we’re like everyone else. COVID-19 is killing the industry right now. It’ll come back of course, but it makes you really focus down to the nitty-gritty on the expense side. It’s pretty well your cost-benefit analysis. What are the big things you focus on?
You got to work with your guys out in the field. The pumps, they might see a glycol loss and just write it off as Op-Ex on that side. Honestly, there is a time of going out there and reevaluating. Something is little as a pump can cost so much wear and tear and then expenses on your side. That’s just kind of being hidden. You almost have to open up those numbers and utilize those numbers for your optimization.
Challenge #7: Reevaluating Specs
On the challenge number seven, evaluation of specs. A lot of our subject matter experts came on saying people need to reevaluate their specs. Talk a little bit more about that.
Chris Smithson:
This goes into, typically for us what we’re talking about with this is the evaluation of the manufacturing specifications. Typically, for new equipment, maybe refurbished, the specifications that we see from clients are varied. They’re all developed. Everything had a reason of why it was originally put in that spec. Either safety or strength or longevity of that equipment. Those specs, they grow and they grow for years and sometimes you find that they’re written by people that don’t even work at the company anymore. They may have retired.
What you’re left with is potentially cost increasing specs that don’t really matter anymore or you’re not really sure why that thing was necessary. An example of this is we have a client they do onshore and offshore. For them it was easy just to say keep the same spec. They have 14C, which is an offshore compliant safety spec on their onshore equipment. That means that equipment has pressure safety switches, level safety switches. More than you ever put on a normal piece of equipment because it’s required for offshore, but you’ve added all this expense for all this safety stuff that it’s not as important onshore. Maybe you want a couple of those things, but it’s a huge added cost that you’re putting on every piece of equipment that has this to meet that specification.
Chris Smithson:
It’s going to increase time for the vendors. As a manufacturer, we have to go through all these specs. We have to make sure that we’re meeting all of them. It’s going to take longer lead times. If we’re deviating from standard, then you’re going to spend more money on it with that vendor. It adds costs to them and they have to make sure that that cost is covered on that. Something as simple as a corrosion allowance can add a lot of money to a project.
Cameron Croft:
When I got my masters in Project Management, they kept on enforcing over and over again of if we have a 1.2 safety factor and then we get offshore specs for onshore, I think that was for West Texas that we were doing these projects over there in, I mean, just the paint alone, they doubled the amount of paint that was going onto it so it increased, so it was like gold-plating the whole thing. This is a good time to evaluate those specs, make sure you’re working with your vendors. I think one of them, what was the flanges that they were wanting us to do on it? They were increasing the series.
Chris Smithson:
They were going to ring joint flanges just because the pressure’s slightly high. Things like that. They’re just not necessarily standard at what you’re used to seeing. That goes into the tip that we have is reevaluating the specs to determine what is necessary and what can be standardized. A lot of shops have cookie-cutter equipment, and if you can buy that you’re going to get a good price for it. They know exactly what their cost is, they know what their markup needs to be. If your specs are pushing that into custom, custom’s going to cost money. Knowing what can be standardized, what you can pull standard from your vendors and reevaluating that, now you’ve got the downtime, look back and see what can be scratched off from some of those specifications.
Cameron Croft:
It kind of goes into the other tip earlier of working with your vendors, because a lot of these, let’s just you said a shop earlier, so if you go to a facility and they have ASME code and you understand them, they can run code counts, they can do their own systems and they will do it free of charge of giving you the recommendations of what you need or what’s necessary to get for what your objective is.
Cameron Croft:
A lot of the work actually can be put back on the vendors to help you out to figure out how to reevaluate your specs properly.
Challenge #8: Meeting Evironmental Standards
Challenge number eight. Meeting environmental standards. This came from one of our regulatory analysts that she’ll be a speaker in our next episodes, but she pushed extremely hard that this is a challenge that she sees coming up. Talk a little bit about that, Chris.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. In times the way that they are right now, something breaks, it may or may not be a priority to fix it. Something, I read an article recently it was talking about one out of ten flares in the Permian is malfunctioned. Either means doesn’t start right, doesn’t start when it’s supposed to, so it’s an emissions problem.
Chris Smithson:
Fixing things like that may not seem like a priority, but eventually,it will be when the helicopters start flying with the FLIR cameras again and those guys start coming back looking for their fine money. Trying to meet those standards, trying to maintain those standards that you’re supposed to meet that you already have the plans and whatnot in place to meet those, it can be difficult right now, but at the very least tracking what is breaking, where you’re out of compliance, so that you know what you’re going to have to fix and what you may need to prioritize once budgets get released and everything. The EPA is on pause right now. They’re not fining anybody or evaluating, but that will come back. When it comes back if they-
Cameron Croft:
Even as an engineer, seeing waste streams or seeing the energy not having the potential and just going into waste, it kills you. The efficiency kills you on it. She did push on that. She was speaking very heavily about don’t be tempted to cut corners. You’re going to save money now but you’re going to pay for it after. It’s going to happen. Don’t mess with it. Talk about your standards, and actually kind of goes into the tip that she shared with us is-
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. That’s maintaining your spill prevention and control and compliance and your health safety environmental. Spill prevention, up in the northeast that’s a huge thing. One of our clients, anything more than a gallon of water, you’re reporting it. Especially we have clients that have tried to put pipelines up there, they get delayed six months, a year, stream crossings and everything that just delay, delay, delay all those projects.
Chris Smithson:
You don’t want something simple like that, not doing the paperwork on a spill to come back and now you’re getting audited, you’re getting shut down by federal judges or whatever they’re doing to knock out your whole production plan just because you didn’t do some paperwork. That’s a dangerous thing to let lapse because it will come back when they start looking at it again.
Cameron Croft:
There is again some vendors out there, some people, consulting firms, that they’ll assist you with the paperwork. It’d be terrible that you did it, you got everything, you tried to do it right, but you just messed up on the paperwork side. That’d be a terrible thing to figure out. Out of the HSE plans right now, septically with COVID going on, we just had to recently update our plan throughout our organization as well to have a pandemic. ISNetworld, what was the other one besides ISNetworld?
Chris Smithson:
It’s the other one like it where you’re not on their client’s site if you don’t have all the paperwork put in place.
Cameron Croft:
Yeah. We had to update that plan. It’s something that you need to have. You need to be putting into place. Don’t be tempted … If you’re going to be cutting expenses, this is not the area to really cut expenses on. It’s very tempting but it’s not worth getting popped or someone actually getting hurt because of it.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. It’s a lot more paperwork if you get caught.
Challenge #9: Knowing What You Don’t Know
Cameron Croft:
All right… Knowing what you don’t know. That sounds backward but it truly is knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your gap knowledge. Is that right?
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. It’s tricky because you don’t know it… Really it’s figuring out where your deficiencies are that somebody else may be able to tell you something to increase your knowledge. Right now when things are really busy, you’re distracted, you have lots of things, phone calls, constantly emails, stuff, stuff to really keep you busy, but now’s a good time to look at those areas that you do have trouble in, and see what you can do to start fixing those, start improving yourself, start making yourself more marketable if you think you’re going to lose your job, things that may improve your career outlook. A great way to do that is just to talk to people that know. Talk to experts, finding people that are smarter than you, nd think that you can learn from them
Cameron Croft:
It goes back into understanding your strengths and your weaknesses and rounding out that team. We were having issues with a chemical side about five, six years ago on our chemical injection system. We needed a chemical expert to come on board. We reached out to a lot of different people. We had these five guys come in, start talking with us and start really educating us with their information, they gave us a huge learning curve and then now every time we run into an issue we can call them up. It’s like that Bubba down the street. He knows the right person to call and get it figured out.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. It’s difficult. For me growing up in the age of Google you just want to Google it and you’ll spend three hours reading article after article hoping you can find that answer so you don’t have to make a phone call. As an engineer, it can be a difficult thing.
Cameron Croft:
Networking in general, engineers are highly technical people, analytical people. They tend to be a little bit more introverted, so getting them to branch out, talk to people, getting on that, so it’s a little rough. We’ve been to several conferences where it’s nothing but engineers in the room. We go to the ice breakers, it’s not an ice breaker. It’s, “What do you do?” As soon as they mention the company then we start talking about projects. We don’t talk about each other. It’s just very focused on the problem at hand. That’s kind of nice. The ice breaker is funny.
Chris Smithson:
Which can be good. War stories can be great. It can be great examples of a way not to do something, a way of doing something that you never considered before. Getting that experience from the guys that have been doing it for a lot longer is super important to make sure that you’re getting a really good source of input and knowledge.
Cameron Croft:
Like webinar. We’re doing a webinar right now, and the people that are on this webinar, we want to invite them to come on, if you all need anything from us, talk to us, we want to expand your network. We’re here for you. That kind of goes into our tip. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. That is a huge thing. I read you are the average of the top five people you hang out with most.
In certain cases, I can’t hang out with my brother that much because it lowers the average down and I’m all about data. You’ve got to surround yourself with people that want to push and try to learn and very strong in what they do. It kind of goes into our research resources.
Research Resources
These are the resources that we utilize. You’ve got the EIA, and I imagine a lot of people on this webinar or joining us by the phone call, energy.gov, SPE, API. Even a lot of these have subscriptions. Chris, you have a subscription to API, is that right?
Chris Smithson:
Yeah.. It’s a collection of industry emails. API and ASME. API is also a really good networking resource. They have events that they do. SPE as well is a good professional organization for engineers. They have lots of interesting articles and stuff that they can keep you up to date with things.
Cameron Croft:
On their cross-systems blog, we got over 400 blogs that really talk about production, processing equipment, breaking down as much as we can. We try to be as informative as possible because when we talk to people, we want them to have as much information as possible so they can make the right decision.
Conclusion
Cameron Croft:
That goes into on this webinar, we’re going to be wrapping this one up. This is going to be the kickoff. What I did want to show are the upcoming webinars that we have. We got Alyssa Arnold joining us on June 23rd. She’s a facility environmental facilities engineering consultant. She does a fantastic job. Very intelligent. She’s a PE. I’m very excited about bringing her on and interviewing her. We’ve got Chad Dorsett, a former production foreman. He’s a plunger lift expert. If anyone’s got an artificial lift out there, plunger lift, he’s a great resource to talk to. Because he was a former production foreman, he does speak from high experience on what he’s doing.
Chris Smithson:
Yeah. He’s a really good input for not just the operational side but now he’s a plunger lift guy now. He’s a really good crossover. He really understands well. That’ll be a really interesting one I’m looking forward to hearing from him on that. We deal with it a lot in what we do but we’re not the expert in that. That’s an interesting one. The same thing with Terry Nelson with WPI. I think I know glycol units well. We built them, we service them, maintain them, refurbish them and stuff, but I haven’t met anybody that knows more about them than Terry Nelson. He’s such a great resource when it comes to glycol dehydration. He gives lots of presentations throughout the year that account for PE engineering credits.
Cameron Croft:
That’s right.
Chris Smithson:
He’s a really good technical expert. That’s also going to be a really good one, talking about glycol units and maintenance and operations.
Cameron Croft:
He’s tentatively towards the end of July so far. Yeah. Those are our next three speakers. If you’re interested, people on this webinar, if you’re going to see the YouTube channel later, if you’re interested in becoming a webinar speaker, if you have something that you want to talk about or if you know someone that might be a good fit, please reach out to our marketer, Tori Valigura. She will get with you, situated, talk with you, so that way we can meet and try to start building out what information you would like to share with the oil and gas industry. Please reach out to her.
Cameron Croft:
At the end of this webinar, there is going to be a free hat and shirt if you fill out a survey. Again, it’s all about feedback, it’s about statistical quality control, so we do absolutely need your feedback of what did you like about us, what are the things that we can improve on this thing, because we want to make this thing tailored to share the best information and increase that learning curve to everyone out there. Fill out that survey. It will come through your email after this webinar.
Thank you for joining us.
