2021 IADC Chair Bob Geddes settles into his first editorial to the industry in the January/February issue of Drilling Contractor magazine.
“I’m not quite sure where to start with this moment of reflection on 2021 and my role as Chairman for IADC.”
With 30 years of working in the industry, Geddes has seen it weather numerous booms and busts. The new Chair notes the resilience of drilling contractors as “survivors and innovators” in a world that is misaligned with its consumer demands vs its philosophical outlook:
“While most the world’s population struggles to understand exactly where energy comes from, they continue to demand more and more of it all the time.”
The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated how reliant that governments are on the human element. If organizations are not working for the interests of their stakeholders, then negative results will occur.
The drilling industry is no different with the rise of negative sentiment against it. Unduly carrying the weight of an entire world of consumer energy demand, ESG should be the focus of the industry to rebrand itself by holding itself accountable. Battling negative sentiment through empirical evidence will prove to be how to improve consumer sentiment about the “ethical, safe and responsible energy” the industry provides to the marketplace.
His larger question is perhaps more pervasive and long-viewed:
“How do we [as an Association] change the narrative to get governments and the general public to understand that the world has lots of low-emission natural gas that IADC members around the world can safely and efficiently tap into, and which – if used more widely around the world – could actually accelerate the reduction of emissions?”
Read Bob Geddes’s entire editorial on the DC Magazine website.
