Most of you have already heard of bitcoin’s phenomenal price rise in recent weeks, or maybe you noticed its big price increase in 2017. Today just one bitcoin sells for an amazing $27,000. But can this new digital currency save the damaged oil & gas industry?
Last week our lead engineer Kurt Mire wrote an open letter to Oil & Gas Investor Magazine editor Steve Toon. Toon’s recent editorial described how the oil & gas industry was being phased out in lieu of renewable energy, essentially waving the white flag for the petroleum industry. A bold move when considering that oil & gas employs hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Here at Vive La Frack! we are committed to promoting 21st- century solutions that leverage new technologies that can both save the environment & preserve the economy. We do not agree with the mainstream media’s contention that we have to move exclusively to renewable (unreliable) energy.
Bitcoin Is Much More Than Only A Digital Coin
The most common description of bitcoin is one of a safe digital currency, but, as with all tech-related concepts, that is only an oversimplification of the truly revolutionary technology.
A better descriptor for how the underlying bitcoin technology could save the oil & gas industry is by thinking of it simply as a timekeeping system, divided into ‘blocks’ of time that store digital files with an ultra-secure and accurate timestamp.
This works well for currency, bitcoin in this example, because every transaction is recorded and is able to be viewed as a measure of trust, but the details of the transaction cannot be seen as a measure of security.
How Can This Tech Save The Dying Oil & Gas Industry?
To save the industry we must acknowledge its problems.
The first issue is that we simply have too much oil, the demand is lower than supply, driving costs and oil company profits down.
The second issue is the mainstream backlash against hydrocarbons and the push to support renewable energy.
The problem with this is we don’t only use petroleum for transportation and electrical power, we use it to produce numerous consumer goods. Here’s a small list:
- Construction materials such as paint, caulking, roofing shingles, asphalt, and pipes
- Protective coatings and waterproofing chemicals
- Safety materials such as hard hats, safety goggles
- Clothing fibers such as nylon, polyester, acrylic, and spandex
- Clothing accessories such as handbags, sunglasses, phone cases, and jewelry
- Household products like cooking tools, domestic appliances, and cleaning products
- Beauty products consisting of nail polish, perfumes, some make-up, and hair coloring
- Personal hygiene products such as soap, toothbrushes, and shampoo
- Nearly all medical machinery in hospitals & medical implants like heart valves and artificial limbs
- Sporting equipment such as surfboards, basketballs, and skate wheels
- All electronics ranging from TVs to computers and cell phones
- Legos, dolls, frisbees, crayons and markers, and balloons are all children’s toys that contain plastics made from oil
- Agricultural fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides are all oil byproducts (You know, the stuff that makes it possible to feed billions of people worldwide)
So, despite what you see on TV, unless we can use solar cells to power the world, it is not going to be easy to get rid of oil like everyone is predicting.
This is good news. Even if every aspect of transportation energy is phased out of oil & gas to alternatives, oil & gas will still have a future providing materials for all the petroleum-based products on that list.
The Blockchain Solution To Every Oil & Gas Issue
The short answer is efficiency and trust.
Blockchain technology can make every point on the oil & gas logistic chain a finely tuned machine of near-zero resource waste.
Imagine a technology that could help the upstream oil industry to securely, safely, and optimally bring together millions of communication points, organize it all together and achieve a reduction of costs & harmful greenhouse gasses.
What if there were a system in the midstream arena that could perfect the massive logistical nightmare of storing and transporting oil? Or what about a system to handle substantial data processing done for regulatory compliance and environment protection? With blockchain, this becomes a piece of cake. Ethereum Blockchain technology can provide multi-stakeholder information sharing, asset tracking, disaster & risk mitigation, and infrastructure maintenance.
The downstream sector would receive the same benefits mentioned for the other upstream and downstream, but would really see a breakthrough by using a platform with smart legal contracts that can reduce time, energy, and costs. This would help all energy companies and consumers.
I know what you’re thinking – “Sounds fantastic, but how far away are we from achieving this tech in all those commercial ways?”
The Revolutionary Blockchain Technology Of The Future Is Already Being Used
There’s a reason bitcoin is skyrocketing faster than black gold from a gusher: Companies across all industries, not just oil & gas, are already using the crypto-blockchain tech developed a few years ago when bitcoin made its first rising star appearance in the investment world.
Since then thousands of companies have begun investing in blockchain ledgers to not only be innovative, but also to help create the next series of scientific advancements in a shorter amount of time.
Here are some of those companies in our industry:
- BP and Shell have been using a blockchain-based digital platform for energy commodities trading they developed in 2017.
- Petroteq is pioneering a new, greener approach to the dirty process of oil sand extraction in the form of a revolutionary Liquid Extraction System that can extract oil with minimal environmental harm. How minimal? 99% extraction of all hydrocarbons in oil sands while generating zero greenhouse gases and without the use of high temperatures and pressure.
- Schlumberger is using cloud technology to build an “all-in-on”’ digital technology ecosystem ranging from wide-scale system reorganization with hyper-customized interfaces down to fully automated and integrated rig hardware on the ground.
When Will Our Economy See The Benefits From All These Projects That Are In Operation?
It’s Hard to say. Regardless of what I just stated, changing mainstream sentiment and achieving noticeable change will be an uphill battle.
But we are here to tell every single person who is being affected by the decline of the oil & gas industry – do not give up!
There is hope for a future in which all forms of energy can coexist in harmony, using the advantages of both and the incredible technological re-imagining of what is possible.
For those of you who disagree with that statement and would rather live in a bubble of pessimistic doubt about the preservation of one of the most useful and beneficial industries of human civilization, please leave us a comment or send us a direct message on any of our social media platforms and tell us exactly how renewable energy can overcome all of the hurdles I mentioned in this article. Start by reading about the lasting effects Covid-19 will have on oil & gas and how it will come back from this a more lean and efficient industry.
For everyone else rooting for the underdog, thanks for reading and Vive La Frack!
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