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COMPANY
Experience is the best teacher
After a 10 year stint as a reservoir engineer, our founder, Jeff Jacobsen, spent the last 25 years working in commercial software development in the upstream oil business. The early years were spent in a vertical silo, having developed the 1st commercial AFE system in the industry. Once free of the constraints of the vertical silo, the last 15 years have been spent on the delivery of information from the vertical silos that are endemic in our industry. The best way to describe the last 25 years would be "cyclical" - name the cycle, he has experienced it. The ubiquitous commodity price cycles, the offshore to onshore to offshore cycles, the private equity cycles, and the "information" cycles. It is this last cycle that has frustrated him for years - mainframe to client-server to cloud to SaaS, yada, yada, yada - one three letter acronym (TLA) after another.
Looking back on his 25 years in the upstream oil & gas business, Jeff has been able to boil down his current philosophy to three significant events.
Focus on your core
His first foray into computer software consulting came in the mid '90s with Flores & Rucks, the precursor to Ocean Energy. Everything done at Ocean Energy, especially from the information perspective, was to enable the core competency of the company, i.e. geologists, engineers, etc. There was an understanding that the correct technology channeled through the right avenues drove tremendous value to the organization. Ocean Energy taught himthat successful upstream oil companies have two common traits vis-a-vis information gathering and intelligence - 1) information strategy must be driven from the corporate level and 2) the value of information is measured in enabling the core competency of the organization.
Sweat the details
One of 1st companies to license the bengalAFE management system was a small operator of GOM properties. Jeff will never forget the mantra that was repeated at every turn - "it is absolutely vital to measure the profitability of every well asset we own". Without mentioning names, this company has gone on to much greater things, and Jeff would like to think that their focus on detail was a large driver of success.
Information is key
After a successful sale of the software assets of Bengal Development, Jeff found himself back in the software consulting arena. This time, however, he would focus on information delivery, and would do so without the constraints of a vertical silo. This application agnostic approach to information and intelligence has allowed BOE the opportunity to focus on information and intelligence ONLY.
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