At roughly a third of the way through my 32-plus years at Oil & Gas Journal, I realized I was witnessing history.
By the early 1990s, oil and gas companies had experienced and overcome the greatest downturn—the 1980s—in industry's comparatively brief life and were surviving with leaner, more efficient, and more productive operations.
That moment came back to me recently when I read in the November issue of The Atlantic "The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs since the Wheel." To an extent that separates it from most other industries, the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of and often improved upon several of the innovations discussed in this article.
No need to rehash the list and rationales here. But one of the "big thinkers" the magazine consulted in the course of its project—Stanford University business historian Leslie Berlin—offered a functional grouping of her nominations that is itself perceptive. And for each category, oil and gas industries have participated, taken advantage of, or even improved many innovations.
Innovations that…
• "Expand the human intellect": the printing press (No. 1), paper (No. 6), the internet (No. 9), the personal computer (No. 16), and "underlying" technologies of modern life.
We can skip the obvious and note that oil and gas companies in the 1990s and since have been in the forefront of employing computing power in exploration (3D and 4D seismic) and transportation (GPS in directional drilling for pipelines and positioning massive oceangoing tankers). These uses have illuminated the path for other industries, which have adopted the approaches.
• "Are integral to the physical and operating infrastructure of the modern world": cement (No. 37), interestingly, along with the more obvious electricity (No. 2), sanitation (No. 12), and air-conditioning (No. 44).
Oil and gas companies have taken cement compositions beyond rudimentary and pioneered formulations and functions other industries have adopted.
• "Enabled the Industrial Revolution": Here, two oil and gas activities merited inclusion: oil drilling (No. 39) and refining (No. 35).
• "Extend life": The production and refinement of petroleum into products that fuel transportation and generate electricity played a major role in moving two critical developments—penicillin (No. 8) and vaccinations (No. 20)—deeply into societies whose lives were otherwise fragile and brutal.
• "Allowed real-time communication": As these technologies—the internet, principally—developed, oil and gas companies embraced them downhole, on remote offshore drilling and production rigs, in the midst of massive and volatile refinery processes, and over miles of pipelines to report instantaneously when a spill occurs.
How those companies have employed these innovations has provided a signpost for other "heavy" industries to make operations safer and more efficient.
• Promote the "physical movement of people and goods": Including mainly the internal combustion engine (No. 7). Is there another technology more dependent on what oil and gas companies do? And they continue to refine formulations to make fuels burn more cleanly and efficiently.
Enter George
Genius is required to conceive innovations that allow humans to turn a corner towards a healthier, more secure world. Genius is also required to take relatively common technologies, combine them for new use, then exercise patience while the kinks get worked.
Enter George Mitchell, who died recently. Thanks to him, in the final third of my 32-plus years at Oil & Gas Journal, I've again witnessed history.
Mitchell believed conjoining the old technology of hydraulic fracturing with the relatively new technology of directional drilling could unlock billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas otherwise trapped in shales. After about 18 years of perseverance, he was proven right.
That kind of genius, dedication, and patience must inform industry's efforts to meet perhaps its greatest challenge ever—how to manage the climate-toxic emissions from its operations and their products' use to save the planet from its keepers.