Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs… But Not How You Think

Andrew Richard, CEO and Co-Founder of Automated Rig Technologies, flies in from Calgary to break down why the oilfield spent 70 years optimizing brute force instead of rethinking the process. He gets into the jointed pipe injector that strips 97% of operator input out, what rig hands call the "barbecue basket," why everyone in oil and gas wants to be first to be second, and the IKEA chatbot that accidentally solved the automation jobs debate.

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Click here to view the episode transcript.

00:00 - Calgary, metaverse throwbacks, and meet Andrew
02:20 - What Automated Rig Technologies actually does
05:50 - Starting in the basement in 2009
07:44 - The jointed pipe injector breakdown
09:13 - Red zone risk and the barbecue basket
17:05 - From Energy Tech Night pitch to the Bakken trial
20:22 - How 15 people get in front of major operators
24:14 - Marketing, trust, and selling the sizzle
30:30 - The automation jobs debate, ATMs and IKEA
36:03 - The dangerous jobs that shouldn't exist
38:11 - Change management and first to be second
42:15 - Bad data is a platform problem
44:59 - What's next with AI and data

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