January-February 2021
The Crude Life engages with industry experts and energy enthusiasts every day with interviews, radio programs, social media posts, print features, video content and podcasts. These conversations range from CEOs to truck drivers to authors to engineers to cafe owners. Just like our diverse experts and interviews, the conversations have...
Interview: Ryan Lailey, CTO, WolfePak
Eric Eissler: My grandfather used to tell me that there is nothing more constant in life than change. He is right and, for many, change is a hard thing to deal with. With all the automation going on, how are you helping companies adapt to change? Ryan Lailey: At WolfePak,...
Tax Considerations for Oil and Gas Partnerships Deliberating Bankruptcy and Debt Restructuring
Many oil and gas companies have sought debt reduction through bankruptcy protection or debt restructuring in response to financial difficulty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. When considering options to reduce debt, companies should understand the tax consequences that these actions can bring. This is particularly true for partnerships, which...
On November 4, 2020, Shell Oil Company announced the closure of its refinery in Convent, Louisiana, a situation that is far from isolated. As reported in the Wall Street Journal article, “Pandemic Pushes Fuel Makers in Richer Countries to the Brink,” 11 refineries from the U.S. to Japan have announced...
Avoid Getting Blindsided by Safety Culture in your Next M&A
While the pace of oil and gas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal-making declined throughout 2020 in both value and number of deals,1 experts are highlighting the potential growth in cross-border M&A, as well as increasing trends toward “responsible investments” with a greater focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) screening...
A Look Inside 2021: Outlook and Predictions for the Oil and Gas Industry
The oil and gas industry experienced significant changes throughout 2020, from digital transformation to cloud migration. The industry has also seen an increase in safety and training technologies and, in relation to the current pandemic, a higher demand for personal protective equipment (PPE). With 2020 coming to a close, many...
Technologies to Detect and Mitigate Pipe Corrosion
Corrosion can be defined as the deterioration that a metal suffers from being under exposure to electrochemical molecules that are in its environment, creating permanent damage to the surface and, in many cases, even worse. In the article, “Corrosion – The Longest War” published by Schlumberger, it mentions that in...
Interview: Chad Valentine, Partner, Assurance Services, Weaver Accounting
Eric Eissler: What accounting and financial reporting methods can oil and gas companies apply to help manage future business decisions? Chad Valentine: Adopting the PCC GAAP alternative for goodwill can alleviate pressures related to goodwill impairment and simplify business combination accounting as consolidations of companies continue to increase in the...
How to Control Target Areas During Hydraulic Fracturing
Weight of Hydraulic Fracturing in the Industry Hydraulic stimulations in the oil and gas industry are positioned as one of the first three solutions to fields where the pressure has declined or in fields where the permeability is very low, either because of special conditions or because the reservoir is...
Offshore Industry Executes Great Effort in Hurricane Preparedness
For those who reside along the Gulf Coast of the United States, hurricane preparedness is a term that yields anxiety and reluctance. It is, however, a necessary evil mandated simply by proximity to the tropical battlegrounds of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Sharing the stress of hurricane season, offshore oil...
Oilmen’s Salaries Across the World
The job of an oilman is generally quite difficult and is associated with working in harsh environments for long periods of time away from one’s home and family. Unsurprisingly, average salaries for this job are comparatively high. However, it varies considerably according to specialization, experience and location (country and region)....
Measuring Oil and Gas Volumes in Different Countries: The U.S. and Russian Cases
It is well known that, if all things being equal (or in Latin ceteris paribus or caeteris paribus), the volume is directly proportional to temperature and inversely proportional to pressure, which are applied to it. In other words, under constant temperature and pressure, the relationship between the volume of gas and the...
The State of the Oil Industry 2020: An Updated Look at Things to Come
Each year, an array of industry analysts makes its predictions on the specific directions the oil and gas industry could be heading in the coming months. However, it’s fair to say that a detrimental global pandemic was not factored into any of those calculations. We know that oil is the...
Young Professionals in the Oil and Gas Industry: Interview with Ahmed Elgohary
Alan Alexeyev: Tell us a little bit about your current (or latest) position and what you do, as well as how you found a job. Ahmed Elgohary: I currently work as a QHSE engineer. I started out as a rig hand then I became an operations engineer with a drilling...
COVID-19 Testing and Background Screening Are Now Essential for Safe Workplaces
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed our entire lives, from work to education, recreation and more. What started out as a business continuity challenge – ensuring an organization can continue to operate safely, often requiring considerable changes to operations to either stay open or re-open – has evolved. For jobs...
The Dangers of Unreliable Data
The beginnings of the digital transformation effort of the oil and gas industry can be traced back at least a decade when many of the oil majors started their initial efforts on smart fields. Different oil majors had various names for this concept – Shell called it Smart Fields, Chevron...
The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth and Policy
To understand and perhaps guide the purpose of our economy, economists and scientists think about future energy-economic options by mixing laws and theory (scientific, legal, socio-political and economic) with data by inserting them into a computational oven of some sort that spits out results for interpretation. Depending upon the knowledge...
Where Does the Industry Go After COVID-19?
COVID-19 has been a global disaster, the likes of which haven’t been seen since World War II in terms of disruption, and a lot of the old ways of operating are not going to return. Jobs Reduction A recent analysis reveals 107,000 lost oil and gas jobs won’t be recouped....
Whether it makes the front-page news with names you know or it’s happening behind the scenes, oil and gas assets are always being bought and sold. The reasons vary. The oil industry is volatile and always has been. Every year companies will examine many factors and try to make predictions...
Letter from the Publisher (January-February 2021)
This past year was challenging for many of us, having to deal with the disruptions from COVID-19 in virtually every aspect of our daily routines. In the oil and gas industry, companies struggled to survive, many were forced into bankruptcy and some closed for good. There were major mergers last...
The Drilling Conundrum – Efficiency Versus Reliability
It is a well-known fact that drilling oil and gas wells is fraught with risks. Several disastrous accidents have taken place in the industry and caused grave harm economically and environmentally. They have even resulted in the tragic loss of human life. A blowout is one such event, which can...
Real-Time Completions Refinement with Electromagnetics
A Troubled Year To date, 2020 was one of the most challenging years for a majority of businesses, and the oilfield industry was no exception. Since the beginning of last year, over 15 companies have been bought or merged, while over 30 companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However,...
America’s Energy: 2021 and Beyond
The year 2020 was truly a time of uncertainty and challenges, to say the least. The future of regulations, executive orders, tax issues, fiscal and monetary policies, international trade issues, COVID-19 vaccination outcomes, supply and demand of energy, and private/public education challenges are some of the numerous issues before us....
