Author Archives: Gefei Liu, PVI

About Gefei Liu, PVI

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Drilling Software: Get More Done by Doing Less

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More than a century ago, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto noted the consistently lopsided relationship between inputs and outputs called “The 80/20 Principle”, which asserts that a small portion of inputs or efforts leads to a big portion of outputs or results. In 2008, self-confessed “lazy entrepreneur” Richard Koch explained this principle in great details in his best-seller book “The 80/20 Principle”.

Basically, if 2 sets of data, relating to causes and results are examined, the most likely result is that there will be a pattern of imbalance. The imbalance may be 65/35, 70/30, 80/20 or 95/5, or any set of portions in between. However, rarely 50% of inputs will account for 50% of outputs.

80/20 principleWhether we realize it or not, the principle applies to our work, social life, and personal matters.

In our personal life, 20% of our clothes will be worn 80% of the time. 20% of our carpet areas are likely to get 80% of the wear. If you have an alarm system, 80% of the false alarms will be set off by only 20% of the possible causes.

In society, 20% of motorists cause 80% of all accidents. 80% of the value of our relationships is derived from 20% of close relationships.

In business, 20% of products or customers are responsible for 80% of a company’s revenue. 80% of wealth increase in portfolios comes from fewer than 20% of the investments. In a study of the revenues and lifespan of 300 movies released over an 18-month period, they found 4 movies (1.3% of the total) earned 80% of box office revenue – a clear example of the rule of imbalance.

Similar analysis could be done to study our time allocation of our drilling engineers/managers. It will probably show the similar imbalance. Achievements should probably not be “99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. Instead, they may come from the 20% of our work.

The key terms in the equation of imbalance may vary from person to person. But from our drilling engineers’ perspective, taking the advantage of drilling software is one of the ways to improve our efficiency, because we then can spend more time in analyzing/identifying potential problems, rather than doing the tedious calculation.

As a software vendor, majority of our time is spent on R&D and software development, so that our clients do not have to spend big chuck of their valuable time making spreadsheet calculation. This is a derivative of the 80/20 principle: if you are not many times better than others in certain areas, outsource the tasks.

Drilling software does not replace drilling engineering. It amplifies drilling engineers’ skills so that we can get more done by doing less.

Anywhere-but-there Encounter in Denver SPE 2011

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Our company participated the 2011 SPE ATCE meeting from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 in Denver, Colorado. Coming from warm, humid and low-altitude Houston, we all felt refreshed when embraced by the strong and cold gust of the mile-high city.

The whole show went well. Personally, one of the memorable moments of the trip was not in the exhibition hall, or conference room, or even in the food court.

That morning after arriving in the booth, I felt the urgency of natural call. I went to the restroom. All the toilets were taken except the last one for physically-challenged, which I took. So, I sat on the toilet stall and started to play “Angry Birds” on my iPhone. Soon, the flushing sound came from my neighboring toilet.

Empty toilet paperThen, to my great surprise, a handful toilet paper was extended to my area below the partition. This caught me unprepared.  I asked: “Excuse me, but for what?”

“You will need it.”, replied the unknown. “I was there before you came.”

 

Looking at the empty toilet paper holder, I immediately understood the situation: this gentleman saved me from imminent embarrassment.

I thanked him. Even though he could not see my expression, he certainly felt my gratitude.  We never met before, and we did not shake hand and said “Goodbye” that day.  Probably we won’t meet in another millennium. And even we meet; we will not know each other from that encounter. Despite all these, he made my day and inspired me writing this article.

Seoul: the Hard and Soft City

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In November 2011, I got a chance to visit Seoul, South Korea. This article is a collection of my notes during the trip…

After a long, long flight, I finally arrived at Incheon Airport. Brian, a sales manager of our agent company, picked me up. It took me another hour to reach my hotel, Novotel Ambassador, in the business center of Seoul. It was almost 24 hours from when I left my home in Houston to the moment I stepped into my hotel room… What a long journey! We can double the CPU speed every couple of years, but we can only wish that for air travel.

Seoul-from-hotel-room-of-Novotel-Ambassador

Seoul from hotel room of Novotel Ambassador

Korea, the Land of the Morning Calm: That is what I felt when I looked at the its city from air and walked on the streets. Putting the name with the person could lead to mixed feelings. In the case of “Seoul”, it’s a pleasant surprise: artistically designed skyscrapers, clean and wide streets, lined up with Bonsai-shaped pine trees, not to mention the mysterious Korean characters in front of trendy stores, a mingle of the state-of-the-art and tradition.

Land-of-Morning-Calm

Land of Morning Calm

Seoul, the capital with more than 10.5 million people, is the most wired city on the planet, with about 95% of households connected to broadband. Contrary to my imagination, it is not a heavy industry city. Korean people call their capital a soft city of arts and design. I even saw the sign “Soul of Asia” on streets.

During the meetings with potential clients, we exchanged business cards. The exchange turned out to be quite an experience. I brought my business cards in Chinese, which most Korean can read and even pronounce. I also asked our hosts to write their names in Chinese on the cards.  What fascinated me was that the Chinese versions of their names were so well thought with profound meanings of life, philosophy, nature, etc. Brian’s first name means “East wise”. His colleague has a first name of “Handsome hero”.

The technical exchange in the 1st day went well. The dinner with our host in a small Korean restaurant was even better: tuna sashimi, soju (Korean version of vodka) and local beer (CASS). Toward the end of meal, Brian told us that there would be a special drink. “It is very good to your health.” He said mysteriously. Soon, the waiter came with a kettle and poured a thick pinkish liquid into our shot glasses. Seeing us puzzled, Brian finally revealed the nature of this special liquid: soju mixed with tuna eyes… It did not have much strange taste, except a little bit fishy, but did let us wonder how many fish eyes were in our glasses.

In the following days, we flew to Geoje Island, took train to Ulsan, and on the weekend, I joined a tour to 38th parallel north,  which separates the North and South Korea. You can see one of the following photos showing the entrance to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Those long hours in the trips were not wasted as our friends told us many things unknown to us.

38thparallel-Demilitarized-Zone-DMZ

38th parallel Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

Our topics during the trips, just as the changing scenes outside the windows, jumped from one to another, ranging from how South Korea develops systems that could turn an ordinary girl or boy into a super star within a few years, to how this country created 3 largest shipbuilding companies in the world (Hyundai Heavy Industries # 1, DSME #2, Samsung Heavy Industries # 3) and their distinctive management styles.

We specifically talked about that writing on a building at the shipyard of Hyundai Heavy Industries: “When we become successful, so will our country; if our country becomes successful, so will we.” This reflected Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung’s vision: “I am interested in contributing to making a glorious nation and proud people.”

I have not made any sale on our drilling software from this trip yet, but I regarded the trip a fruitful journey. I am grateful to my new friends who made our voyage a happy one; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom, and they are among those who make Seoul prosperous!

Autumn-Leaves

Autumn Leaves

Haircut VS. Software Customization

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Coming back from vacation in Disney World, I went to a local barber shop to have a haircut.

During the hair cutting, I chatted with the lady barber. I mentioned that I might ask her to cut the hair for my 6-year daughter. She then told me some stories of her younger clients.

“Cutting hair for children and teenagers is very challenging.” She began.

“Some little girls are very particular about their hair style. Many of them are not used to see big changes. Too much change (shorter hair) might bring them to tears. I have seen some young girls doing that."

“Many teenagers are very creative. They bring the pictures from magazine and ask me to do a similar design. Other talented may even draw the images from cartoon series and ask for the same style.  Still others, when accompanied by parents, may have disagreements on the way his or her hair should look like.  When discussion got heated, parents finally showed the card: if I pay for the hair cut, it needs to be on my way, unless you pay for it.”

Hearing the little stories of hers, I could not help laughing out and thinking about the similar situation we have encountered in the past.

We develop drilling software for petroleum industry. Normally, we sell our designed software to both operators and service companies. They buy what we have. However, some clients occasionally specify the function and design. We end up building customized software packages for them.

Economically speaking, selling pre-designed software is better than software customization.  But through customization development, we learnt new things and experienced more how the users feel about the software.

Alan Cooper, widely recognized as the “Father of Visual Basic" once said: "If we want users to like our software, we should design it to behave like a likeable person." Frequent interfacing with the users during the software customization brings us out of “Closet Developers”.

So, when the lady barber finally concluded with a sigh: “Cutting hair for children and teenagers is very challenging, but we do learn some new tricks!”, I smiled to her: “Amen to that, ma’am!"

Finding Nemo and Finding Oil

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My family just spent 4 days around Christmas in 2011 in Disney World in Orlando. We did so at the same time in 2010. It will probably become a family tradition the way my daughter likes Disney. I do not know if I should feel happy or sad that I myself become a fan of it, too.

We visited all 4 parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios.

Finding NemoMy favorite is Epcot.  Animal Kingdom is the 2nd best in my list because I like the Finding Nemo – The Musical so much. I'm ashamed to admit that I was in tears toward the end of the performance, touched not only by the story, but also the lighting, sound, and stunning theatrical puppets, all those careful little details, which create a great show. I know those guys behind the show put their efforts just like the Nemo and his own new friends who inspire him to do whatever it takes to see his father again. No wonder Disney World continues to attract huge crowds.

Here are the data from the attendance report for the June 2011:

  • Magic Kingdom, 16.97 million visits (# 1 worldwide)
  • Epcot, 10.83 million visits (# 5)
  • Disney's Animal Kingdom, 9.87 million visits (# 7)
  • Disney's Hollywood Studios, 9.60 million visits (# 8 )

No matter we like it or not, Disney has successfully found a way of attracting children’s and their parents’ heart and created a pop-culture superpower to make billions. Disney World earned their success.

I see a rough analogy with finding oil in petroleum industry.

In October 2011, I attended a conference in Houston, one of the keynote speakers mentioned that in North America alone, we have drilled more than 4 million wells. Being in drilling software business, we help drilling and obtaining the natural resource more efficiently together with thousands of other service companies. People do not reserve much effort to find oil and gas under the earth’s surface.

I guess that we need to find Nemo as well as oil. That is the way the world works: laughter vs. bread, emotions vs. physical, service vs. resource: the pairs go on ...

Ancient Drilling Technologies

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There are many articles talking about the future of oil and gas well drilling. However, as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said 2600 years ago: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present. So, we would like to use this blog to explore some activities of the earlier pioneers in drilling.

Around 2000 years ago, Chinese in Sichuan province originated deep drilling. The primary motive for deep drilling in China was the search for salt. Even as recently as 1965, 16.5% of China’s salt supplies came from brine pumped out of deep boreholes, making this source of supply second only to sea salt.

The ancient percussive cable drilling system was called “churn”. The derrick had height of ~ 33 ft and all parts of the rig were made from wood (mainly bamboo). A large wooden drum had 16 ft in diameter and was used to perform round trips. Rocking movement of the balancing beam created the percussive impulses on the bit, which sometimes weighted as much as 300 lbs. By alternately lifting this tool and letting it fall, the Chinese achieved a well depth of 2000 ft. Wonder the rate of penetration (ROP)? 2 feet per day! The Orientals were willing to work as long as 3 years to complete a well. This testified the saying: Man who wants pretty nurse must be patient. BTW, Confucius did not say it.

The deep drilling for brine yielded natural gas (primarily methane) from time to time. The boreholes producing methane were known to the Chinese as “fire wells”. So the drilling for natural gas followed and was developed at the same time.

The bamboo tubes were used as pipelines, carrying both brine and natural gas for many miles, sometimes passing under roads and sometimes going overhead on trestles. Among other uses, natural gas was used to heat evaporation pans of brine to make salt: perfect example of killing 2 birds with 1 stone.