Ambyint CTO Ferdinand Hinger l EP91

Hey, welcome back everybody to the digital doers show. It's been a little while since we have released an episode. We had a little hurricane smack us in the face here in Houston and OGGN corporate headquarters was down for a while with no electricity, no internet, but we are back. And I'll be back, but we're back with a company I have known for an extremely long time, Ambient. Um and I'm very lucky had the CTO of Ambient, Fernando uh pronounce your last name, Fernando.

So my last name is Hingerl. So Ferger. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh you and I have been trying to get this thing done. I had problems last time we went to Calgary. Um and so we're just gonna go ahead and do this remote. But I just want to jump into the technology. Amy has been around for a long time. When I first met you, you were using artificial intelligence before anybody else was to do predictive maintenance on failures on the rigs, on land, around sucker rods.

Y'all are still doing that type of predictive maintenance, but y'all are doing a lot more now, aren't y'all? Oh yeah, a hundred percent. So Ambient really started about seven ish years ago and we came out of another company called Pumpwell and Pumpwell basically devised you know designed this little device uh eight that they put out on the well and they collected data and based off that company essentially ambient was built so we had the access to this very large amount of data.

that was pulled from the pumps directly. And from the early days on we started developing data science models that really analyze the heck out of this thing, if you think, right? So anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

Was there from the beginning. But then over the years, what we really put a very strong focus on was autonomous set point management. We really wanted to get into a situation where we can um provide closed loop control to our clients because we saw that that's a big pain point with having few folks out in the field being responsible for very large numbers of high asset wells.

And that's where we really saw the pain point as, right? And so we developed that. But there's more. So it's really anomaly detection, autonomous set point control. We have a very comprehensive surveillance and reporting module. Same philosophy again.

We want to make sure that our clients and you know really when they get to work in the morning they have reports available that can really guide them through the day. They give them all the information into their hands to make sure that they're as efficient as possible so that they can focus on the stuff that they really should be focusing on rather than you know

trying to weed their way through the different kinds of data of which there's too many, but really give them the high value work that they're trained for, that they really enjoy doing, right? And then the last piece, one more thing, is the the remote control. Um our tools since they're closed loop, they don't just read from the well, they also write back from the well. So we basically give them the ability to, independent of the scale system that sits behind it.

between well and our platform really give them access to their well, change settings, analyze everything that's happening on that. That's incredible. And like I said, you're doing it before I saw anybody else even trying to do this.

Now, this audience that's listening now is a lot of business people in oil and gas that use technology to solve problems. So I want to start and have a little bit of a business. results conversation with you. Then we're gonna move over to the technology side. So one of the things that you're doing with with your your different uh um offerings

is besides making sure that the people get the right data to make good business decisions, you're affecting a couple of things which I think are incredible. Number one, you're affecting uptime, the ability to produce, right? Which is like the holy grail in the industry.

Yeah, totally, Mark. And to be honest, when we started, um so or when I when I joined the team about five and a half, almost coming up to six years now, as a data scientist, I tr I started a team we started working on plunger lift back then. And the original focus was on set point management. Up t the goal was uh we heard our clients is that you know, we want to have a tool that helps us manage those set points so that we can increase uh production against natural decline.

But after a short time he saw that, you know what? Um there's actually other things that are more important for p uh you know, ultimatively cumulative production. And one of them is anomaly. If you're able to detect issues early, you can prevent downtime. And nothing's worse and nothing hits your production more than a well that simply doesn't produce at all because it's down, right?

So we started really focusing on nonolymity detection predictive maintenance very early very early on in in order to really tackle exactly that. Reduce downtime, increase uptime, and you know, stabilize production again. Which is amazing, right? Which that actually pays for for whatever y'all charge. You know, you have a high producing well go down for two days and that could be a million dollars.

But the other thing it just struck me is now people are not rolling trucks in an emergency at three o'clock in the morning to go change a pump, which means you're also affecting safety. So you're reducing lost time incidents'cause people don't have to wake up and go try to repair something three hundred miles down a a a dirt road somewhere. You know ahead of time when something's gonna fail.

Yeah, absolutely right. So and let's be very honest, we actually didn't set out to do that, but um a good example for that is We're working with a Canadian client here, uh who has uh lots of gas fields up in in the Montne in northern B C. And it's a pain to get to, especially in the winter. It's dangerous. Sometimes I have flying crews, et cetera, et cetera, right? So it's not something you can do on a on a whim.

And when they heard our value proposition and they implemented it, then they saw that, hey, the number of field trips is actually decreasing. That means we have fewer venting events and so on where peop folks have to go out manually and actually do these kind of things. And their risk profile went down. And that's when we started listening. Oh wow, this actually has huge implications for the people working on

Which naturally is dangerous, right? So and that's where we start to really hone in on this one, to really make sure that we can provide this benefit more and more. Right. Yeah. That's a beautiful thing. The the the more we can keep people safe, the better we all are off. Then finally, from a business point of view.

is you're actually helping increase or decrease the impact to the environment, right? So if you can predict when something's going to fail, you can predict with a reasonable degree of certainty far enough ahead of time that maybe we don't spill crude on the ground or maybe we don't have to run out with chemicals to go clean pipe. So you're actually uh increase or decreasing the operator's impact to the environment.

Yeah, and that's that's sometimes when I tell people that they think like uh come on, that sounds a little bit Too good to be true. But frankly, if you think about it, it's actually pretty s pretty reasonable and b and straightforward. So the set there's two things that we can achieve through purely uh set one automation. One is we increase stability. When you have increased stability you automatically usually get more production'cause you don't have downtime.

But if you reduce down times and if you increase stability, you also have fewer manual interventions that are required, which is your safety factor. But not only that, it's also the environmental impact. If you think of a natural gas well, for instance, pretty normal that at some point they start liquid loading, right?

However, if you have a tool out there that constantly checks your conditions, that constantly makes sure that you're performing well and you respond proactively to environmental changes, temperature drops and all that kind of stuff. Then you can actually prevent a lot of these liquid loading events. And we have seen

with various clients, specifically here in uh you know, in Canada and down in the US actually, that we can reduce those cementing events by sixty five to seventy percent. Wow. Simply because we ha we constantly react to what's happening. uh uh you know, aspect on this one,'cause you don't vent methane. Uh but you also have a commercial aspect now because well the methane that's not vented, it's in the pipe, so you can actually sell it, right? So

This is why we can really strike two birds with one stone. Is that the right sign? Yeah. Now I want to have a technology conversation. Okay. So

Well sites on land typically are out in the middle of nowhere and a lot of times there's little to no connectivity. How does And work when in a in an environment where there's little or no connectivity? Yeah, that that's an important one, right? Uh so especially for roadlift valves we have all sorts of different ways to connect. Um one is satellite, for instance, so we can tap into the Iridium satellite system if we have an on-edge device on site.

uh which we provide for roadlift. And so it doesn't really matter where those wells are. Once you have an edge device out there with the satellite connection, it goes up to Iridium and then to our cloud. So wherever those wells are we will be able to connect. What a great solution. Um, it is interesting to watch uh cellular operators realize that there's money to be made in connectivity on well sites.

And here in the States there's a couple of small cellular operators who are building cellular infrastructure out in the Permian just

for data connectivity. They don't care about people talking on their cell phone. They want to be able to offer that service. And I think it's great. The more connectivity we have in the field, the more tools we can run that keeps everybody safer, the quicker we understand when something goes wrong. But I love the fact you're all using satellite. I guess that would be a VSAT solution

Um my next question, so we we got that figured out, but no connectivity. My next question is, and this is huge right now in the industry, security. Cybersecurity specifically. Uh let's talk a little bit about how secure Amien is and is that built into your base code? Is it y'all use a third party for cybersecurity? How does that work?

Yeah, cybersecurity is huge for us as you can imagine, right? We're working and we're directly tying into well, not into the systems themselves. We go through uh SCADA systems on the client side. But naturally there's a lot of IT involved. And typically one of the first contacts on the client side when we actually start onboarding a client or even before in the pre-sales process.

is IT. Because they obviously want to have yeah, you come along here, you know, a tech company, and you wanna tell us you want to tie into our most valuable asset, our blood, bloodstream essentially the wells. Well we don't just let this happen, right? So we are sucked to a type two certified shop. Uh which means that everything we do is fully certified. It has to be compliant, otherwise we wouldn't be able to operate.

So there's all sorts of different layers of encryption, etcetera, et cetera, in place for data, for data connections. to prevent anything harmful from happening to us or to the client or any data that flows for and back. Right. So it's top priority. Um it's extremely important for us because we wouldn't be able to survive as a company if that wasn't Yeah, and I could tell you y'all would not still be around if y'all secured cybersecurity was at rock slide. Absolutely, right. I mean you

One one big mistake you hear it with CrowdStrike right now, right? Then then there's the whole world listens to that and then there's a problem. So we can't afford that, we don't want that, and we're very proud of our uh security compliance. and the platform that that guarantees that. Yeah, I love you'll have a strong focus on cybersecurity. Also love the fact that I can have this conversation with the CTO of Ambient who understands the technology. So you mentioned SCADA a little bit. So

You you know this as well as I do, probably even better, but every operator out there has a different back office, has a different set of infrastructure. Uh sometimes it's modern state of the art, a lot of times it's old legacy software, sometime it's patched together bits and pieces.

When when you come in, when ambient comes in, do you need to forklift anything or can you work with the existing infrastructure the operators have? Yeah, this is this is the the actually one of the biggest biggest pain points that we had to overcome initially when we started, let's give me a Just a ten ten second spiel on what that actually means for us. We we started with developing data science models and you know, f to solve engineering problems.

But uh like a lot of other data companies, we pretty quickly realize that, well, there's theory and there's practice and in practice it's extremely difficult to integrate with all these different kinds of RTUs, PLCs, SCADA systems, different versions and different systems. So we devoted literally seven years on developing approaches and technology that can provide a streamlined experience to so that we can integrate with essentially everything that's out there.

But there was a substantial undertaking. Now we're in a state where we can do that. And so we basically work uh in in a way that we whatever the client has, we try to integrate with. In uh almost all cases that's successful. And then we can pull all the data from wherever they are, also on the client side, in one centralized place, and they can interact with this data in one platform. It's amazing.

Uh because as you know, this industry loves to silo its data. It's in four hundred and fifty five different places. And the the people that are w working with production data don't talk to the people that are doing the geoscience data who don't talk to the people that are running the the cost uh modeling and it's just it's it drives me crazy sometimes. But I think it's great you'll have it all in one place. Now S you have it all in one place, it's secure.

Um, what about operators that are small that aren't very tech savvy? Do y'all have like some type of interface or dashboard you can provide them? And then what about the operators that are very savvy around data? Can you just provide them the data feeds that they want? So it's one extreme to another. Uh we are a data company, uh so as such we need a certain we have a certain mim minimum requirement for digitalization on our client side, right? So a minimum of data data sort of

stage has to be provided uh that we can actually work with there. So um in some cases, for instance, we can provide, for instance, an an edge device as in the on the Radlift side on Plunger we don't do that. That's not really commercially viable for us. But as long as there's a minimum sort of uh digitalisation already in place on the client side and uh respectively also the the val you know the

the the appreciation of that, then we can do that. Now on the more advanced side, yeah, we have we have dashboards, for instance, that clients can interact with where they can pull data from.

Theoretically we could provide data through uh through certain warehouses or something like that. Right now we're really trying to funnel everything through uh dashboards that we can very quickly iterate over if clients have certain requests for modifications, etcetera. So this is how data um are provided uh in all their multitude there. Yeah, and I'm guessing that those dashboards can be customized to whatever the the buyer needs to have on the dashboard.

To a certain degree, exactly. Right. So about I I can't exa exactly remember when we started with dashboards, like one and a half two years ago. We started really implementing that'cause we saw that if you just focus on regular UI development, that's very slow. It's ultimately what you wanna have.

But if you uh add like a dashboard component in there which is seamless, you don't necessarily even see that you're interacting with the dashboard back end now, then you can much quicker iterate over customer requests and make sure that yeah, whatever they need they actually get. Because in the end

Everything we do is for the clients. So if they are look for certain things we want to make sure they can actually get it in the exact form they they wanna consume it and we wanna make it better than what they're used to right now. I love it. Um, you mentioned the ability to not only be are you you're able to pull data, you're able to push it, which means you're not just transactional. It's it's actually a a two way operation.

So are you able to push data back into the common used ERP systems in the oil and gas industry? So SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, that sort of stuff. Um it hasn't been requested yet. So is this one of those things that if somebody wanted to pay for, you'd make it happen? We are in a very interesting point right now as a as an organization'cause we have developed a tool uh that can do quite a few things and I listed the value prop out as these four different items initially, but

What we currently don't fully leverage yet is this really this fully that that basically that data sort of centralized data system that we have available. So right now the only piece that we're writing back uh is actual set point data. So because that's how we do autonomous set point control, closed loop set point control. So we write the data back

But obviously there is a ton more data that we internally calculate, analytics, etcetera, et cetera, that um clients can access and theoretically that we could be providing. It's just right now the main focus is on set points. Got it.

Um and you mentioned your cloud. Is it literally your cloud or are you buying cloud space on AWS or or Google's or something? Yeah, so it's when I talk about our cloud, it's more like the our cloud estate which sits uh in AWS. So we are partnering with AWS, you can find us on their marketplace for instance. Um and um so this is where we have our cloud instance with the clusters and everything right

Well thank you because AWS is one of OG G N's sponsors, so the money that you're paying to AWS at some point helps run us. So thank you for being an AWS client. Uh they're they're great people over there. Um and and I love the fact they have oil and gas domain expertise. Um I'm this is not an ad for Amazon Web Services, but if you're listening to this and you're looking for a cloud provider, make sure you talk to them. They understand the oil and gas industry.

Um, so I I guess my my last thing around around the technology is I have to see can I you have this opportunity that I see. I don't know if y'all have tapped in this yet, but if you've been doing it for seven years and you've been gathering their data on on well sites for seven years. Just that just mining that data itself.

has to be valuable. I mean, you should be able to look at you know, I and I don't want to mention any manufacturer, but you want you should probably should be able to look at a manufacturer of a certain part that y'all monitor.

And look at its failure rate and look at, you know, is if the failure rate goes up if we have these temperatures or failure rate goes up, we have these vibrations. Have y'all gotten to the point yet where y'all started mining your own data yet? Cause that data has to be worth a fortune.

Oh Mark, that's a very hot topic. That's a very hot topic. And and if this is something proprietary that's y that's secret, we don't have to talk about it. No. So um that's exactly the thing. And for me this is where the uh future value will also come from, right? As you rightfully say, we have terabytes of data of uh all major basins in North America, from uh almost ten thousand wells. So

there is and and some of them have been in the system for for many, many years, right? So naturally there is a tremendous wealth of information. in there. Now we have to of course also be aware of what our clients want. Some clients are very sensitive around how they're being used, leverage, right? So we have to absolutely acknowledge that and take these data sets out. But generally there's a massive amount of insight. that you can get from these kinds of data. In terms of like

certain reservoir properties or how certain lift types respond to these properties or environmental conditions or hardware that you install which performs you know on one side more than on the other. We have access to all this.

And we're just actually in the process of developing more tech to really also harvest that information and then make this available. Yeah, I I can see if I was an operator and I was going to a new field somewhere and never operated, I'd I'd I would be willing to pay y'all to tell me What works best? What doesn't? What should I do? What I should not do? Because you have real data. This isn't academia. This is real data from real operating fields.

And if y'all aren't y'all aren't capitalizing on that now, I'm surely somewhere in the future y'all have to'cause it's just that's just worth a fortune. And not just from a business monetary point of view, but from being able to help the industry to have you know, those tools available to you is is is amazing. And like I said, y'all been doing it for so long, the longer you do it, the more accurate that data is going to be.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're just a bit in a unique spot there'cause we've been In this business for quite a while now. So seven years in in technology is quite it's a pretty long time. You're almost a dinosaur at this point. Um and um so we have a lot of data available and we really you know are going with the flow of uh Or is also from an acad academic point of view, trying to stay on top of the algorithm and

And different m you know, methodologies are actually leveraged. I don't know how y'all stay on top of that. So I'm I'm a little bit of a data geek too. And literally i every day something changes, right? And there's so many free tools out there that before you couldn't even buy and now they're free. Um and then, you know, there's a lot of uh public available data out there and then a lot of it's crap.

It's dirty and it's it's uh it's just it's almost worthless. And so it's just a mess. I don't know how you do it. Although I will say this much. It is kind of fun. Like like when you start digging into actually mining that data, doing, you know, doing analytics on it, and you get it right.

It it it's it's almost like big game hunting. Like, yes, I've I've conquered this. It's amazing. Look at what I've done. Yes. That may that may be a really bad analogy actually, audience. I'm sorry. But it's cool. Just trust me, it's cool. It's very empowering for sure, yeah. Okay. So um we're getting close to kind of winding down the show.

So if our audience wanted was curious about a what ambient could do for them, can we kinda can you kinda explain what is a initial Um uh meeting or initial uh gig with ambient look like. So if if we have an operator listening and they want it to reach out And or they did reach out. What would be like step one, step two, step three? Well yeah, absolutely. So reach reach out to us on LinkedIn. You'll find us on the ambient on LinkedIn or our website, www.ambient.com.

And reach out to us and we're gonna make sure that somebody on our side reaches out to you. Once we do that, we will prepare a presentation for you. We will really walk you through uh, you know, actual customer use cases. and show you what it means to work with us and really benefit from everything that we can provide for for you. And then uh, you know, the way we work is really we listened. We really want to make sure that we set you up for success.

Alright, so that re that requires conversations. We're not just a tool that you you know pull off the the the the the store there and you you plug and play, even though we do that. But what what's important is that you feel that we listen to you and we really incorporate your feedback. And that we are the one who will help you be successful with your optimization, right? So, this is typically how that works.

And then we have you know of course you know there's this getting to know process and we have to go through IT, etcetera, to make sure that we're compliant with everything. But then essentially we will start an actual And during that pilot phase typically what happens is that we will generate set points, we will generate anomaly, you so we have full access on the data.

That we provide, but we want to really make sure that you also leverage our CS team, the customer success team. And to be honest, um, I personally have learned so much from those folks. These are all Hands-on oil and gas guys from pr production engineers, technologists, etc., optimizers out there, they will work with you.

on um setting our platform up for your success. So they will go through like a few weeks process with you where the uh the the platform will provide set points and information. They will be in there with you, help analyze and interpret all that.

And then when you're ready, you can essentially literally with a click of a button you can take over that set point and it will be written out to your field. Or you change the set point, whatever you want to do, right? So during that time, the system actually starts learning.

Right. And then once you're comfortable as an operator, there's literally a switch up there. It says, okay, it's time to go to auto. Right. And once you click that auto button, it's like in an airplane. Right. Once the pilot actually feels comfortable with, all right, now everything is set, we're started.

P pulls the sort of the switch or however they do it in an airplane and then you have the the the the thing fly in auto mode and that's the same thing there, right? So it's that s pre sales process where you get to know each other.

where we demonstrate how we usually go about these integrations and how we work with you and set you up for success. Then we have the pilot phase that's really more you know, a little bit more intimate, getting to know each other, where we work on you well, so you will be working with our very, very capable CS team.

And then uh we can go all the way to fully autonomous control on those wells. Yeah, and and audience, let me tell you ambient is and and I hope this doesn't get your chief revenue officer mad at me. Um ambient is one of the least salesy tech companies in the oil and gas space I've ever run across. They will not try to sell you anything.

They want to see if they can help you and they will tell you. I love this. If they can't help you, they will tell you. I know this from personal experience. So if you think you need a little bit of help, uh reach out to them. Great people. Uh A huge uh bench of subject matter experts of really good oil and gas talent.

Um just a good company. Uh we're gonna put a link to Ambient in the show notes. There we also a link to uh Fernando's uh LinkedIn profile if you want to reach out to him directly. Um and then like he said, you know, if you're curious. Give them a holler, uh, engage with them. Like um they're not gonna try to make you buy something you don't want and and see what they can do for you. They um they're one of those uh tech companies that have been in the industry for a while.

that kinda has flown a little bit under the radar. A lot of operators use them in North America just Um just not everybody knows who you are. And I'm trying to help you. Right. So with the podcast, maybe we get a couple more people to know who you are. Fernando, we gotta get out of here. Um thank you so much for your time today. Um maybe ne well are you in Calgary?

I'm in Calgary. Yes. Yeah. Maybe the next time I make it to Calgary I can actually get there on time, unlike this last one where I miss my plane. Um and maybe we go grab a beer or something. I you know I love your company. I've known it for a long time. Thank you for coming on the show, and I'd love to catch up with you in person.

Thanks so much, Mark. It was a pleasure. And thanks so much for having me. Thank you. All right, everybody. Uh check out the next uh episode, which should be out in two weeks. And like I said, uh check out Ambient. All the links are in the show notes. Uh until next time, we will see you later.

Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this Leave us a review and then go to the And don't forget to sign up for our weekly day. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.