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Digital Gets Real in the Mid-Market

Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

Release Date: 06/11/2025

Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

In the upstream oil and gas sector, frontline operations have long depended on manual methods for information management, such as clipboards, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools. These outdated processes persist despite mounting pressure to improve efficiency and cut costs. But with today’s margin compression, regulatory scrutiny, and demographic changes, that operational model is no longer sustainable. Field operators are expected to do more with less, but lack integrated, user-friendly tools that align with their daily work activities. In this episode, I chat with , CEO of , about how his...

Digital Gets Real in the Mid-Market

Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

More Episodes

Mid-sized oil and gas companies are now at a digital crossroads. While supermajors have pushed forward with large-scale transformation programs, many mid-market firms are only beginning to explore how digital innovation can improve performance. Their operational processes—budgeting, forecasting, asset planning—tend to mirror those of larger firms but constrained by fewer resources and less internal capability.

Unfortunately, mid-sized companies cannot simply copy the big-company playbook. They lack dedicated data teams, struggle with legacy systems, and must handle all the integration hassles with bespoke coding. At the same time, they are under the same pressure to lower costs, improve transparency, and make faster, better decisions.

Is a pragmatic and impactful digital transformation even possible in this context?

Absolutely. In this episode, I speak with Lewis Gillhespy, Executive Advisor at Rockflow, on practical solutions that work with mid-sized firms. By focusing on core business processes—particularly budgeting and production forecasting—smaller firms can drive efficiency through better data quality, increased transparency, and dashboard-driven decision-making. A bonus outcome is that improved data transparency leads to a self-reinforcing data stewardship culture, and why starting with business needs (not technology hype) is the key to lasting change.

👤 About the Guest

Lewis Gillhespy is an Executive Advisor at Rockflow, a UK-based consultancy focused on oil and gas strategy, technical excellence, and expert witness services. A former transformation leader at Suncor, Lewis now advises global mid-sized energy companies across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He brings deep operational experience and a keen understanding of how to turn digital ambition into practical execution.

Connect with Lewis Gillhespy

🔗 Rockflow

🔗 LinkedIn - Lewis Gillhespy