The Connected Universe - Virtual 'Commuting'

By Maki Petkovski, CEO, Petsec Energy (Middle Eastern) Limited

Maki Petkovski, CEO, Petsec Energy (Middle Eastern) Limited

The oil and gas industry has been at the forefront of technological innovation and advancement from the day that Edward Drake started drilling the first commercial oil well in 1859 along the banks of Oil Creek in Cherry Tree Township in the US state of Pennsylvania

The upstream part of this particular industry has benefited most from the ‘shrinking’ world; the Earth has become a small place indeed. The most dramatic changes and the fastest pace of change have occurred in my lifetime.

Virtual Commuting is now a part of everyday life in the business world, the weekly and often daily Skype call gives experienced staff and executives the opportunity to make remote decisions a practical and functional reality, and it is now the ‘right’ way of doing business. Management in remote locations and in head office (HQ) can monitor and make operational decisions on well operations in the Shabwah dessert of the Yemen on the basis of live data being streamed to HQ, for example.

Service providers to the industry can, and do, provide live and real world data on activities that can considerably impact the cost of doing business.

The virtual commute now delivers buy-in from remote office management and remote staff.

It keeps the strategic objectives clear and refines the direction of activity, as well as confirming results and milestones are consistent with corporate objectives. It was not long ago that the telex was eagerly awaited on a daily basis to update executives, project leaders, and the markets in general as to what was going on in those far flung exotic operational places.

To make things, life, easy, we can now look at the world in virtual space and in 3D. We can do this on opposite sides of the planet, far removed from where the data is being acquired or in fact when it is acquired as 24 hour operations have long been the norm.

The oil & gas industry has been doing this since the early nineties; however we can now do this in ‘real’ time. We can update data in our 3D models as it is delivered to us via the ‘commercial’ web.

Gone are the days of the private data network providers.The bespoke remote satellite dish, connected to the service provider’s network under a subscription agreement through an exorbitant pricing contract. The World Wide Web has dramatically changed this model and has changed the economics for even the smallest of companies; eBay’s success is testament to this. Gulf of Mexico, USA, 2015

The ‘sea change’ in corporate structure has arrived! We no longer require the in-house expert on all manner of exotic topic. The specialist, the expert, can be secured on a project basis without evermeeting them or having them visit the clients office, the exotic professional is the core of the connected ‘Universe’.

Global virtual commuting can now become a reality; the open market has provided access to talent no matter where it may be located.The globalisation of the English language has facilitated this and even encouraged this, speaking in ‘one tongue’ has made the virtual commute a practical reality. Access to the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips and when we cannot find the answer we can find the specialist, the expert, in any location as remotely as is necessary, who can.

The Connected Universe allows us to speak to anyone on Earth in almost any location at an instant, we can even ‘see’ what they are seeing, and we can now receive and analyse data from anywhere, at anytime, anywhere else, in the world, all at such a modest cost. The economics of this access has delivered the Connected Universe.