Taming the Owner Communications Chaos
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Release Date: 11/19/2025
Taming the Owner Communications Chaos
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Oil and gas companies are finally confronting the huge communications and stakeholder challenge they face with their asset owners and stakeholders. Production assets such as oil and gas wells almost always have many part owners (land owners, JV partners, interest-holders, trusts, first nations tribes). Managing these hundreds or thousands of parties across tens of thousands of wells is really demanding. These relationships are complex, sensitive and often layered with legacy ownership structures, royalty flows, regulatory demands and reputational risk. This is much more than an operational...
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Unlocking Capital for Latin America’s Energy Transformation
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Latin America is entering a period of rapid economic growth, urbanization, and industrial expansion. Unlike North America and Europe, where primary energy demand has been flat for more than a decade, the region’s energy consumption is rising sharply. A young, increasingly urban population is pushing electricity and fuel demand higher, placing new pressure on infrastructure and supply. This demand surge is colliding with a second global shift: the explosive rise of AI and hyperscaler data centers. These digital megaprojects require enormous volumes of power, often sourced from natural gas,...
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Power Without Surprises
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Electricity powers nearly everything in oil and gas, from pumps and motors, to compressors and digital systems. But while production engineers obsess over volumes and temperatures, the quality of the electricity driving their systems is often overlooked. Most teams only discover power issues after equipment fails, leading to unplanned downtime and costly repairs. Unfortunately, traditional power quality meters and relay monitors don’t catch the early warning signs. They lack resolution, require manual data pulls, and don’t provide actionable insights. Worse still, the frontline...
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Navigating The Maze of Global Energy Regulation
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
In all my years of experience in energy, I rarely worked in pure regulatory areas, but regulations loomed large over everything I touched. The energy sector is very highly regulated, and for very good reasons. From environmental standards to carbon pricing, energy companies are held to a high standard and must demonstrate that compliance to operate locally, regionally, and globally. The regulatory landscape is highly dynamic and under constant change. New regulatory frameworks emerging from Europe and the United States will reshape how energy companies, particularly in North America, do...
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The Safety Copilot
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
In the UK oil and gas sector, the record on major accidents looks encouraging. Serious incidents are very rare, and the industry appears to be operating safely. Beneath the surface, the data tell a different story. One-third of safety inspections fall below the legal standard, and more than half of process-safety professionals are expected to retire within the next decade. At the same time, ageing assets, shrinking budgets, and weaker regulatory oversight are straining existing safety systems. Operators must sustain high safety performance when experience is walking out the door,...
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How To Misspend $100 Billion Using Excel
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Unconventional oil and gas is massive. Every year, over $100 billion is poured into steel, sand, and water just in Canada and the US. Yet, most of the planning behind these extraordinary investments still runs on Excel spreadsheets. Spreadsheets were fine in the 90s, but today they struggle to handle the complex interdependencies and real-world constraints of modern tight plays. The hidden cost to the industry is huge. Expensive inefficiencies, wasted capital, and missed opportunities to improve well design and execution. Other industries abandoned spreadsheets long ago when margins got thin,...
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Smart Metal In Oil and Gas
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Oil and gas operations rely on heavy machinery and equipment that perform critical tasks, yet most of this equipment remains disconnected from the digital landscape of cloud computing, analytics, and autonomy. This lack of connectivity leaves operators with higher costs, inefficient maintenance, and limited visibility into how their assets are really performing. The traditional approach to equipment design is no longer enough. Operators face pressure to improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and cut costs, but without better data and smarter tools, these goals remain out of reach. The industry...
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Smarter Scheduling in Oil and Gas
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Scheduling in oil and gas has long been a weak link. Wells, rigs, frack crews, contractors, and regulators must all line up in precise sequence, but too often the “system” is stitched together with Excel spreadsheets, siloed tools, and a lot of human memory. The result is inefficiencies, costly delays, and endless arguments in daily meetings. That model is no longer good enough. The complexity of modern operations, coupled with volatile markets and new constraints (from labor shortages to tariffs to water management) is making traditional scheduling tools obsolete. Operators that rely on...
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Harnessing Energy’s Data Deluge
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
The oil and gas industry generates extraordinary amounts of data from millions of sensors, yet only a tiny fraction, at most 8%, is actually used to inform decisions on complex and valuable assets. Decades of building analytics and machine learning solutions have helped, but they’ve also left companies with a patchwork of siloed systems and “industrial gridlock.” The arrival of foundation models in late 2022 introduced the possibility of moving beyond one-off solutions. But generic internet-trained models are not suitable for high-risk industrial environments, where accuracy,...
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When Water Bites Back: How Oil and Gas Learned to Respect Its Most Overlooked Resource
Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann
Water is the unsung workhorse of the oil and gas industry. It's instrumental for generating steam, driving b, lubricating drill bits, flooding reservoirs, and separating oil from oil sands. Historically it’s been cheap, plentiful, and overlooked. As climate pressures mount and scarcity becomes real, water is now emerging as one of the industry’s most critical resources. Water isn’t just another utility, like power. It's a highly interconnected system. A quick fix in one unit can cause downstream failures, regulatory breaches, or environmental harm. Unlike power, water can be reused....
info_outlineOil and gas companies are finally confronting the huge communications and stakeholder challenge they face with their asset owners and stakeholders.
Production assets such as oil and gas wells almost always have many part owners (land owners, JV partners, interest-holders, trusts, first nations tribes). Managing these hundreds or thousands of parties across tens of thousands of wells is really demanding. These relationships are complex, sensitive and often layered with legacy ownership structures, royalty flows, regulatory demands and reputational risk.
This is much more than an operational hassle. It’s a brand and trust issue. When owners ask: “Where’s my check?” or “What’s this charge on my statement?”, slow responses can damage goodwill, complicate legal compliance and create unnecessary risk. Companies try to manage but have often saddled themselves with dueling systems in the land department, operations, legal, and corporate communications.
I was delighted to learn about Firm App, a clever digital solution to this chaos, that was co-founded by two brothers, Deren Boyd and Dagen Boyd, and partner Josh Wright. Firm App was initially aimed at the legal profession, who also have many parties to manage, but the stakeholder problem in oil and gas turned out to be far more pressing.
Their purpose‑built platform delivers better and more responsive owner communications, stakeholder transparency and operational risk reduction. It uses AI to answer many routine enquiries freeing up scarce staff to focus on more important tickets. Owners see their relationship through a portal, and companies even save on paper and postage.
👤 About the Guests
Deren Boyd is co‑founder of Firm App, an AI-based owner relations software headquartered in Norman, OK. Before Firm App, Deren served as Senior Vice President of New Markets at KPA, leading growth strategy and expansion into new industries following KPA’s acquisition of iScout, an EHS management software he co-founded in 2020.
Earlier in his career, Deren was Vice President of Safety and Compliance for Crescent Companies, an oilfield services firm based in Oklahoma City.
A proud graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Deren holds a Bachelor’s in Health & Sports Science and a Master’s in Adult and Higher Education. Before entering the safety and software industries, he spent seven years in intercollegiate athletics at OU as Assistant Athletics Director of Development and Director of Basketball Operations.
Deren lives in Norman OK with his wife, Monica, and their four children.
Dagen Boyd is a co‑founder of Firm App, an AI-based owner relations software headquartered in Norman, OK. Prior to Firm App, he served as Director of Corporate Development for Crescent Services, LLC, an oilfield services company based in Oklahoma City. Applying his knowledge of oilfield operations, Dagen co-founded iScout, an EHS management software that offers safety reporting, training, asset management, and more. iScout was acquired by KPA Services in 2020. Dagen is a proud graduate of the University of Oklahoma and lives in Edmond, OK with his wife and their three children..
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The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not constitute professional advice.