Building Tomorrow’s Energy Talent Today
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Release Date: 12/20/2024
Methane Matters
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
The oil and gas industry is sitting on a ticking environmental and financial liability. Around the world, millions of wells have been drilled to date, many more will be drilled, and all will eventually need to be plugged and abandoned. Today, the US alone has thousands of orphaned and marginal wells, many leaking methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. With underfunded asset retirement obligations and inconsistent plugging practices of the past, the sector faces mounting pressure to act—but struggles to finance solutions at scale. There is a potential...
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700 Ways to Boost Cash Flow in Oil and Gas
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
The oil market is once again bracing for change, with OPEC signaling their interest in unlocking supply that has been withheld. For producers, this looming oversupply translates into a fresh imperative: cut costs. The oil and gas sector, long accustomed to volatility, must now sharpen its cost control strategies in the face of intensifying pressure on margins. Matthew Hatami, a professional engineer, entrepreneur, and author, joins me on this episode to discuss the tools and tactics operators can use to improve free cash flow. With experience spanning Halliburton, Hess,...
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Fracking Reinvented
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
For decades, hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—has relied heavily on water and sand to crack underground rock and release oil and gas. Fracking is safe, proven, and reliable, and in collaboration with horizontal drilling, has resulted in the huge growth in hydro carbon production in the US and Canada. But fresh water is a scarce resource particularly in arid settings, and in many places under stress because of climate change. Disposal of used water is a technical challenge and costly. The sand resource, or proppant, is both costly to mine and heavy to ship. The mechanical...
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Mapping The Wet Frontier
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Despite covering over 70% of our planet, the oceans and seas remain largely unmapped and poorly understood. Collecting useable data about the oceans is hard and expensive--reliant on specialized costly vessels, old-school technologies, and plenty of labour. The comparison to land mapping technologies (like Google Earth) is stark--we have near-total visibility of land-based infrastructure, continuously updated, and collected by satellite. Subsea infrastructure, like pipelines and cables, are managed with minimal, outdated, and isolated datasets. This gap in oceanic intelligence is an...
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Empirical Gas
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Natural gas producers have long struggled to differentiate their product in a market that treats gas as a commodity. When it comes to carbon intensity (CI), the industry is reliant on emission factors and self-reported data, and lacks a credible, data-driven approach to proving their gas carries a lower CI. With new regulations like the Inflation Reduction Act’s Waste Emission Charge and Europe’s carbon border tax, the opportunity to produce verifiable low-emission gas has grown dramatically. Enter “empirical gas”—natural gas measured in real time with actual data instead of...
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Opening Oil & Gas to the World: Tokenization and the Future of Investment
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
The oil and gas industry has traditionally relied on financial instruments like futures and private equity—frameworks that have largely benefitted institutional investors while leaving little room for broader participation. But as digital assets continue to reshape capital markets, tokenization presents a new way forward. With blockchain technology and regulatory frameworks maturing, real-world asset-backed tokens are gaining traction - even in sectors once considered too complex for digital finance. In this episode, I speak with , Co-Founder of a security...
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How Big Oil Fell Behind In The Digital Race
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Twenty years ago, Big Oil companies like Shell and Exxon were the stars of the capital markets. Huge revenues, stellar profits, high share prices, robust price/earning ratios and reliable dividends placed these companies among the world’s best, magnets for top engineering talent and voices of influence in the halls of governments globally. But no more. They lost the market leadership crown to the digital giants, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Oil and gas concerns are still market...
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Beyond the Lens
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Industrial operations have long depended on the OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—a military-inspired decision framework that works, but at great cost. It requires physical presence, human expertise, and often misses key variables hidden from view. This age-old method is embedded across energy infrastructure—from wells to refineries. The digital age, however, is transforming our ability to observe. With billions of video-capable devices generating colossal amounts of data, and artificial intelligence now capable of interpreting this data in real time, there’s a game-changing...
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The Future of Offshore Connectivity
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Offshore oil and gas operations are among the most complex and remote in the world. From harsh weather to limited physical access, these environments demand reliable, high-speed communications to enable modern digital workflows and keep operations running safely and efficiently. As offshore operations become more autonomous and data-driven, the traditional telecom models fall short. Legacy systems struggle to meet rising demands for bandwidth, low latency, and mobility—especially when platforms are unmanned or vessels are constantly on the move. is addressing this head-on by delivering...
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Corrosion Under Insulation
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Pipes are the silent workhorses of the process industries—hidden in plain sight yet essential for daily operations. But what happens when these unassuming assets begin to fail? A recent catastrophic water main rupture in Calgary serves as a stark reminder that even the most robust infrastructure is vulnerable, especially when degradation hides under insulation. The challenge of inspecting and maintaining piping is immense. Facilities house millions of miles of pipe, much of it exposed to harsh climates, inaccessible locations, and made from materials with complex corrosion profiles. Layer on...
info_outlineSAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) has a critical mission: producing the frontline workers that keep the energy industry running.
But as the sector evolves—shaped by decarbonization, digital technologies, shifting demographics, and immigration rules—so too must the workforce.
According to Dale Hansen, dean of SAIT’s MacPhail School of Energy, the institution’s role is to stay several steps ahead of these trends, making sure graduates are ready to meet the future.
Dale faces an unenviable but exciting challenge: anticipating where the energy market is headed years before it happens.
SAIT works to identify the skills the industry will need, refresh its curriculum, and recruit educators—all while navigating rapid changes.
This isn’t just about tweaking course content; it’s about rethinking what it means to be an energy professional in a world increasingly shaped by new solutions and technologies.
The future energy worker won’t just turn wrenches or operate rigs—they’ll need to innovate, adapt, and problem-solve in ways that the industry has yet to experience.
Dale highlights how SAIT is taking a proactive approach to build this next-gen workforce, seeing that the energy sector has the talent it needs to thrive in a decarbonized, digital-first future.
About Dale
Dale Hansen is the Dean in the MacPhail School of Energy at SAIT, providing strategic leadership for its academic programs that span across the energy industry.
Prior to joining SAIT, Dale spent 25 years in the oil and gas and mineral resource sectors. Through the course of his career in oil and gas, Dale filled a wide variety of leadership roles across many functions, including time spent in field locations such as the Oil Sands near Fort McMurray.
This has provided him with a well-rounded perspective on the industry and an absolute passion for energy in all of its forms.
Dale is an experienced facilitator and speaker who holds a Chartered Professional Accounting (CMA) designation and a Master of Arts degree in Leadership from Royal Roads University.