It might not be evident just yet, but it will become clear in the coming years.
18 replies (most recent on top)
Carbon capture, hydrogen blue or green, recycling facility? All this has been evaluated, reevaluated and old as the hills. I really can't see EM doing any of this as value added. Smaller companies can and do. Just PR stunt now, contract out and claim success. Yawwnnnn
@1mwv: there’s plenty of innovation and new solutions to apply to any industry. The problem is the “leadership” are so incompetent they’d rather pay McKinsey $millions instead of implementing solutions that are 10-15 years old their own staff came up with. So I guess we can both be right - there’s nothing new or ground-breaking, and the experienced technical staff aren’t necessary because we don’t implement simple solutions anyways because the “leaders” are too stupid and have no courage.
@1eqs Have all the thoughts you want. You can even call yourself an expert. Maybe you are. I really don’t care.
Question: when was the last time you had a serious conversation about innovation with an O&G business leader that actually led to something decisive happening?
Is the poster below who says there’s no new tech in the industry referring to upstream/downstream/chemicals/midstream?
I have my thoughts about my own expertise but I’ll wait for their response…
It's a commodity company.
Blood-gorged arms and bean counters.
Where's the brain part required?
Dividends.
Who cares? We deploy world class talent in BTC!
@pno Yawn…that’s old technology.
And BASF isn't an O&G company. They certainly don’t operate on the bo-m/bust commodities cycle that Exxon does.
So yeah, nothing new has happened in the industry for ten years.
In fairness, nothing much new is happening anywhere else either. Companies are just re-heating old ideas and dressing them up with shiny new packaging. The iPhone is a good example.
No brains left in Annandale, site has been destroyed by management all the talented Researchers and Lab Technicians have run for the doors, left for greener pastures. Watch for the Lab snoopers………
For those of you that say that no new technology has been developed in the petrochemical/O&G industry in the last ten years FLASH NEWS: BASF and others have just announced the construction of a steam cr--ker that uses electricity to heat things up. The reduction in CO2 emissions is a fre@king 90% compared to ours. There is technical work, and a lot of it, to be done in the petrochemical business. It is just that Exxon doesn't want to do it. It prefers to give all the money back to the investors while shrinking the company by selling all assets. It lets others have fun, develop the technology and they it licenses it. There is a lot of really cool tech stuff that we could be doing. Management just doesn't let us do it and they keep firing us.
@wtf Maybe, but it’s the old-timers/lifers who are complaining to the internet while refusing to move on.
The young talent (such as it was) were using the same dated knowledge base as the lifers, because nothing new has happened in terms of technology or processes in the industry for over a decade.
@jxv+1iAiyyWL it’s far from just the gray-hairs that are leaving. At least in EMIT the young talent is nearly non existent, quite a few “up and comers” as well as various mid career folks have all left.
“Brain drain”
Is that what we’re calling the resignations of senior employees with dated knowledge who should have moved on years ago but wouldn’t?
I’ll let everyone in on a little secret: nothing new has happened in O&G for the past decade. Same technology, same processes, same people, same problems since 2012.
All anyone has to do compensate for the so-called “brain drain” is look up the best-practices that the old-timers stashed behind a bunch of paywalls or buried in desktop folders, which any mediocre consultant can help with.
That’s the truth. I fear DW and his buds are going to run this place into the ground and bail right before it all crumbles. They’ll have their escape plan and plenty of money while everyone left will have to deal with the mess.
Management doesn’t care about brain drain, they actually encourage it. Because if you have a brain, you can see through their nonsense and their sycophantic behavior. Fewer brains means fewer challenges to their supremacy, and they can continue singing the “everything is awesome” chorus.
I agree with most of the comments regarding the lose of talent. Annandale is circling the bowl.
Correct, no one cares.
Management thinks they care and they may tell you they care. Reality is, they have no control over any thing. Luk Youie made sure of it.
If you are/were hoping to get a career in Annandale, good luck. Or do like me, as little as possible and take the paycheck. I laugh all the way to the bank.
How about those poochie faces on the intranet home page. Are they our best and brightest?
So much knowledge has exited EM, replaced with BTC that the likelihood of a future significant event has increased substantially.
EM Management thinks that Process Safety is just making the engineers read the GP’s. Now they are at the point where the engineers do not understand the GP’s or so few EM engineers that reviews are skipped.
Nobody cares.