Discovering Tech in Oil and Gas
0:00 All right. Welcome back to Energy 101. We are asking the basic, sometimes dumb questions, so you don't have to. But not really dumb. Not really dumb because we are smart women. Right. We know
0:12 we're smart. And we would like to not only raise our energy IQ, but your energy IQ. I am Sydney from Digital Wildcatters. We have Julie and Jules, aka Jules squared, here with us today. And the
0:25 guest of honor is Diana Grouwer, the director of research and development for NOV, but also a very much a longtime friend of Digital Wildcatters. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.
0:37 You're excited to have you. I'm super excited about this. Me too. I think we decided on our topic. Yes. Which the title of it even a little went over my head. So I'm going to let you introduce a
0:49 topic and then kind of explain and we'll ask questions as you go. Okay What I proposed for us to talk about is technology and something called technology readiness levels. And the reason that that's
1:04 important is that is the scale by which we measure both development and deployment of technology, not only in the oil field, but in the broader energy business - Okay - So there aren't, I can't say
1:19 the scale is perfectly the same for all different types of energy, but it's darn close And it tells us that if we're at a low technology readiness level, the technology is really immature. It's new,
1:36 something like out of university research lab. And then we move into a technology readiness level of three or four, that's sort of bench scale, we're prototyping now. We, that's my favorite part,
1:50 because that's when we start bringing pieces and parts together - Right get to build things. And then as you go on up. the technology readiness level ladder, say that five times. You start getting
2:01 into more mature technologies and at a
2:11 nine, it is field proven. And then everybody can just kind of wipe the sweat off their brow and go, yes, we made it to the top. The thing works, it hasn't broken. We have a reliability plan in
2:26 place, go team So would you compare it to, this just came to my mind, but like a vaccine or medication going through the process of getting tested and okay - Absolutely, great, okay - That makes
2:37 sense, 'cause nine would be like
2:41 FDA approved. It's out, we made it - Absolutely, okay. I'm not exactly sure what their scale is if it's through nine, but I'm sure it's something like that they go through the same kind of a.
2:59 prototyping iterations that we do.
3:02 Also in software development, we do the same thing. Some people call different technology development processes different things. So everybody always in the oil field talks about the process and
3:17 the workflow.
3:19 When I first started, I went, what is that supposed to mean? Well, the process is the steps that you follow and the workflow is the handoffs. Right. So if you and I are working on a project, I
3:35 put a workflow in quotes in place that says that at this point I hand you something. It's like scrum. Yeah. The work for Adjalen to person. Yeah. Yeah. First into person. And there was a big
3:51 huge push when I was working at Schlumberger to really set a robust workflows.
4:01 I think that there's a lot of value in that, but you have to be super, super careful because everybody then talks about how we don't want to crush innovation. Right. At the same time, so we got
4:13 to have process, we got to have workflows, but we don't want to build up these walls so that people can't get anything done because humans still need to innovate. If you don't innovate as a human,
4:25 two things are going to happen You're either going to get eaten by something, something's going to eat you or you're going to get run over by something
4:38 else. That's the end of your existence. So humans just have to keep moving forward. And
4:45 I think that the energy industry,
4:50 back to technology readiness levels. We know how to push the envelope. But we know how to do it really, really carefully - Right - Which is the
5:02 thing that
5:05 I think we talk about a lot but we still don't talk about enough and that's safety in the energy business. I know I've gotten us a little bit off topic now, but technology readiness levels are
5:18 supposed to manage your risk - Okay - It's the whole idea - Makes sense - To make sure that you're not putting people or technology or tools or resources in danger - Yeah, 'cause you're talking like
5:33 when you have big rigs that people are working on or some big machinery, anything is like, can be super dangerous. So you can't just throw something out there and be like, let's test it with these
5:45 guys' lives - Right, let's test it. Let's see what happens. We can't do that So we've got to have a really rigorous way to evaluate. technologies, which is my favorite part of working in energy
6:03 because you get to see all of it. I was going to ask you, so what does it look like whenever you get to see a technology in development? Is it on a test site? Is it on, what does that process
6:16 look like? So a lot of times it starts with just a pitch deck on paper I know so many entrepreneurs that have really, really amazing ideas, no capital to back them. So you've got to be looking for
6:30 the person who's willing to put in the time and the effort to put it down on paper to translate their ideas into whatever the next phase is.
6:41 I usually see technologies when they're a little bit more mature than that when people have
6:49 tried something in their garage one of the places where engineers tend to do a lot of work.
6:58 Also, universities are allowing students to work in what they call maker spaces. So, students are getting to try technologies really, really early. That's about when I see stuff. Then, what I
7:13 try to do is take them down a path
7:18 that is the least painful way possible of introducing whatever it is that they're trying to build to my industry.
7:30 Sometimes that can take a couple of weeks. Sometimes that can take a couple of years. Sometimes some of the stuff that people do in oil and gas is harder than going to the moon And I will argue that
7:48 any day with all of my friends from NASA.
7:53 There are just so many incredible challenges.
7:57 in that space
8:00 that people are fixing every day. If I spent all of my time just looking at pitch decks,
8:10 I wouldn't have time to actually evaluate the technologies, but at the same time, you don't wanna miss out on anything really, really good - Right - So you've got a review - Yeah - Every pitch deck
8:20 - I'm sure
8:23 it's a balance - It's an incredible balance, but you get to see, it's almost like seeing into the future a little bit. So how long have you been in the industry? So I've been in the industry since
8:38 I graduated from undergraduate in 2006. Okay. And I went on a co-op to a company called El Paso Corporation. They're now part of Kinder Morgan. And I stuck around there for a summer and then went
8:53 back to graduate school and I finished my PhD in 2010.
8:58 After graduate school, I went to the Department of Energy for a couple of years, and then I moved into the oil field - Okay - So 2012, about was when I started working for Cameron - So about 10
9:11 years. How have you seen like the technology kind of advanced? Or actually, let me ask you this. What has been like the favorite, your favorite like technology
9:28 to work on - Oh, robots - Robots - Robots - How does that - Doesn't matter what kind - If it's a robot inside it - Is it in the oil field - Absolutely - What do they do? Like what kind of robotics
9:33 are kind of out there right now - Robots are put in place in the oil field to take humans out of an unsafe location. So we've almost come full circle back to now we're managing our risk, trying to
9:55 move people out of the line of fire. make sure that they're not in danger and make sure they're not doing anything that could get them into trouble and danger eventually.
10:07 That's what we have robots for. We also have robots for places that humans can't reach, like 3000
10:17 meters water depth below the surface of the ocean. Humans cannot, we can't do that. We're just not built for it So the robots will swim down, fix whatever's wrong. Exactly. Like, back up
10:31 swimming robots. And they will do all kinds of things.
10:38 Some of the most interesting people that I have ever met have been ROV designers and ROV operators and teams that develop those technologies because they have to think in three dimensions because the
10:55 robot, for example, Subsea is floating. So it can move in any direction. It can roll. It can swim straight. It can not swim straight if you're not being careful.
11:12 But then they have these arms that reach out and can manipulate valves. They can
11:20 sample fluid. They can do all kinds of crazy things. But that's because humans can't get there.
11:30 On the other side of the equation, on land rigs, for example, which I know Colin and Jake are super familiar with, we use them to handle the drill pipe. So I've got a couple of really, really
11:44 large robots out at the Spring It technology center at NOV
11:51 run by a team that are just incredible when it comes to the versatility of the robot arms. I could sit there and watch them all day - That is so cool - That is really cool. Are robots fairly new?
12:07 You would say in the oil and gas industry - I would say
12:13 robots are not new. How we're using the robots is very, very different.
12:22 What we used to do is something called teleoperate, which means that we had an operator
12:28 with joysticks and it was like flying a helicopter. Right? So we would give them all of the capabilities to move the robot exactly how they would want an extension of their arms to move. Now what
12:52 we're finding is that there are more efficient ways to do processes. and that we can program in some of what those, those robot arms and those other robots do and let them do them themselves. And
13:08 the robot will optimize what it does, which I think is just incredible - Yeah - There's a company in town called Houston Mechatronics, shout out to them, great friends. They're building the
13:24 Aquanaut, which is a tetherless vehicle that allows you to make all these changes and operate in the oil field without having a big long extension cord that goes all the way to the surface - So
13:39 that's usually how in the past, it was always tethered - Tethered, absolutely, absolutely. So imagine trying to vacuum your entire house and you can only plug into one outlet, right? That's how
13:53 much extension cord relatively you need. and managing that extension cord gets really hard and it's really complicated and it takes time and it takes a lot of energy to do -
14:10 That's crazy - That is it - It also kind of blows my mind to hear you talking. We don't, I don't feel like we get to hear like the technical side of things - We really don't, not as much as this -
14:21 Not like this. So this is a really cool, and you always hear people say, the oil and gas industry runs 10 years behind, but hearing you talk, I'm like, it's all sounds pretty innovative and
14:33 maybe it's like a different side of the industry runs 10 years behind, but it's crazy how technical the industry is without people knowing it. Like I don't think people, there is a big
14:47 misconception - I think that there is a generational shift right now, not only in oil and gas but in energy. where my dad worked for an oil refinery. He ran pipeline operations.
15:06 That was a very, very different environment than the oil field that I work in now. We have people in lab coats. It is, we have clean rooms for sensor development and design We have biologists that
15:27 work for oil companies on
15:32 different kinds of fluids to inject in the oil field that are clean and biodegradable. It's just, it's crazy. I think that
15:44 my generation, our generation has started to look up and say, can it be a little bit different? Can I talk about what I do in the oil field? Can I tell you about all the cool things that we're
15:58 investing in all the time?
16:02 We have to stay out in front of our competitors, just like with any business. We're
16:10 a B2B. We have to be innovative all the time. We always have to be adopting technology. And the other thing that we have to do is grow all the time So we're either organically growing through RD,
16:25 right? So
16:27 we develop our own stuff and we commercialize it inside. Or we're in organically growing. We buy somebody. Right. We evaluate that technology. We acquire them and we bring them into the
16:37 organization. Yeah. And both of those methods can be successful. Both of those methods can be a complete shit show but ultimately the energy industry.
16:56 is the industry right now that is investing really, really heavily into new technology. And that's where I want to be. I want to be in a group of people that are looking at new technologies every
17:08 day. Well, it sounds like we talk a lot about at DW, just how the energy and oil and gas sector is not great at storytelling. And they have such a bad reputation. And I love talking to people
17:19 like you, because just like you said, you guys are investing in this technology that isn't just advancing energy and oil and gas, but making it safer, more environmentally friendly, things that
17:32 other people look down on our industry for. You guys are investing in things to make it better. Absolutely. We are pulling a product out of the ground, processing it in a million different ways.
17:51 You guys need to get yourselves a chemical engineer to come talk to you about all that because
17:56 at the end of all of that craziness comes out really important things like ziplock bags and disposable diapers, which is all my life revolved down
18:08 for like five years - I feel your pain - Yeah, it's, and those are things that make life easier, they make life better. They also, we use those fuels for propulsion and mining I have a cell phone,
18:27 you have a cell phone, all of that has metal in it. Well, we gotta get it out of the ground in some way. I would prefer that we did it in a sustainable and fairly autonomous way and not people
18:39 just kind of digging holes.
18:42 There are better ways to do things. And I think the industry, the energy industry is really on the forefront of the, let's do this better movement. We have so many young executives right now who
18:59 are like me, they've got 10 years in the oil field, they know what they're doing and they know how to do it well. We've just got to get the right people in the right positions given the right
19:09 opportunities and the right incentives - Absolutely - Which is a whole other podcast about incentives and investing that we can tackle some other time - I have one last question Can you share anything
19:25 that you're working on right now that you're excited about - I'm excited about emissions reduction technologies. So
19:35 criteria, pollutants, things that we measure and monitor are really hard to measure and monitor. And the reason is that you have a little tiny location in a huge big installation of equipment you
19:52 may have one little tiny leak.
19:55 And I'll be damned at finding that leak is impossible - Yeah - So we've got some new technology now. We mount these sensors on drones. Shout out to Seacops in Austin. They're gonna do some drone
20:08 surveys for me. We're gonna measure and monitor all the interesting things that are going on. Because we as an industry know that first of all we need to mitigate those pollutants. But also we want
20:27 to - Yeah - We want to. I want to keep that product in the pipe. I don't want it leaking all over everyone. That's a waste - That's a waste - Yeah - I'm wasting money - Yeah - So, you know,
20:41 there's, I think there's a ton of opportunity in emissions management, emissions reduction of both methane emissions and combustion. products like CO carbon monoxide, CO2, carbon dioxide, knocks,
21:01 all kinds of stuff like that. So I think that there are some really interesting technologies that are leading us down a path of maybe not being able to fix every lead, but getting darn close - And
21:16 we're trying - And we're trying - And we're trying - And we're investing - We're investing. We've got, I don't mean to brag, but I think we have an amazing leadership team at NOV. I'm a huge fan
21:23 of David Reed. I'm a huge fan of
21:34 what the organization is doing in terms of just trying to evaluate
21:42 really, really good technology and bring it to the field really fast - That's awesome. That's what fun is - 'Cause that's one thing is like, there's one thing about bringing it to the field, but
21:52 if you can do it quickly. Oh yeah - Well, I've got competitors on my heels. I've got customers pushing, I've got investors pulling.
22:03 We've just got to align all the right incentives and then allow people to innovate - Yeah - And then back to where we started
22:15 on risk management, it's all about people, it's all about keeping them safe. That's all I do every day is make sure that I'm looking at technologies from a risk reduction perspective - Yeah - Right?
22:28 So I put everything on the technology readiness level scale - I mean, and I think you are speaking at Fuse in October and this conversation just makes me so excited to learn more about all the new
22:40 technology that hopefully people are gonna come demo, talk about, show off, I think. And hopefully by that point, we'll have even more podcasts under our belt. So we'll be walking in a few.
22:52 Experts on everything - Experts, experts, yeah. I think Fuse is gonna be a really, really interesting way to bring a lot of really different groups of people together. And
23:08 I love collisions. I'm a combustion engineer by training. I love molecular collisions. I love people collisions in a good way, not on the beltway, but like not on the day But I love to see those
23:20 intellectual collisions. And I love to watch people's brains grow in front of you - Yeah - It's the best. It's the best thing ever. When you can stand in front of a room of people, bring something
23:36 new. And potentially a perspective that they haven't really felt up before. And you just watch their eyes get really big and then you watch their brains start growing and it's just an incredible
23:49 thing to watch. kind of our mission. One of our missions here at the Digi-Wile Cadders is to celebrate those collisions and encourage them. And the healthy debates that happen between different
24:01 sides of the sector that sometimes definitely butt heads, I think that's what we're hoping for - Yeah, yeah. I think you're headed in the right direction because I have seen the speaker list or at
24:14 least part of it. I'm super excited just to be in attendance So getting to speak is, you know, cherry on the top. Love it - Yeah, we can't wait. Very excited - Jules - All right, we're gonna
24:26 end this episode with rapid fire. You ready - Okay, I'm ready - Here we go. What's the number one misconception about the energy industry - Oh, it's dirty that it's
24:39 hard. You know, it's not this glamorous environment It's not,
24:46 you know, like working in a biology lab or working in a biology lab. in fashion, but it has its own incredible challenges. And,
24:58 you know, if you want to wear a lap coat, wear a lap coat for me and wear a lap coat.
25:06 Number two, why should I care about energy? Because it touches everything that you do every day
25:16 We talked about Ziploc bags and diapers earlier, you know, getting from point A to point B, harvesting the materials that will eventually give us a cleaner way, at least locally, of getting from
25:31 point A to point B. I think
25:36 that
25:39 you guys are headed in the right direction trying to get this message out And that's I think one of the things that I'm most excited about. last one. What is your most embarrassing story in your
25:50 career? That's my favorite question. Okay. Might do. So I won't go too deep, but I
25:58 told you ladies earlier, I wiped out in front of a board of directors going up onto a podium. Oh no. And I was in heels. And it was really, really funny to me because it was a room full of men.
26:21 And they all like reached out to help me and squealed at the same time.
26:27 There was this like high pitch like, oh, like a collective from like, and I could have, you know, the, the, I can get from a room full of women, but it was just me and I wiped out. And it was,
26:42 we all still laugh about it at me later. But that was the first time I had ever, I ever got up to give a presentation in front of a board of directors and a faceplate. I feel like it was only up
26:58 for there. Yeah,
27:03 exactly - I would have started for a lot - I would have started a bar really, really low, really early. And I can impress them for theirs - I don't know if I would wanna laugh cry or just lay there
27:10 - I just lay there - I just let me be. And I gotta tell you, I wasn't, I didn't like jump up. Like I wasn't like, miss spring and everything's okay. Like I was kind of like, ugh, better - That
27:27 was rough - It reminds me of Jennifer Lawrence with the Oscars. I think it was the Oscars. She was walking up the steps in this like humongous dress and just fell and just stayed there for a little
27:38 bit - Yeah, just like herself - And then was like, all right, here we go - She was probably much more graceful than I was. I'm sure that like. my legs were over my head. I'm not sure it was just
27:51 awful. At least there's no video for that. No, there is no video. You know, I still have the PowerPoint that I gave that day, just as a reminder, right? 'Cause I thought I was a big deal. I
28:05 was young, I was in front of a board, I was my first vice president role, I was gonna show him. 'Cause I was the woman in the room, we were gonna do it, and I just looked like a total idiot That
28:17 was great. That's great. That's awesome. I love that story, I feel like that's something that would happen to me honestly. I'm like the first person alive. You're like first BOD presentation.
28:28 That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I really enjoyed this episode. Like talking about robotics was really interesting. Like we could talk about that all day probably. I do, I
28:40 think you kind of shine a light on something we don't ever get to hear about. So thank you You're very welcome.
28:48 If you want our non-existent followers to follow you, where can they follow you - They can follow me on LinkedIn. I know LinkedIn isn't like the most amazing place, but I am kind of an old lady and
29:04 I am just now figuring out how to tweet and TikTok and Instagram, isn't that insane? So
29:13 follow me on LinkedIn first and then you can follow me on the other platforms - Oh yeah, I love them - Once I get them figured out - I love to see your TikTok. I feel like you could do so many cool
29:22 things. You could showcase a lot - Yeah, actually - Robots - There are some really cool 101s that I wanna do - Yeah - And I just haven't done them yet - Well, you have three followers right here -
29:32 Yeah, we'll follow you - Thank you - Well, thanks so much.
29:39 Bye!
