Interviews and Case Studies

One from the archives - In the lead up to the 2019 Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit in Houston, we caught up with Sheryl Corrigan, Director, Environment, Health & Safety, Koch Industries. Here, Sheryl provides insight into how the company is working to create next-generation leak detection technology for the oil and gas industry.

From the archives - In the lead up to the 2019 Operational Excellence in Oil and Gas Summit in Houston, we caught up with Chris Humes, Senior Vice President of Operations at Crestwood Midstream. Chris provides insight into how the company has saved $14 million in operating costs while simultaneously improving safety performance and compliance.

From the archives - In the Oil & Gas Industry, Continuous Improvement plays an essential role in reducing costs, improving margins and driving organizational growth. In this exclusive interview with Michiel Van Noort, Global Head of Continuous Improvement, Downstream, at Royal Dutch Shell, we discuss the company’s holistic approach to continuous improvement, and how it is driving lasting results.

From the archives - In the lead up to the Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit, we sat down with Kal Johnson, Director of HSSE at Cameron LNG. Kal is accountable for developing and implementing an overarching corporate and operations HSSE management system, while maintaining strategic security infrastructure to meet MARSAC and USCG requirements. Kal has been working on a robust hazard identification program.

The oil and gas industry has consistently focused on improving its operations, particularly as production costs rise, refinement margins come under pressure, and labor shortages persist, along with an increasing pressure to reduce risks and enhance sustainability. These challenges collectively amplify the need and value for Operational Excellence (OpEx), enabling industry leaders to confidently demonstrate that they are operating their assets safely, reliably, sustainably, and cost-effectively.

Ahead of the 15th Annual Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit, we caught up with advisory board members Nicolas Felix, Operations Director, Asset Management and O&M at TotalEnergies, Julie Thyne, Global Improvement Director at Dow Chemicals, and Stephan Blasilli, Head of Business Process Excellence at EDP Renewables, to discuss the evolution of Operational Excellence within the oil and gas industry.

Read as they highlight the importance of learning from failures, the transformative impact of digital technologies, and the rise of automation and AI, along with challenges faced by operators today - from balancing investment with returns to managing change fatigue.

From the archives - In the lead up to the 2019 Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit in Houston, we caught up with Robert Hutcherson, founder and CEO of Optimize Consulting as well as author of Organizational Optimization. As one of the event speakers, Robert provides insight into his work with the Department of Defence and offers his expertise as to what the Oil and Gas industry can do to optimize their operations.

In October 2022, Schlumberger announced its new name – SLB – and its transition from the world’s largest oilfield services company to a global technology company focused on driving energy innovation for a balanced planet.

As they became SLB, the need to evolve the company culture arose to support the new positioning effectively and enable them to deliver on their strategic goals. The program to support that cultural evolution became known internally as, ‘Living our Culture.’

We sat down with Carlos Sarmiento, Diversity & Inclusion Director and Philip Irele Evbomoen, HR Director, Digital & Integration Division at SLB, to better understand the ‘Living our Culture’ program’s implementation, successes, and challenges.

Read as we delve into the intricacies of the ‘Living our Culture’ framework and how diversity and most particularly inclusion lead to further innovation and performance within the organization.

From the archives - Jim Claunch, Vice President of Business Efficiency at Equinor shares his unique insights on the digital transformation of oil and gas companies and the barriers facing companies on this transformation journey.  Jim has over 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry and shares his expertise with us in this exclusive interview. Download the full interview to read about how Equinor is: defining business efficiency through a mission to integrate competencies, developing a culture that embraces digital transformation, leveraging big data, predictive maintenance and analytics. 

From the archives - In the lead up to the Operational Excellence in Oil and Gas Summit, we had the pleasure of catching up with Sheryl Corrigan, Director of Environmental, Health & Safety at Koch Industries. With over  thirty years experience in the environmental, health and safety arena and 12 years working at Koch Industries,  Sheryl shares her insights on operational excellence at Koch Industries and how the company is leveraging new technologies to improve safety and environmental stewardship. 

Operational excellence requires a degree of stability to understand processes and identify ways to improve them.

But how do you improve processes and maintain the gains when the macro economic climate is constantly changing how you operate? You’ve got to find the Goldilocks zone, according to Sean Barnes, VP, Corporate Operations, at Nine Energy Service.

Sean notes that the periods between booms and busts is the time you need to make small and rapid improvements and get them solidified before the next big market change.

In this interview, Sean discusses the impact of market volatility on oil and gas operations, the ongoing labor challenges in the industry, and what it means to find the just right “goldilocks” zone for operational excellence in oil and gas companies.

Download your copy of the interview today...

From the archives - In the lead up to the Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit, we sat down with Hugo Ashkar, Global Risk Manager at BP, to discuss his work in human performance and the role of human factors in overall risk management.

From the archives - In the lead up to the 2019 Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit in Houston, we caught up with Grigor Bambekov, Director, Performance & Business Excellence at Andeavor Logistics. As one of this year’s speakers, Grigor provides insight into how the company is maintaining its vision for operational excellence following its recent acquisition as well as its methods for creating employee commitment to a new or changing OEMS.

Recorded live at Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit 2022! Delfina Govia of Oil & Gas Global Network (OGGN), the world's leading Oil & Gas podcast network, sits down with Grigor Bambekov, Senior Executive Leader, Excellence, Innovation, Digital and Business Transformation, to discuss his experience in the Oil & Gas industry and the challenges of Business Transformation and Operational Excellence.

From the archives - In the lead up to the 2019 Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Summit in Houston, we caught up with Julie Thyne, North America Continuous Improvement Lead at The Dow Chemical Company. Julie provides insight into how the company is driving reliability improvements by speaking directly to frontline experts.

From the archives - In this new and exclusive interview, Cynthia Hansen, Executive Vice President of Utilities and Power Operations at Enbridge, shares her insight on how high-risk businesses can enable safe and reliable operations during times of transformation.

From the archives - Mark Hutcherson, Director of Operations Excellence at ConocoPhillips, discusses how the American energy giant is taking the next step toward digital transformation and driving real time production optimization.

In this exclusive interview, Mark shares powerful insights on how ConocoPhillips is fostering a culture of technology adoption, as well as how AI is used for the purposes of equipment condition monitoring and predictive analytics.

Graciela Perez, Global Manager at Chevron, shares how the global oil and gas giant is leveraging human factors and data analytics as part of their Lean Transformation.

Download the interview to learn how human factors, linked together with Lean Six Sigma, has helped Chevron facilitate change management, improve cross functional learning, and deliver safer and more efficient operations.

Exclusive interview with Jim Wetherbee, the only American astronaut to have commanded five missions in space, a former Vice President of Operational Leadership at BP and author of the recently published “Controlling Risk"! 

In this exclusive interview, Jim discusses the ten common adverse conditions that existed in companies that experienced a major safety incident and how to use the presence and severity of these conditions as indicators to determine if your organization may be drifting toward a disaster.

Download the full interview to find out more.