Surviving oil&gas downturns 1986 - 1996 - 2010 - 2014

1. Oil Price and Innovation
From which was derived
this LinekdIn Pulse
www.linkedin.com/pulse/oil-price-innovation-andrew-zolnai

2. BP statistical review

3. 1986 – my first downturn
• Started a venture called Cal-CAD
• Before Windows existed
• AutoCAD front-end to Sun workstations
• PC-NFS link to well datasets
• Video-tracing system
Canada

4. 1988 – more innovation
• Joined start-up CD PubCo
• Put all well data from Western Canada Sedimentary Basin on one CD
• Another CD held all the production data
• Used a Texas School Board hashing algorithm
• Leased CD reader with CDs as they weren’t prevalent yet
• One oil co. had one tech visually check data with their mainframe
• Yet clients asked that the text interface have a map interface
Canada

5. 1992 – yet more
• Found StrataWeb had a potential map front-end to CDs
• After a few false starts, end up with Munro Garrett Engineering
• And who do I meet, but some of the StrataWeb folks!
• And they had created Argus, a script based map front end
• Windows was still new, and Esri ArcView was also new
Canada

6. 1996 – the big time
• In three years went from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 employees
• Munro Garrett was bought by Landmark itself bought by Halliburton
• Same desk, different paycheque
• Move from Calgary thru Dallas and Houston to London
• Argus was replaced by Esri ArcView to front OpenWorks system
• OpenExplorer was a oil&gas runtime extension in Unix then NT
• Sold the most Esri extensions across all industries worldwide then
• Halliburton DecisionSpace is a descendant of that system
Canada California
Texas UK

7. The business of tech

8. Also in 1996
• George Mitchell proposed ‘fracing’
• That tech was pioneered by Halliburton 75 yrs prior
(Schlumberger logged wells, Halliburton did completions)
• Three other ingredients still missing
• Directional drilling (tubulars)
• Microseismic (monitor fracing)
• Price of oil (< $20 / bbl then!)
Texas

9. 2000 – big big time
• Manage petroleum industry for Esri
• Industry in the upswing globally
• Esri benefitted of global economy
• Petroleum User Group breaks 1,000 attendees 2004
California
worldwide

10. 2006 – return to UK
• Petris a small firm with Recall (1/3 global wells stored!) & GIS
• GeoSolveIT a consultancy branching out in oil&gas
• AGIP KCO business process re-engineering of data assets transfer
• oilelefant.com a web based well data management start-up
• 2010 next oil price crash following 2008 financial debacle
• OpenWare, Esri’s Kuwaiti distributor with KUFPEC, KOC, KGOC etc.
• Wipro (ex SAIC Oil&Gas) as Eastern Hemisphere geospatial lead
• 2014 final oil price crash
• Start zolnai.ca as sole proprietorship

12. Always keep a sense of humour