6 market opportunities for tech and oil & gas

by Brian Gruber
May 13, 2014

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The Energy & Tech Mashup was organized around a simple premise: get oil & gas industry experts to bring industry problems to problem-solving tech CEOs, and let the public discourse commence.

Anyone who has ever attempted to bring a solution to an industry will appreciate how critical it is to have a deep understanding of that industry. Likewise, anyone who has ever had a deep understanding of any industry can list off problems within that industry that just never seem to get solved.

Only when the 'problem experts' and the 'solution experts' begin having an open discussion can some of these (ahem, multi-million dollar) problems turn into win-win solutions. 

These efforts usually seem to lack momentum though. Traditional cross-pollinating (is there such a thing as traditional cross-pollinating?) almost seems to be done behind closed doors, with a few brilliant key players jointly ruminating on solutions that they’re too busy to implement. 

And as Paul Washington, Executive Director of the Denver Office of Economic Development and the night's keynote speaker, pointed out, Denver - despite being only the 23rd largest city in the U.S. – is the No. 1 city for 18- to 34-year-olds looking to relocate, the second most highly educated, and the third best city for startups. In other words, the thinkers are here. 

Below are the identified market opportunities according to the experts and their problems with one key similiarity across all boards: the need for a platform to analyze the mass of data.

Rich McClure, Petroleum engineer from the Colorado School of Mines

  • The need to communicate long distances from remote locations. i.e. When a pumping unit quits, admin needs to know immediately
  • Need for a low cost solution for transmitting real-time pressure data, depth data, rate data, volume of fluid data, volume of sand data, etc., and wondered if this might be accomplished cheaply through SMS updates.

Don Walton, Principal of Calyx Energy

  • A smart way of combining huge mountains of disparate data. Optimizing completion-related parameters to production, combining reservoir, economic, and statistical analytic methods to maximize return on investment.
  • Optimization of economics based on frac data.“You can look up fracfocus.org data [a public chemical disclosure registry], but they don’t provide all the important data from an operations perspective.

David P. Craig, Owner of Reservoir Development Consulting

  • The ability to take data and use it anywhere in the world- and ability to specifically analyze numerical data and production data. 

Peter Mueller, Sr. VP Ops at Saga Petroleum & Former Chairman at Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission

  • The need for a visual database for older wells relying on paper data, organized correctly and with the ability to be shared across the industry. 

Technologists get your thinking caps on, the opportunity is in your hands.

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