Time ripe for E&P professional societies to start integrating

Robert P. Peebler
President and CEO
Landmark Graphics Corp.
Houston

At today's oil prices, we can ill afford outmoded ways of doing business. Volatile market conditions continually force our entire industry to seek innovative ways to boost productivity, control costs, and solve complex exploration and production problems more effectively.

All across the globe, energy companies, oil field service firms, and technology suppliers are downsizing, consolidating, and forming previously unheard-of partnerships and strategic alliances.

In companies large and small, old barriers between the geoscience and engineering disciplines are coming down like the Berlin Wall. Some E&P organizations are literally knocking down walls, building common work rooms for multidisciplinary asset teams. More importantly, they are empowering teams with suites of seamlessly integrated applications, shared data management systems, and team visualization centers.

For years, we've all been learning to expand our narrow visions, get out of our rigid functional silos, and work together in more integrated teams. Why, then, do our professional societies-American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and Society of Petroleum Engineers, among others-seem impervious to the changes affecting the rest of the oil industry? The new millennium is nearly upon us. Isn't it time our professional societies started integrating, too?

Team approach

As an E&P solutions provider with technologies that span the oil field life cycle, Landmark works with innovative energy companies on the cutting edge of integration. Yet even in organizations with established asset teams, our consultants encounter significant gaps in communication and understanding among the various disciplines. Often, a real breakthrough happens when team members are physically brought together in one room, freely sharing data and knowledge with the aid of integrating information technologies.

As geoscientists and engineers work side-by-side to develop comprehensive 3D earth models, plan and implement drilling and enhanced recovery programs, their "peripheral vision" tends to expand. They begin to see each other's perspective, speak each other's language, and understand each other's data. Not only is this invigorating, it is profitable. Cycle times plummet. Productivity skyrockets.

If they were more integrated themselves, our societies could foster the professional development of such cross-functional teams. They could bring whole asset teams together for multidisciplinary conferences and exhibitions focused on overcoming barriers to integration. They could promote unified approaches to complex E&P business decisions.

Instead, team members fly off to different society meetings with technical agendas focused almost exclusively on enhancing functional specialization. Is it just me, or is something wrong with this picture?

A radical proposal

I have a radical proposal. What if, instead of seeking bureaucratic self-preservation, the three major professional societies-AAPG, SEG, and SPE-formed a single mega-society called, say, the Society of Petroleum Geoscientists and Engineers (SPGE)? And what if, instead of three annual meetings/year (as they hold in the U.S.), there were just one? Certainly, it would be appropriate to maintain three major divisions under such an umbrella organization. But the primary focus would shift to integration of the disciplines.

Maybe I'm dreaming, but I don't think the idea is so far-fetched for three reasons:

• First, although few people remember, the SEG was actually a division of the AAPG in the 1930s. For over 2 decades, they held joint annual meetings. So there is a historical precedent.
• Second, 10 years ago, an agreement among SEG, AAPG, SPE, and the Society of Professional Well Log Analysts led to the formation of an Intersocietal Coordinating Committee of some kind. While nothing seems to have come of that effort, it shows the idea is not new.
• Finally, some of our European counterparts have actually done it. A few years ago, the European Association of Exploration Geophysicists (EAEG) merged with the European Association of Petroleum Geoscientists (EAPG) to form a single new society, the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers (EAGE). Although this merger unfortunately did not include the European branch of the SPE, it was clearly a step in the right direction. Now oil companies in the region can send people to one annual meeting, instead of two.

Financial Implications

Merging the three major U.S. meetings/trade shows would benefit everyone involved. Energy companies would save money by eliminating the need to attend multiple events and minimizing people's time away from work. A single "mega-show" would allow cross-functional teams to experience the full power of new integrating technologies all in one place. As it is today, E&P solutions providers must "carve up" otherwise integrated work flow demonstrations into functional segments for different conferences.

Exhibitors would save a considerable amount of money as well. This past September, for example, both SEG and SPE scheduled their annual meetings in New Orleans just 1 week apart. Numerous service companies had to set up, staff, and break down their booths twice. This is just one example of inefficiencies created by lack of integration among the societies. With crude oil prices what they are now, who can afford such waste?

I understand that my proposal poses a threat to each society's finances, because trade shows are a primary source of revenues. However, I suspect exhibitors would gladly pay much higher rates for floor space at a single event in order to save all the redundant costs, material and human, of supporting three shows a year. Finally, wouldn't it make more sense to merge the "back office" administration of all the societies into one new organization, with only a fraction of the current overhead?

A new vision

Long ago, each of this industry's professional societies began with the laudable purpose of advancing a particular branch of earth science. Today, however, E&P professionals need something else-something less monolithic, more multidimensional, like the earth models asset teams are building in oil companies all around the world.

Wouldn't it be nice if the leadership of our professional societies would finally sit down together and start talking about an alternative vision for the future?

The Author

Robert P. Peebler has been president and CEO of Landmark Graphics Corp. since 1992. Previously, he held executive positions including chief operating officer, president of Landmark's seismic products division, and vice president of marketing. Before joining Landmark in 1989, he was president of his own marketing/management consulting firm. He was also employed in the oil field services business for 18 years. Peebler graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in electrical engineering.