700 Ways to Boost Cash Flow in Oil and Gas
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Release Date: 06/04/2025
From Clipboards to Cloud
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 These outdated processes persist despite mounting pressure to improve efficiency and cut costs.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...
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Digital Gets Real in the Mid-Market
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
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...
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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...
info_outlineThe 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, Chesapeake, and private equity ventures, Matthew shares how data and digital technologies can identify, prevent, and mitigate costly inefficiencies—without big budgets or sweeping tech overhauls.
Drawing from his new book, Shale Oil and Gas Operations: Maximize Cashflow with Cost Reduction, Matthew shares three practical, high-impact digital strategies: build operational algorithms to flag issues before they arise, embed probability-based decision-making into drilling management, and implement daily visual reporting using nothing more than a smartphone. Each tactic is aimed at boosting productivity, engaging teams, and staying competitive in an increasingly lean industry.
👤 About the Guest
Matthew Hatami is an accomplished oil and gas professional with over two decades of experience across engineering, operations, and executive roles. A former Halliburton and Hess engineer, he’s also the author of Oilfield Survival Guide and Shale Oil and Gas Operations: Maximize Cashflow with Cost Reduction. He advocates for data-driven, digital-first thinking to solve industry problems at scale.
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⚠️ Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not constitute professional advice.