It has been a jam-packed calendar for all of us in Oil & Gas recently, and that’s the way we like it!

The past few months has seen our team travel across the globe, attending six industry conferences and events where we were proud to show off our latest offerings and rub shoulders with both familiar and up and coming names. From Cairo to Dallas to Abu Dhabi, we were proud to be represented at some of the industry’s biggest gatherings, including:

• SPE Annual Technology Conference & Exhibition (ATCE), Dallas
• IADC/SPE Asia Pacific Drilling Technology Conference & Exhibition, Bangkok
• SPE Asia Pacific Digital Week Symposium, Kuala Lumpur
• CMP – Congreso Mexicano del Petroleo – Acapulco, Mexico
• Wells Technology Conference, Kuala Lumpur
• Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC)

Genesis CEO Dr. Carlos Damski was particularly busy at these events, having been invited by the Society for Petroleum Engineers to run educational courses around the topic of drilling data analytics at four of them. ‘It’s exciting that so many people attending these events had an interest in progressing in this field, wanting to dive even deeper into the idea of data science and what it can mean for their drilling business.’

With a focus on drilling processing improvement Dr. Damski met with professionals from all sides of these operations, including drilling engineers keen to learn more about the data science, and data scientists looking for greater insights into the drilling side. ‘There was one issue that always popped up’, said Dr. Damski, ‘Data quality, it remains a major problem across the spectrum.’

The ‘digital transformation’ of the Oil & Gas industry is showing no signs of slowing down, but many untapped opportunities remain in the area of data analytics, especially where businesses and professionals aren’t on the same wave length when it comes to maintaining a consistent data governance practice.

‘It’s a rough example but everyone wants to use a clean toilet, yet nobody wants to clean it!’ A key takeaway from each course was the idea that data quality should be seen as an ongoing process, and not something you test when you want to actually use the data. ‘Look at Toyota, they’re absolute masters at this, testing every step of the way during car assembly in order to avoid costly mistakes being identified at the end of the line.’ Data quality control is an independent process which must be driven by the data owner and not by the service provider. Checking in on data quality control when you need to utilise that data is already too late.

With attendees from a wide variety of business functions in each class it was always interesting to show how data flows so widely throughout each organisation, and how everyone ‘touching’ it has a role to play in maintaining its quality and maximising its impact. In a typical Oil & Gas company only a small percentage of the staff actually touches ‘oil’, but everyone touches ‘data’. Data transformation is real and will continue to improve the Oil & Gas business in many ways, challenging what’s already established and very much the ‘status quo’.

Learning, networking and seeing the latest industry developments on show are just some of our favourite things about attending these international events, and all of us at Genesis are already pleased to see our calendar filling up for 2019!

What’s in store for the new year? ‘These events are certainly going to become even more uplifting’, said Dr. Damski, ‘The downturn was a pretty miserable time for Oil & Gas, but it’s so obvious now that everything is ramping up, confidence is rising…the buzz is returning, for sure!’

Looking forward to an exciting 2019, along with all of our partners.