I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine the other day, who is a programmer at an O&G ERP software company. We were kinda riffing on the topic of how long it would take until A.I. could perform many of the routine tasks we have accountants for. After all, with DocVue, Enverus, and Quorum’s Dynamic Docs, it seems like the machines are slowly chipping away at the drudgery of menial accounting work. But it’s the oil and gas industry, so… you know, we’re about 20 years behind the kitchen appliance sector.

Remember in the ‘90’s when Deep Blue finally beat Garry Kasparov in chess? I remember chess geeks and computer nerds were amped up about it. Kasparov himself had a full (and untelegenic) meltdown. Kasparov boldly predicted a machine would never be smart enough to beat him, a grandmaster, at chess. But what did we really learn from that game?

I graduated from high school in 2002, a long time ago. During my MBA program, when one of my professors didn’t recognize a Groucho reference, (“Any program that will take me isn’t good enough”) I took that as the final smidgen of proof that the traditional education system had nothing more to teach me.

When I was in high school, computers were only just becoming standard in certain classrooms. They were old Apple iMacs— you remember the brightly colored, neon one-piece boxes Steve Jobs used to hawk back in the day— and some nameless PC that was probably handed down to the school from a city auction. Back in those days, I didn’t see the computer as a friend. I didn’t recognize these hunks of junk as the predecessor of the tools that would help me crush Jane Doe.

To: President@Whitehouse.gov

From: We The People

Re: Any d@mn thing that pops into my head about how this country should be run.

People in power always care about letters, good or bad. Today, if PetroLedger received fewer than a dozen letters complaining about my use of ‘colorful metaphors,’ I’d get the call, “Driskell, you gotta clean it up! Give me your badge and gun. You’re on the bench.”

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Pardon Me, Can I Store My Crude Oil in Your Swimming Pool?   Remember over a year ago, when we had so much oil that you couldn’t pay people to take it? Or when global storage was maxed out and previously successful E&P Operators were draining their swimming pools...

A Parable on how outsourcing could save you from an embarrassing Christmas   Long before I won the lottery and landed a job in Sales & Marketing, I worked for an insurance company (I won’t give the name, for obvious reasons). It’s a big company; our humble...

We Might Have a New President, So What? I Still Like to Guzzle a Little Gas There was a presidential election recently, although, you might not have noticed. I’ve always enjoyed election day. For a news junkie like me it’s better than the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby,...