Robert Brelsford
Downstream Technology Editor
In any year, the charge of penning the final Journally Speaking column is a weighty assignment, and this year, a particularly onerous one. For this editor, it's rather like receiving orders to extract his own teeth with rusty pliers, which in fact, likely would be a less-painful task.
As we slouch ever closer to the year ahead—as hackneyed as the exercise seems—the arrival of something new inevitably evokes a need to account for what has passed. It may be that the business-minded are predisposed to such an act. It may simply just be the human condition.
Either way, the accounting happens, and in the best-case scenarios, we hopefully glean something useful from it. We learn from past mistakes. We vow to operate with integrity and currency in lieu of reverting to espousals of lips service and castings of smokescreens. We resolve, when all is said and done, to do better.
Substance vs. blather
OGJ editors, as many of you know, receive countless e-mails a day—from prospective authors seeking to place technical articles, operators announcing their latest projects, public relations firms seeking to push their clients' latest products, and recently out-of-work engineers and skilled laborers requesting assistance in finding new placement.
Over the past year, however, an accounting of this editor's e-mail inbox indicates a gradually alarming volume of pathetically self-aggrandizing releases from major operators attempting to deflect attention from their latest exposed crises. Technically and operationally substanceless, these 2016 releases (as of early December) numbered just less than 3,000, accounting for more than 800 MB of storage space before their permanent deletion.
In a year of wildly touted "enhanced" transparency initiatives, these statistics are disgraceful. Without question, damage control is part-and-parcel of any industry, but there are limits, especially when companies guilty of these practices should know better.
Of the 50 or so releases widely issued by one major integrated operator by yearend 2016, about 10 dealt even remotely with its actual operations, of which maybe four provided details meriting inclusion in OGJ. Thankfully, related releases from different service providers supplied enough operational data to finally justify coverage for OGJ's readership. (This same operator, by the way, ignored OGJ's attempts to divisions across its entire organization seeking its participation in the annual refining survey, even as the operator's incessant social media blasts and televised commercial campaigns glorified the organizations commitment to its transparent and aboveboard dealings.)
While understandably this company was attempting to dodge a patch of bad publicity regarding its past operations, it begs the question as to why fellow operators that have endured similar bouts of bad runs with press have managed to do so without sacrificing their willingness to maintain open and transparent media relationships about their current operations. Why can these entities, even in the face of adversity, continue to operate with an integrity that enables them to share meaningful press communications while others seemingly find it impossible to do so?
Perhaps it boils down to the company's leadership. Perhaps it means there's more to hide. Whatever the reason, it's this type of evasive behavior that causes the world at large to generally question our industry's practices, even when that behavior applies only to a few.
Auld lang syne
Mark Twain once said yearend was a time of making good resolutions that, by the following week, became the stones for paving hell again. One hopes this will never be the case, but from an OGJ editor that across the recent downturn maintained (as one reader bluntly put it) a "rather sickeningly hopeful outlook" regarding the industry's near-term future, don't assume we're in the clear just yet.
The forecast certainly calls for warm and sunny days ahead, but at the precise time of this writing, there's a fair chance we're in store for some dense-fog advisories stateside, and by default, then certainly abroad as well.
Resolve to use your stones wisely, friends, and to each of you, all the best for a safe, prosperous, and healthy New Year.
