Artificial intelligence has been part of the oil and gas industry's technology toolkit for years. Predictive models identify deteriorating equipment, flag production anomalies, and help engineers make better decisions. These tools generate valuable insights across exploration, production, and maintenance operations.
But knowing something is wrong and doing something about it are two different things. Someone still has to interpret the information, determine the appropriate response, and organize the work. Frustratingly, highly skilled specialists spend enormous amounts of time gathering and cleaning data, the most experienced operators are rapidly approaching retirement, and industrial facilities remain difficult and expensive to inspect and maintain.
I’ve speculated in my books that AI could someday move beyond generating predictions to actually helping carry out the work. Finally, that day is here.
In this episode, I speak with Alex Knowles, Industry Chief Technology Officer at DataRobot, about the emergence of agentic AI in oil and gas. Drawing on his experience in the US Navy, oil and gas operations, and enterprise AI, Alex explains how intelligent agents can help bridge the gap between insight and action.

• compressing months of work into days

• preserving the knowledge and experience of senior people

• optimizing maintenance across complex industrial assets

• collaborating with Chevron to develop AI-enabled autonomous inspections

• using physics models and sensor data to predict hazardous gas plumes and guide robotic inspections

I'm most interested in where agentic AI is already delivering value, why annoying tasks such as cleaning well data and seismic metadata deserve more attention, and what happens when AI begins to interact with the physical world of oil and gas.

⚒️ Additional Tools & Resources

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🎓Take my one-day digital strategy training course for oil and gas: https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185

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⚠️ Disclaimer

The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not constitute professional advice.