Energy companies need to integrate new functions in order to better utilize data, says this expert

Using APIs, organizations can more easily combine their own internal data. Getty Images

Houston, home to one of Cognite's U.S. headquarters, is the energy capital of the world. But while many oil and gas industry players and partners come together here, much of the data they use — or want to employ — remains siloed.

There's no lack of data. Connected devices are a wellspring of enterprise resource planning data, depth-based trajectories, piping and instrumentation diagrams, and sensor values. But incompatible operational data systems, poor data infrastructure, and restricted data access prevent organizations from easily combining data to solve problems and create solutions.

We understand these challenges because we work alongside some of the biggest operators, OEMs and engineering companies in the oil and gas business. Lundin Petroleum, Aker Energy OMV, and Aker BP are among our customers, for example.

Flexible, open application programming interfaces can address the challenges noted above. APIs enable users to search, filter and do computations on data without downloading full data sets. And they abstract the complexity of underlying storage formats.

As a result, data scientists and process engineers can access data in an efficient manner, spending more time on their use cases and less effort contending with technical details. Using APIs, organizations can more easily combine their own internal data. APIs also simplify the process of using data from industry partners and other sources.

Most companies have slightly different work processes. But common API standards can help a company combine software services and platforms from others in a way that matches its own business logic and internal processes. That can allow the company to differentiate itself from competitors by employing services from the best suppliers to create innovative solutions.

Standardizing APIs across the oil and gas industry would open the door to a community of developers, which could create custom applications and connect existing market solutions. Then more new and exciting applications and services would reach the market faster.

To ensure adoption and success of such a standardization effort, the APIs would need to be well crafted and intuitive to use. These APIs would have to include the business logic required to perform the operations to empower users. In addition, APIs would need to define and allow for the sharing of desired information objects in a consistent way.

Best practices in defining common APIs for sharing data within the industry include:

  • Introducing APIs iteratively, driven by concrete use cases with business value
  • Ensuring all services using the API provide relevant output and insights in a structured machine-readable format, enabling ingestion into the API to ensure continuous enrichment of the data set
  • Making all data searchable
  • Preventing underlying technology from being exposed through the APIs to ensure continuous optimization and allow companies to implement their technology of choice
  • Supporting all external data sharing through an open, well-documented and well-versioned API, using the OpenAPI standard

If oil and gas industry operators define APIs, suppliers will embrace them. That will "grease" the value chain, allowing it to move with less friction and waste.

Operations and maintenance are a natural place for API harmonization to start. Standardized APIs also can enable operators to aggregate and use environmental, equipment and systems, health and safety, and other data. That will accelerate digital transformation in oil and gas and enable companies to leverage innovative solutions coming from the ecosystem, reduce waste, and improve operations, making production more sustainable.

------

Francois Laborie is the general manager of Cognite North Americas.

Luther Birdzell, founder and CEO of Houston-based OAG Analytics is on a mission to democratize data for his upstream oil and gas clients. Courtesy of OAG Analytics

Houston entrepreneur is using his analytics company to change the oil and gas industry

Featured Innovator

Luther Birdzell has been on a mission to democratize data for the upstream oil and gas industry since he started his company, OAG Analytics, in 2013.

For him, there's just not enough data scientists for hire to do the same thing internally for different companies. He thought of a way where he can give clients an easy-to-use platform to have access to data that could save oil and gas companies millions of dollars. So, that's exactly what he did.

"Over the past five and a half years, we've built that platform," Birdzell says. "We are currently helping to optimize over $1 billion in capital deployment around drilling and completions."

The company has grown to 25 employees and tripled its revenue last year. The team is forecasting another year of high grow for 2019.

Birdzell spoke with InnovationMap to talk about his start in software, the company's growth, and why nonprofit work has been important to him as a business leader.

InnovationMap: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Luther Birdzell: When I was about two years old, my grandfather ran a meat business in New York City — in the meatpacking district, back when that area actually had meat packers. It just was in my bones from a really young age that I wanted to start a business.

IM: How did you get into software development?

LB: I studied electrical engineering in college. For my first seven years, I worked within consulting, implementing systems that made data more valuable to subject matter experts. I was primarily supporting management teams and mostly tech teams.

Then, I met the founders of iTKO, who were doing software testing for clients, and I helped them figure out a way that was complementary to what they were doing. We took a capability that can enable software developers that can help companies reduce their data center costs by a lot. It was a capability that was really restricted to specialized programing. Together we figured out how to make that a capability that anyone in an IT company used. That resulted in companies being able to higher fewer people to maintain servers, as well as reduce other costs. Companies were saving of millions of dollars per year per project.

IM: When did the idea for OAG come to you?

LB: Computer Associates bought iTKO from us in 2011. When I resigned from CA in 2013, it was very clear to me that artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, and the cloud, were all tech ingredients for adding more value to data. Then the oil and gas business came into focus.

When I founded OAG Analytics, our mission then — and still is today — was to build a platform for the upstream oil and gas industry that enables them to manage their data, introduces world-class machine learning in minutes without having to write a single line of code, and allow them to run simulations on the resulting analysis.

IM: What makes OAG successful?

LB: My vision was to create a platform that could be trusted to support billions of dollars of capital optimization through transparency and control. A black box doesn't work for the kind of problems we're helping our customers optimize. They need something that's easy to use, simple, powerful, and also gives them complete control.

IM: What's the barrier of success for your clients?

LB: We have customers who have increased their capital efficiency on drilling programs that are about $500 million by over 25 percent, while still getting the same amount of oil out of the ground.

IM: What was the early reception like?

LB: We found a lot of interest in talking about how it works. In 2013, 2014, 2015, well over half the industry knew enough about this technology from other industries to have high confidence that it would affect the oil and gas industry one day. They were willing to spend an hour or two on what it is and how it works. But the number of companies who were really willing to invest in a meaningful way was really small.

There were companies, like EOG Resources, for example started spending millions of dollars developing this technology in house. Other companies seeing EOG and Anadarko success, raised the bar on the level of proof.

There's an increasing number of companies in the industry who realize that AI isn't a futuristic thing anymore. There are companies using it today, and the companies using it right are making more money. But, they're learning it's hard to do right. It could take years and millions of dollars to develop this yourself, but we're helping companies get up to speed in a matter of months, and our total cost for the first year is well under a million bucks to do this. They want us to train them how to use it, then act as support, rather than run it all for them.

IM: Do you plan to stay in just upstream oil and gas?

LB: We're 100 percent focused on upstream oil and gas, and always have been, but as we continue to grow, we're going to follow the market and what customers want. Repurposing our platform for other applications in oil and gas, energy, and even beyond that. We're evaluating. The vision has always been to democratize AI, and oil and gas is where we started.

IM: Do you have an exit strategy?

LB: As far as exits, I get asked this a lot. I don't believe in exit strategies. I believe in building a great company. I've seen a lot of founders make a lot of mistakes trying to cut corners to get to early exits. Our goal is to be a great company, and that starts with the right vision and then getting the right people and hires.

IM: How has Houston been as a place to have a startup in energy?

LB: Houston is unparalleled in the oil patch or the ability to support day trips. There's two airports and tons of direct flights to other cities in the oil patch. It's the only city you can cover all the other cities from with day trips. The efficiency of being able to be on site with customers is such an advantage.

There are a lot of industry experts in and around Houston, but a startup software company works very differently from an oil company. I think we have a long road ahead of us before we have an ecosystem in place to support startups and give them the best chance of success. Some of that comes from advisers, some from the ecosystem, and some part of it just takes time. But once those pieces come into play, talent follows. I think Houston is a very natural hub for energy tech.

IM: Volunteering is an important part of your business. Why is that something you've focused on?

LB: Something in the DNA of our business is giving back. We do that through direct community action. We've volunteered as a company, and we're always on the lookout for ways we can engage with and make the most contribution to the community. We do this primarily for personal reasons, but the universe has been very generous over my career with reciprocating a professional upside.

You volunteer in high school to get into college, then maybe some in college. And you might think, "oh that's for philanthropists or retired people and I'll get back to that later." But the reality of that is it feels better doing some of that now, so we do.

------

Portions of this interview have been edited.

Andrew Bruce had the idea for Data Gumbo when he realized how difficult it was to share data in upstream oil and gas. Courtesy of Data Gumbo

Data Gumbo CEO discusses Houston's startup ecosystem and goals for his company

Featured innovator

For Andrew Bruce, an oil and gas professional and entrepreneur, there's nothing like Houston.

"I've lived in Boston, New York, and London, and I've spent a lot of time in Norway," Bruce says. "They are all wonderful places, but I've never experienced anything quite like Houston."

After a long career in oil and gas, Bruce found himself a victim of the oil downturn. Once laid off, he decided to focus on a new idea for a way to provide access to upstream oil and gas data to companies. He founded Data Gumbo Corp., a blockchain-as-a-service company based in Houston, in 2016. The company closed its seed round last year and is moving toward a series A.

While Bruce credits his trajectory from laid off to startup CEO to a lot of hard work and a bit of blind luck, he says that Houston's people and the help they are willing to provide has been extremely beneficial to the growth of Data Gumbo.

"I'm just brainstorming, but I think a lot of [what makes Houston great for startups] comes from the fact that we all recognize the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry, we are obligated to look out for each other even when people are laid off," Bruce says. "Maybe it comes from that kind of recognition that we're all in this together and we have to try to work through it."

InnovationMap: Tell me a little bit about your background.

Andrew Bruce: Started out as a programmer, and was transferred from New York City to Houston to build a consulting practice for financial systems. My background originally in London was building systems for the deregulation of banking industry that was happening in the mid 80s.

When I came to houston, I got involved in energy trading systems. I built a small software startup, and eventually got involved in National Oilwell Varco and the drilling business. As part of that, I kicked off a program called NOVOS to build an autonomous drilling rig. Came across the challenge of not having access to data for that rig. Data Gumbo was a direct result of that.

I started Data Gumbo to solve the problem of not being able to get data from industrial installations. Along the way, I came across the opportunity for blockchain because the real problem people were trying to solve was mistrust and inefficiency of the process. I stumbled into blockchain kind of backwards.

IM: How does Data Gumbo work?

AB: The whole idea is to build out the blockchain network, and provide a network that they can subscribe to and start doing business on that network. It's a service, so there's a subscription fee. It gives them access to the savings they already have available within their organizations.

IM: Who are the type of customers you're looking for?

AB: Midstream and upstream oil and gas companies, and the service companies that serve them.

IM: What was the reception like at first?

AB: Difficult. We got a lot of questions and concerns about what blockchain is, why they need it, and whether or not they can trust it. We were introducing a completely new concept to a conservative industry.

IM: What were some challenges and opportunities?

AB: No. 1 is the Operators Blockchain Consortium, which was 19 different oil companies coming together to understand blockchain and its opportunities. That's helped. And 75 percent of our early calls were sort of evangelism of explaining blockchain and how it's different from cryptocurrency. So, it was an educational process. The industry was independently going down the road of understanding the technology. And, to be perfectly honest, it was a bit of blind luck that we chose this technology that the industry was getting behind anyways.

IM: What doors does your recently closed seed round open?

AB: Now we're pursuing a series A equity round. Seed was a bridge to equity funding. It was primarily individuals in town who got behind the company and believed in what we were trying to do. They helped open some doors, but primarily it was financing to get us to series A and prove the concepts from a sales and product market fit perspective.

IM: What are you long-term goals for Data Gumbo?

AB: To take the company public and to remain independent. We believe that we want to provide a service to the customers that is independent from any other offers. We want to stay true to our roots and be a blockchain network infrastructure people can trust and rely on for not just upstream oil and gas, but also getting into trucking and shipping and other adjacent industries so we can satisfy the whole supply chain.

IM: How is it being located in Houston?

AB: Houston's startup community has been amazing. When we started this journey, it had been a while since we had any entrepreneurial contacts, so it was basically like starting from scratch. Organizations like Station Houston and, later on, The Cannon helped provided great contacts. People from those organizations — and the business community as a whole — has been really generous with their time. Houston is probably second to none when it comes to people's willingness to help.

IM: What does Houston still need to work on as an innovation ecosystem?

AB: I don't think it's Houston specifically, but a generalization is that large corporations are set up to buy from large corporations. As a small company or startup to sell to a super major is difficult because the sales cycle is so long and the requirements are set up to buy from other large companies. If there was a way for creating an entrepreneurial division of these companies so that they can experiment with and support startups, that would be tremendous. If you're a startup, you should be focused on sales, but cracking that nut within a large company is really hard.

IM: What keeps you up at night as it pertains to business?

AB: People. I've viewed my roles with a huge responsibility. There are people who make a bet on a company, whether they be investors or employees, and you've got to be able to fund the company. So, whether it be through sales revenue or fundraising, making payroll and building a company that people can get a return on their investment is a huge responsibility. So, that's what keeps me up at night — making sure that I'm repaying people's faith in what we're doing.

------

Portions of this interview have been edited.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston universities climb the ranks on annual list of most patents issued

top 100

The University of Houston and Rice University have claimed spots on the National Academy of Inventor's Top 100 U.S. Universities Granted Utility Patents.

The list is based on data obtained from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and ranks U.S. academic institutions that are advancing innovation by the number of utility patents issued in the prior year.

Utility patents are among the world’s most valuable assets because they give inventors exclusive commercial rights to produce and use their technology. The universities ranked on the list collectively hold nearly 6,500 patents.

“In the ever-evolving innovation landscape, it is imperative that the U.S. is remaining competitive and at the forefront of today’s emerging research and technologies,” Paul R. Sanberg, president of the NAI, said in a news release. “Ensuring the security of intellectual property through patenting is a crucial component to this and allows those innovations to be effectively moved to market, where they can create valuable societal and economic impact. The Top 100 U.S. list celebrates U.S. universities and their inventive staff and faculty for their dedication in ensuring their innovations and IP are protected.”

The University of Houston System came in at No. 62 with 34 patents, and Rice University claimed the No. 68 spot with 30 patents.

Both universities climbed up the rankings this year. Last year, UH was ranked No. 63 with 27 patents. Rice climbed an impressive 26 spots this year, after ranking No. 94 with 14 patents issued in 2023.

“Granted U.S. utility patents can tremendously help in commercializing the technologies covered by such patents by attracting industry investment and commercial partners on a global level,” Neha Malik, assistant director for intellectual property management in Rice's Office of Technology Transfer, said in a release. “Advancing in this list memorializes Rice’s commitment to support research programs of Rice faculty by generating a path for the university to bring its research to the marketplace.”

Other Texas universities on the list include:

  • No. 3 University of Texas System (234 patents)
  • No. 35 The Texas A&M System (61 patents)
  • No. 73 Texas Tech University System (25 patents)
  • No. 80 Baylor University (20 patents)

The University of California (540 patents) claimed the No. 1 spot again this year, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (295 patents), which also placed second for 2024.

First large-scale affordable housing project of 3D-printed homes rises in Houston

Building Blocks

What’s being promoted as the world’s first large-scale affordable housing development built using 3D technology is taking shape in Houston.

Houston-based 3D construction company HiveASMBLD has teamed up with Houston-based Cole Klein Builders and the City of Houston on the Zuri Gardens project. Located near Hobby Airport on Martindale Road, the first 3D-printed home at Zuri Gardens is set to be completed in October.

“Zuri Gardens was born from the frustration of watching hardworking families get priced out of safe, resilient housing. We knew there had to be a better way — and with this project, we’re proving that there is,” says Vanessa Cole, co-founder of Cole Klein Builders.

“By combining visionary design, advanced construction technology, and powerful partnerships, we’re building more than just homes — we’re creating a blueprint for the future of equitable homeownership in Houston and beyond.”

The development is being created for households earning up to 120 percent of the median income in the Houston metro area. For a four-member household in the Houston area, the 120 percent limit in 2025 is $121,300, as set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The 13-acre Zuri Gardens development will feature 80 energy-efficient homes averaging 1,360 square feet. Prices will be in the mid to high $200s. The homes will qualify for up to $125,000 in down payment assistance from the City of Houston.

HiveASMBLD will print two different home designs, each with two-bedroom and two-and-a-half bathroom configurations, along with an office/flex space and a covered patio.

Zuri Gardens home model Houston Courtesy rendering

“The community we envision for Zuri Gardens is modern, safe, and one that residents will be proud to call home. When completed using HiveASMBLD’s innovative technology, this 3D-printed multifamily community will exemplify the future of residential affordable living,” says Timothy Lankau, founder and co-CEO of HiveASMBLD.

Developments like Zuri Gardens are popping up around the country.

“3D-printed homes are revolutionizing the construction industry by making home builds faster, cheaper, and more sustainable,” according to The Zebra, an Austin-based insurance marketplace. “In less than 24 hours, 3D printers can print the foundation and walls for a small home at a fraction of the cost of typical construction.”

U.S. News & World Report explains that unlike a traditional home, a 3D-printed home is printed in place, “just like you’d print a knickknack on your home 3D printer. Layer by layer, proprietary concrete blends are used to build the wall systems of the home in any type of design that a builder can imagine.”

Texas is home to several trailblazing 3D-printed projects.

In the U.S., the first 3D-printed home was built in 2018 in Austin, and the first 3D-printed multistory home was completed in 2023 in Harris County’s Spring Branch neighborhood. Meanwhile, the world’s largest neighborhood of 3D-printed homes is located in the Austin suburb of Georgetown.

Grand View Research predicts the global market for 3D-printed construction will approach $4.2 billion by 2030.

---

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Houston tech company secures $450M NASA contract

space deal

NASA’s Johnson Space Center awarded Houston-based aerospace technology and engineering services company Barrios Technology the Mission Technical Integration Contract (MTIC).

The two-year contract is worth $450 million and will begin Oct. 1, 2025.

Barrios will provide technical and management support to some of NASA’s human spaceflight programs, which include the Orion and Gateway programs, the International Space Station (ISS) and possibly more human spaceflight initiatives.

The contract represents a continuation of Barrios’ Human Space Flight Technical Integration Contract (HSFTIC), which has been in effect since 2020.

“We are incredibly proud to have been selected by NASA to continue working side by side with them in shaping the future of human space exploration,” Kelly Page, president of Barrios Technology, said in a news release.

The contract also includes support for program, business, configuration and data management, information technology, systems engineering and integration, mission integration, safety and mission assurance, and operations according to Barrios.

Barrios will be supported by subcontractors ARES Technical Services Corp., Booz Allen Hamilton, Intuitive Machines, Summit Technologies & Solutions, and TechTrans International (TTI).

“This award is a testament to the passion, hard work, and extraordinary value that our Barrios family brings every single day,” Page added in the release. “This is not just another contract award—it is the continuation of a generational commitment to our NASA customers and their critical missions.”

View All Listings