[sparky]

.
In 1439 , johannes gutenberg started the printing revolution ,
the world was never the same afterward
He didn't invent printing , or even movable types , but perfected it for what turned out to be a huge demand

often it is pointed out that fracking and long horizontal drilling are not new ,
that's perfectly correct but miss the point ... it wasn't much used , there was no demand

Fracking literally exploded on the world consciousness , and billions were to be made and unmade in a frenzy

Now I wonder if there is some other technical development , already in existence , which could transform the crude oil business

one which spring to mind is autonomous wellheads at the bottom of the ocean ,
rather than a floating platform the structure is towed then sunk .it make them immune to some pretty atrocious weather and floating ice , it could be cleaned and maintained by undersea robots , manned or not
the candidates would be the mid oceanic , arctic and even antarctic provinces .

Maybe there are other possible technologies already in existence which could be the seed of a revolution

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('sparky', '.')
Fracking literally exploded on the world consciousness , and billions were to be made and unmade in a frenzy

[KaiserJeep]

The most current wave of technology is mobile phones and other networked devices, the one before that was the Internet, via wired access.

In terms of absolute and lasting impact, these latest developments are dramatic - very probably the most intense and the most persistent change in the 500 years since we harnessed water power and steam to begin all. This has been happening for 3+ decades, if you are 40+ years old, you remember it all because you were present.

This current wave has already turned individual tribes of human primates into many worldwide virtual networked "tribes", for example members of the PO.com virtual tribe exist and participate from seven continents.

This wave ends when our brains are directly interfaced to the net. The research is being done already. The concept entered our consciousness in an SF story called "Neuromancer" published in 1984. The latest SF to utilize the concept is iBOY, a series on NetFlix, where a teenager suffered an attack on a subway which resulted in a bullet shattering an iPhone, and blasting a networking chip into his brain - now his thoughts control networked devices.

Except it's not really SF anymore, the R&D is paying off big time, more and more human minds are being interfaced to the network. Arguably there approaches a time not too far from the present when anybody without a networked brain will be regarded as obsolete, archaic, and useless.

No, it's not direct oil drilling tech, but the Internet is the new knowledge repository and therefore IS responsible for the majority of technological changes in the past 3 decades in every field of human knowledge. Among recent petroleum tech developments which were enabled or enhanced by Internet access, GPS, etc:

Thermal EOR (EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery)
Chemical EOR
Microbial EOR
Zipper Fracking
Stacked Lateral Boreholes in Multiple Shale Layers
Remotely Operated Vehicles in Offshore Drilling
3D and 4D Seismic Imaging
Measurement While Drilling Tech

As for innovative and new techs, somebody will first utilize these to make a lot of money, and only THEN will you read about them here.

[sparky]

.
A good friend of mine , many moons ago was envious of the pay packets I got working on the north sea rigs
I told him the crude oil business was not penny pinching , he was smart and had some good secondary schooling but nothing really flash
he got a job as a general deck hand , then as an assistant to the tool pusher , then with Schlumberger driving the drilling heads , working in many places but mostly offshore ,
Now he has a purebred stable and two daughters pushing him toward bankruptcy
he work FROM HOME driving the drilling heads 5000 miles away thanks to the digital revolution

[evilgenius]

I don't know about what will happen in the oil business, but I think that 3d printing has the capacity to change everything. It's not very advanced right now, but it could evolve to replace almost everything we buy at the store or through Amazon. When that happens we will still have semi-trucks running around supplying us from great distances away, but they will mostly be shipping the raw materials the printers use rather than finished goods. It may also change our definition of what a great distance is. Ideas, larger and bulk printed items and raw materials will be what people share between each other for the kind of consideration that includes the transfer of money today. The change may even involve the manufacture of medicines and supplements, as both ideas and infrastructure surrounding the way that is done evolve. Even what sounds inconceivable as a locally sourced item may become regionalized, that is to say, as the world changes its perspective.

I guess it would involve oil. Treated as a raw material in things like plastic it would be very important to 3d printing. There would be competition to either keep oil regional or to cause it to become so ubiquitous, like with an explosion of pipelines well beyond anything imagined in the contentious pipeline arguments of today, that it would function under a marketing system that makes it local enough to meet people's aggregate home manufacturing demand. Corn might become an economically viable substitute as a raw material for some plastics. Batteries, in this more local world, could also become a much more viable alternative to gasoline. I don't know if big central refineries will abound, or if robotics means that smaller micro-refineries might be in the cards. It would depend upon what would work best as 3d printing took off, and upon what sort of marketing conventions people settled upon in their minds as acceptable or not. It's that latter point, what people will do in cooperation with the possibilities available to them in the future that will impact oil most, I think. Gauging that is more difficult than predicting the technological future.

[KaiserJeep]

3D printing is great for what it is, but not a panacea. I remember a TV interview with Jay Leno, where he demonstrated a 3D printer that they use in Leno's garage to make plastic parts that are then used to make sand molds for cast iron/brass/aluminum parts for restoring antique vehicles. He used his printer to create an adjustable "Crescent Wrench" in a single step, printing all three parts already assembled. The plastic wrench was completely functional in the sense that it did indeed adjust, and completely useless for turning metal nuts and bolts.

One thing I would advise against is investing any money in 3D printers. The smart money already did that here in Silicon Valley more than a decade ago. Now there are multiple bankruptcies happening in 3D printer companies.

[evilgenius]

3d printing, by the way, is a broad label for a whole class of home based, intelligence driven devices. I watched a video a few years ago put out by some guy who was really high on 3d printing. He was far more excited about the plywood cutting machine that made lick and stick houses possible than the 3d printer.

[KaiserJeep]

Astute observation, EG. Computer Numerically Controlled machinery has come to the home woodworking shop as well. Here is a place where one can source complete CNC routing machines capable of cutting 4X8 sheets of wood, plastics, and even soft metals:

https://buildyourcnc.com/default.aspx

The prior generation of CNC machinery, in some cases capable of fabricating and assembling housing modules as large as 40' by 10', has been in use for over a decade to build modular housing, which has obsoleted 2/3rds of the rough carpenters that used to work framing new houses.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ow I wonder if there is some other technical development , already in existence , which could transform the crude oil business

[sparky]

.
rocdoc ,to get some grist to you mill , I've posted this before but since it apply here , what the heck
Aramco control center , all the production , storage , transport and shipping is handled there
the instrumentation and scada make my mouth water .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQo5_P8N35k

the point I was trying to make is that revolutionary new technologies are often failures at first
full of bugs , mis-applied , with operators who don't really know what they are doing , discovering as they go along
materials procedures and components are per force untested by reality .

"sleeper" technologies are proven ,often used for marginal problems with a well tested usage
once they are applied on a much larger scale , they can be geared up easily .

[ROCKMAN]

sparky - With respect to finding, drilling and producing fossil fuels it is the service companies, like Haliburton and Schlumberger, that do the vast majority of research. And the Rockman lunches with them on a regular bases. And none are talking about anything close to game changing as 3d seismic, Deep Water and horizontal drilling (all 3 more then 20 year old "step change" technologies) were. Not even during a 3 martini lunch fantasy level. And actually more likely whiskey then gin. LOL.

No "sleepers" out there. The only meaningful buzz out there is the prospect of more hz drilling and frac'ng as oil prices increase.

[sparky]

.
So .. nothing much under the horizon , a bit of a pity !

I'm having this fantasy of self driving cars tech being applied to Mega tankers ships ,
mind you , it's already partially done , a computer is often more reliable than a bored sailor

[ROCKMAN]

sparky - Just continued tweaking of current tech. Nothing to kick off another drilling boom. Except for high oil prices, of course.

[evilgenius]

Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years Exxon will rule solar? Will the oil companies, the majors especially, be able to make the leap to the next iteration? BP has made a lot of noise about investing in what comes next. That doesn't mean they'll succeed, or even still be at it when it will really start to matter. It seems like a good start, though. I don't see many of them putting much into fusion research, but solar I think is possible. Real research, backed up by the anxiety of oil industry execs looking for the kind of solar panel efficiency that makes domination of the industry possible.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')parky - Just continued tweaking of current tech. Nothing to kick off another drilling boom. Except for high oil prices, of course.

[Tanada]

Rockdoc123, given what we now know about the shale boom of 2009-14 could someone have started the boom sooner, say 2004 when prices first started to rise year in and year out? You say all the pieces were in place, and the players generally already knew the locations of the sweetest spots that ended up being drilled early in the 2009-10 time period when things were just getting rolling.

I ask because historical quirks interest me personally and if the Shale Boom had started in early 2004 and ramped up as prices rose in 2005-2006 I think there is a fair chance the idea of Peak Oil would have been a much harder concept to sell in 2007. By then prices would have supported an explosive boom level of fracking just as they did from 2011-14 in the real world. I doubt oil would have ever gotten to $147/bbl in 2008 if the Fracking boom were going on at the time, a lot of the impetus for that spike was fear of future shortages.

[ROCKMAN]

"Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years Exxon will rule solar?" And why not: Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years General Electric will rule solar? Or: Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years Ford Motor Company will rule solar? Or: Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years Microsoft will rule solar? Or: Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years Starbucks will rule solar? LOL.

But seriously why not Starbucks instead of XOM? Neither have much solar infrastructure in place nor the personnel to man it if they did. Just a question of how any well funded corporation chooses to deploy its capital strength. Let's hit Texas one more time: one of the biggest wind power generators in the world and in the verge of a huge solar build out. And with a number of major cities targeting alternative energy sources including some looking to go 100% green. And no where do see ExxonMobil's name in the conversation. The big name in Texas alt today is SunEdison, the world’s largest renewable energy company. So maybe the better question: Maybe we ought to ask if in 50-70 years SunEdison will rule solar?

And Texas is XOM worldwide headquarters for Dog's sake. LOL.

BTW in 2001 E.ON, on the verge of bankruptcy, did a deal with the private equity company Texas Pacific Group (TPG), which purchased E.ON's stake in MEMC for a symbolic dollar and offered MEMC (later known as SunEdison) $150 million in credit lines. In 2006 MEMC announced its large-scale entry into the burgeoning solar wafer market, via longterm agreements to supply China-based Suntech Power and Taiwan-based Gintech Energy with solar-grade silicon wafers. Similar contracts followed with Germany-based Conergy in 2007, and Taiwan-based Tainergy Tech in 2008. The company cultivated short-term solar wafer customers as well. By 2007, MEMC held approximately 14% of the solar wafer market.

In November 2009 MEMC acquired the privately owned company SunEdison LLC, North America's largest solar energy services provider. SunEdison had been developing, financing, building, operating, and monitoring large-scale photovoltaic plants for commercial customers, including many national retail outlets, government agencies, and utilities, since 2003. The company had pioneered solar-as-a-service, and the solar power purchase agreement (PPA) for no-money-down customer financing. SunEdison was purchased for $200 million, 70% in cash and 30% in MEMC stock, plus retention payments, transaction expenses, and the assumption of net debt.

And that, my friends, is how a company becomes the world’s largest renewable energy corporation. And not by producing a bunch of f*cking oil wells. LOL.

[KaiserJeep]

It's very possible. Prior to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, BP Solar was one of the three biggest players in the retail scale Solar PV industry. Now they are a memory, having established a fund to honor customer solar panel warranties:

http://www.bp.com/en/global/solar-warranty.html

Their demise has nothing to do with the expenses from the infamous oil spill. Rather, they found it impossible to compete with the state-sponsored Chinese solar PV manufacturers, who are "dumping" solar panels in the USA at predatory prices that are actually below manufacturing cost. The practice of dumping has long been banned by US law, but the Chinese are past masters at not getting caught, there are literally dozens of examples here in Silicon Valley of lawsuits ongoing where an American company had a product contract-manufactured in China, then found itself competing with a clone product from a "new" company that employs many of the engineers trained by us to manufacture our original designs.

This happened to me, and it still smarts. I suppose that such predatory practices are the least of what happens in the oil business.

One other thing that smarts. Manufacturing silicon rods and wafers requires a heavy investment in machine tools. Originally back in the 1980's these were 2" in diameter but now 12" wafers are standard and 14" are the latest tech. The desire to make larger and larger wafers allows more and larger semiconductor devices to be fabricated in a single manufacturing line. Silicon Valley sold the 6" and 8" machine tooling to China, that they are now cleaning our clocks with in the solar PV industry - the same machines that we used to make the microprocessors that enabled PCs and Mobile devices, China is now using to make the most efficient monocrystalline PV wafers used in high performance PV panels.

Business as usual with our "trading partner" China. Probably BAU for "energy companies" as well, although that was not my trade.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') ask because historical quirks interest me personally and if the Shale Boom had started in early 2004 and ramped up as prices rose in 2005-2006 I think there is a fair chance the idea of Peak Oil would have been a much harder concept to sell in 2007. By then prices would have supported an explosive boom level of fracking just as they did from 2011-14 in the real world. I doubt oil would have ever gotten to $147/bbl in 2008 if the Fracking boom were going on at the time, a lot of the impetus for that spike was fear of future shortages.

[Zarquon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rockdoc123', 'S')KADA has been around for decades but it is still only used sporadically around the world. Very few companies employ active real time monitoring while drilling although the technology has been around since the eighties (it was used extensively in the Canadian Beaufort drilling program). The only pipelines that have full SCADA real time monitoring are ones where there has been terrorist or criminal activities associated with pipeline bursts (eg. Colombia and Mexico). How many companies actually real time monitor right from the wellhead through the field gathering system, through the main trunkline and through the plant? I suspect they can be counted on one hand.