My Entrepreneurship Journey So Far

It is exactly three years today (March 10, 2018) after I resigned from Shell as a senior reservoir engineer and global subject matter expert in integrated production system modelling (IPSM). I have decided to write this piece today in response to all the questions I have been hounded with since I made the “crazy” decision to resign from such an exciting job. No doubt, I enjoyed my professional career in Shell and consider myself one of the most fortunate persons amongst my peers. I had the privilege of working/consulting internationally across all the continents of the world and will forever remain grateful for the opportunities given to me to excel in Shell. 

It was really emotional leaving the premises of Shell on March 10, 2015, especially after I dropped my ID card with the IT department and had to call a friend to grant me access out of Shell premises! For a place I had worked for about ten years, with great love from colleagues, supervisors and managers, I felt sad leaving especially when a lot of people within and outside the organisation expressed shock and pondered about the uncertainties surrounding the decision I made.

I had a promising petroleum engineering career in Shell and enjoyed every aspect of it although not to the extent I desired. because of some inherent constraints based on my initial job definition as a reservoir engineer in an operating unit and the available software I had to work with for my day-to-day asset optimisation routines. These factors motivated my resignation as I wanted to:

1. Simultaneously practise petroleum engineering, applied mathematics and computer programming in a research-focused ecosystem.
2. Work with colleagues in a research-focused environment to develop the next generation well and reservoir management (WRM) software for the industry

I would like to expound the above reasons further thus:

Research Focused Ecosystem

Applied mathematics and computational statistics sit at the heart of most of the innovations in the petroleum engineering space. A research-minded petroleum engineer grows and thinks better if groomed in an ecosystem with loosely-coupled structures that promote free interaction amongst passionate petroleum engineers, applied mathematicians, computational statisticians and engineering software developers. An ecosystem like this is where I really wanted to be, and it is fundamentally the reason why I resigned from Shell. It is important to note that while Shell encourages such integration, the distinct deliverables expected from the different teams shares the focus with other important organisational demands.

In CypherCrescent, over the past three years, we have created this kind of ecosystem wherein our 50+ engineers, computer programmers and applied mathematicians research and interact continuously to improve their skillset and debate freely on ideas in a rationally persuasive manner. By constantly interacting with these minds, I get a personal fulfilment as an engineer and will like to continue this way for as long as possible.

Our philosophy has been to understand as well as build all our algorithms from first principle including visualisation libraries, optimisation libraries as well as our mathematical models. This helps to strengthen our ecosystem and gives us the skillset required to rigorously integrate multi-disciplinary interpretations and improve the understanding of well and reservoir performance.

This first principle philosophy coupled with our objective to build in-country capacity in the development of E&P engineering software, has pushed us to build one of the strongest and fully independent in-house mathematical libraries in E&P software development industry. Given the numerous constraints we faced when we started nurturing our applied mathematics department, we are happy that it is now fully developed and robust with the following sub-units;

            I.           Mathematical Optimisation

                 II.           Linear Algebra

               III.           Mathematical Physics [of fluid flow]

               IV.           Computational Statistics

                 V.           Computational Geometry

We are also proud that all our researchers, engineers and mathematicians are locally sourced via rigorous skill-based open-interview process.

Development of Next Generation WRM Software

Existing well & reservoir management applications in the oil & gas industry are discipline specific and thus engineers using these applications are encouraged to work in isolation. This creates friction amongst engineers based on their perspectives of the data available to them. Attempts to solve this by integrating applications introduce serious inconsistencies which in turn further exacerbate the friction amongst the application “owners” due to divergence in interpretation of data.

Based on my pre-Shell experience, working as an independent computer programmer and an applied mathematician, I was confident that if I am in a research focused environment, a solution can be developed to address this problem. I also understood that this was a daunting task requiring the courage and tenacity of an entrepreneur to accomplish.

Three years after, we have created a WRM analytics application (called SEPAL) which integrates interpretations from the various disciplines which make up the WRM ecosystem! SEPAL is a step change from the closest practice of integrating sub-surface applications while trying to create an integrated WRM application. So far, we have deployed our application commercially in five companies as part of our exploratory market-entry strategy.

We are in commercial/pilot deployment discussions with at least ten other companies in Nigeria including two multinationals. This for us is a demonstration of technical success and confirmation that our Integration of Interpretations technology (SEPAL) is already gaining acceptance in the industry as it addresses the challenges faced by engineers and managers in well & reservoir management. Given the cautious pace of new technology acceptance in the upstream sector of the oil & gas industry, this is an encouraging progress. 

In addition to our SEPAL WRM Analytics software, another exciting innovation we have come up with in the well, reservoir & facility management (WRFM) space is the creation of WRFM Maturity Model used for asset management assessment and to help companies define concrete roadmaps to move their WRFM practice from informal level to adaptive level. This maturity model is the first of its kind in the E&P industry for structured WRM/WRFM practice.

Next Steps

I must say we are really lucky to have succeeded from a technical standpoint. It obviously takes more than technical knowledge to succeed in business. Our focus in the next three years will be to engage consultants that will help us build and grow our company using the balanced scorecard approach while we continue to focus on technical which is obviously our area of strength.

Our current business structure, although not excellent, has guided us in building a great product. However, it requires further refinement and investment of external capital to rigorously scaleup operations and fully commercialise our software and services globally. This will be our primary focus in the upcoming years.

After three years of leaving an exciting role in Shell, my team and I have built a business intelligent software for efficient well & reservoir management. We now task ourselves to build a great business with sustainable structures in another three years and it is then we can say we have actualised our objectives.

On behalf of the entire CypherCrescent team, I wish to appreciate everyone including clients, shareholders, consultants, and staff that have supported our strives so far.