Jason Spiess and special guest co-host Shawn Forbes is joined by Alma Cook, Cook Compliance Solutions, at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference talks about how the industry has silos and what they look like from an outside perspective.
They Play Hard Work Hard Morning Show dives into how Alma, a female environmentally minded professional gravitated to industry. She explains how her brother in Thailand was the catalyst for her journey in oil and gas.
Click here for Alma Cook’s music website
Click here for Alma Cook’s day job – Cook Compliance Solutions
Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Speaker 1
So I think I dug my heels into the crew life just about a year ago, like when the market started going absolutely haywire in 2020, I started just looking for commentary that was interesting and grounded and especially commentary that was, that was based in the bacon and there is no one better than the crude life. You have the monopoly on that as far as I'm concerned. What
Speaker 2
kinds of other, certain topics that interest you? Maybe more than others when you're listening to oil and gas?
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh. Well, you know what's interesting is when you first entered this industry and I came in as a complete newbie, I was telling you guys before we started recording, I'm a music major like what? How do you know? I'm
Speaker 2
really upset. You're not going to be box for me, but maybe some other time.
Speaker 1
Well the 11 lounge May 14th, 7:30 p.m. I'll be playing. But when you come into the industry, you think everybody knows everything, it's kind of like when you're a little kid and you assume the adults in the room,
Speaker 2
it's
Speaker 1
absolutely, and you're afraid to ask questions. You think like, you know, if I don't know what this term means, I'm a complete idiot and this person isn't gonna want to talk to me. Um, but, but yeah, so you, you come to realize very quickly though that everybody has their own silo. Um, and the more complete picture you have, especially if you're working in the compliance industry as I am.
Um, the better equipped you are to speak different languages and translate across those quote unquote cultures within the industry. So, um, while I'm interested in topics like E. S. G. Um, which you know, is compliance adjacent. There's a big kerfuffle. I know you guys have done a series on E. S. G. Recently.
I really am interested in everything. I was just talking to a frack engineer over there. Um, Monte Bessler, whom you just interviewed. He's one of my, one of my favorite people in the bacon. Um, so literally anything a person will, will, will tell me about oil and gas. I will absorb like a sponge.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love your passion
Speaker 1
for
Speaker 2
the industry and how, how long have you been in the industry
Speaker 1
Industry? 5, 6 years. I lose track actually what got
Speaker 2
you, what got you started into the oil and gas.
Speaker 1
It's such a weird story and I don't know how long of a version I should tell you, but the, the short version is that my brother studied abroad in Thailand in, in undergrad. The name of this
Speaker 3
person ...
Speaker 2
studied abroad.
Speaker 1
I forgot Jason's crude, crude, no pun intended sense of humor. Um, so he was studying abroad in Thailand with this gentleman who was from Williston started a company in the bacon. Um, and I didn't have any concern about this at the time, but this person became a family friend and was was really near and dear to our hearts. Like I said, I'm a music major, what does the music major need to do when they graduate college, they're touring, they're producing music.
You know I'm investing in my own career, doing what I need to do to make it a quote unquote as a singer. And um it really really helps if you have a remote job to subsidize that. To make a little
Speaker 2
money to pay a
Speaker 1
little bit of money to pay the rent and pay for the records that you're producing, pay for all the social media, the press, like everything that you need to pay for in order to have a sustainable career. So um I was actually working a different remote job. Fresh out of college. Lost it because I was a little bit too sassy. I call up my friend this family friend frantically.
And I'm like oh my god do you have anything that could help hold me over at this period of time where I don't have a job, I'm imagining my world crashing, having to be a barista, having to to work at a department store um which you know disables essentially put on hold my entire music career. And lo and behold somebody had left that week that very week in a compliance position at his company. So I don't have a clue about this industry.
I had done a little bit of editing work, you know on on S. O. P. S. Like he had given me a bit of reading material and editing work prior to that, but other than that I didn't know what I was doing, but within three months I took a department that was in the red and made it not only in the green, but one of the most profitable departments in the company. Not to toot my own horn,
Speaker 2
but sometimes ...
Speaker 1
yes. And I just fell in love with it and I started to see this is compliance is not just a bunch of boxes that you're checking. It's a story, it's a relationship between the supplier. On the one hand, these small companies that make the Williston Basin tick and the large producers that are funding all of that and making life as we know it possible. Um So I fell in love with that story and started to see, oh my God, there's so many things that people aren't seeing about the storyline and by
stepping back as a complete newcomer. Music freaking music major. Um I would like to think that I brought something really new to the compliance industry. So I ended up starting my own company later down the line, but I could not be more grateful that I was given that random, accidental in show to the industry years ago
Speaker 3
I got a question for you gotta rewind a little bit be kind rewind, you mentioned silos, that was a trigger word for me as in like oh somebody's speaking my language, but then I realized I don't know if we're speaking the same language. So what's the silo to you in that context?
Speaker 1
In
Speaker 3
that context?
Speaker 1
Yeah, well,
Speaker 3
you talked about the industry and silos?
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. So if somebody's working upstream, they might know nothing about midstream and they might know nothing about downstream.
Speaker 2
This, this,
Speaker 3
this is very important conversation
Speaker 2
to hear somebody else talk about this,
Speaker 1
and not only that
Speaker 3
it's going to get better.
Speaker 1
So even if even if you're in the upstream side, you could be a welder or you could be providing insulation or you could be roustabout, or you could be hot shot and you might know nothing about what those other guys are doing, even though you're all technically upstream, you know, so that um, that uh, that super, hyper zoomed in perspective, I find can be really, really crippling for service writers, especially when they're trying to, to communicate to
producers their value, because they don't know the context of their own value, and that's one thing that I really try to bring to the table for the small contractors that I serve
Speaker 2
or the arm of the energy chain that they support and but they could be supporting it on a wider scale, but like you said, they put themselves in a corner and they only cater to a certain part of that stream
Speaker 1
and if we want to make an analogy to music here, it's like, oh yeah, I know how to drum. Super, Super, Well look at me, I'm a fantastic drummer, blah blah blah. But if I don't know how to play, you know in time with the base and I don't know what that drumming, it's supposed to sound like in context with the singer and I'm drumming too loud.
I mean I'm not doing my job, so service writers are doing themselves a great disservice by not taking the time to step back, learn more about where they're fitting into the supply chain and really help the producers solve their problems better.
Speaker 3
So what I believe is happening right now and the other host when it's not Sean Forbes sterling sterling's never worked a day in oil and gas. He grew up in Saudi Arabia in Dhahran which is an oil and gas compound. So imagine like a crew camp, but they've got golf courses and schools and but it's still
Speaker 1
razor
Speaker 3
wire fence around the entire city
Speaker 1
company town, but there's
Speaker 3
there's four of them in Saudi Arabia because there's so much oil and gas activity that these companies literally own the town literally meaning there's a grocery store there. But Saudi Aramco which is the largest oil and gas company in the nation. Used to be Ramco and used to be standard oil, right? They employ the grocery store workers, they employ the greenskeeper at the golf course, they employ the teachers.
Okay, so if you're a teacher and you're teaching in Saudi Arabia, you're actually employed by an oil and gas company, you're not employed by an education system. Okay. So he that's what he grew up in, right? I don't even know where that was going to the store. What he talks about is building silos. What he thinks right now is happening in the oil and gas industry is that they're building silos, meaning they're purposely building and insulation, so they will not have to go talk to
others. We talked about mike Summers with a P. I earlier, he's here at the conference. We've asked him to come on the show. We've had others asked him to come on the show. Ok. People have influenced not just the crude life. People have real influence, asking
Speaker 1
your
Speaker 3
now hired, you're on our staff. Okay. But I found out
Speaker 2
about energy,
Speaker 3
energy world. So, what I found out today was that there were several people that had lunch and specifically mentioned the crude life in my name and said you have to interview with him and he won't come on because he does not want to talk about climate taxes. What I was
Speaker 1
told the
Speaker 3
biggest tax on the planet and no one is talking about it. Right. That is a silo. That is an example of where if your industry is not talking about it, you're building your own silo. So, I thought that's why I just wanted we've been talking about silos a lot lately. And so you brought that word in. So just for our audience. I wanted to make sure that, you know, we defined it. So
Speaker 1
it's interesting that you brought that up because, so that that the A. P. I.
Speaker 3
American Petroleum Institute
Speaker 1
of course. So they, they released that press release just what a day or two or a week.
Speaker 3
I'll give you the timeline
Speaker 1
Department of the Interior meeting
Speaker 3
So that I don't know what I do know is that they released it and then it was 7-10 days late later they came back and endorsed
Speaker 1
it. Okay,
Speaker 3
So it was less than a week of conversation because it was on friday when they released it.
Speaker 1
I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes at A. P. I. But what was, what was really interesting to me is I was in that Department of the interior meeting about the federal leasing ban and now we're getting, you know, a little bit off track from compliance. But it is, this is our industry related.
Yeah. Um, Which by the way that the D. O. I. Meeting started with everybody naming their pronouns and apologizing for at least one minute about exactly which tribe whose land they were occupying. It was very interesting like I've never, I've never
Speaker 2
seen
Speaker 1
yes. I've never seen somebody use their time that way in a. ...
Speaker 3
I spent a little bit of time yesterday clarifying the chairman remark I made because, well, chairman ken hall, but he's chairman of Missouri River Resources, which is a private company. He was offended when I said Chairman Hall because his cousin tex hall is the chairman of the M.
H. A. Nation and for a native american, chairman is the nation not a private company. And so I actually had to take a little time out of the show to kind of clarify that and apologize, I didn't need to, but you know, just to educate and make awareness.
Speaker 2
He was,
Speaker 3
he was gracious. I actually brought it up on the air because most people were,
Speaker 1
yeah, that was very respectful of you.
Speaker 3
You know what, I fall flat on my face every day 100 times and offend 100 people. So I don't mind talking
Speaker 1
to own it every time you make a mistake, 90
Speaker 2
nine, times one time you get it right
Speaker 3
today. Alright, that's right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day is good for me
Speaker 1
at that meeting. Anyway, after the pronouns and after the, the indigenous people apologies, they brought on all sorts of experts from different arenas to weigh in on this federal leasing ban that they were discussing and they brought the indigenous peoples very interesting conversation, different perspectives. Not uh not at all a monolith by the way, these two are not all, you know anti oil and gas as you might think. There was a woman from Alaska.
Speaker 2
No, we talked about the mixed emotions. So
Speaker 1
it is so mixed to paint it as one uniform story as a total disservice to what these tribes are actually doing and thinking and needing. But anyway, a P. I came on as one of the experts I believe or is somebody who was a P. I. Adjacent at least. And it was very interesting to me that that D. O. I. Meeting was happening right after that standard was released by them, this carbon carbon tax.
And I felt like it was then it was a P. I may be throwing them a bone in advance of this meeting to say, hey, don't hurt us, we're at least trying. So that's how I read it. I know the industry has digested it in a few different ways and I again, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but I do know I was in that D0 I'm eating and they played that like a card politically. How
Speaker 2
do you feel about that? From a compliance
Speaker 3
perspective?
Speaker 1
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean I don't know it's politics, right? You are more of a political that I perhaps I
Speaker 3
Don't want to be. But unfortunately I worked for 20 years. So 25 years I've worked in government affairs. So I do know how it works and what I'm seeing is it's nauseating.
Speaker 1
It's nauseating, right? And candidly I I would rather stay away from that arena for now. And from a compliance perspective for your question I um not to say that I'm in a reactive rather than proactive mode because that's not the case. But right now, I'm really focused on that relationship between the producer and the supplier.
What the government is doing the government is gonna do. I can't take care of every problem was I have no magic wand. So I've I've adopted that as my domain and maybe someday I'll get in those arenas of political power. But I
Speaker 2
feel like you're super aware though of what's going on in the political world so that if you have to shift or like realign what it is that you're doing for companies, you would be prepared.
Speaker 1
I would try to be. Yeah. But but I really believe in humility and knowing your lane all the time. I see companies out here saying yes to every possible thing that could be. Do you know, they have an M. S. A. For hot shot. But then the their their producer asked them, oh, can can you do this, can you do that? And they say yes yes yes. And they don't know if they have the capacity to do that.
So I'm the person who would rather stay, you know, squarely over my skis, if the opportunity arises to move into politics in some way to help influence from up there then then so be it. But right now my priority is is healing that relationship kind of being a marriage counselor between the producers and the
Speaker 2
bridge. A
Speaker 1
bridge. That's a much better way to put it should
Speaker 3
be a very good politician, you'd be very good at
Speaker 2
it. Yes. Oh
Speaker 1
My Gosh. No one has ever told me that. That
Speaker 3
I don't know if you'd be a lifetime one because I don't think that
Speaker 1
should be a lifetime.
Speaker 3
Well, no, it changes people, you know, everybody, it's like teaching you go in, you're all going to change the world change kids and then they just beat you down and then you just become part of the administration and everything else happens in politics all the time too. But I love your energy, ... your
Speaker 2
energy and your passion and your spirit is just very
Speaker 3
difficult to fake passion, very difficult to fake passion. ...
Speaker 2
Let's talk about specifically what it is that you do for companies
Speaker 1
because compliance
Speaker 2
is broad. It's
Speaker 1
so broad and so do listeners know about your background at all?
Speaker 2
Mine? Yes. Have
Speaker 1
we talked about my background? ... So when, when I met you in a bar yesterday sean you describe yourself as a former buyer And at first that word threw me off because it's not a word that I hear super often, but you are so many different
Speaker 2
words to describe, it
Speaker 1
depends who you're talking to.
Speaker 3
No, literally,
Speaker 1
I thought the fashion. I'm like, okay, I mean, I guess like we could use some like frs that are actually flattering to women. We can do that
Speaker 2
too. I'm flexible.
Speaker 1
I'm an idea like what can I say? Um I, yes, so when I, when I find what que me into, what you actually did as a buyer was when I described what I did and you actually knew what I did. So I work in supply chain, which means that the people in the producer and the midstream companies who need vendors to, to provide all these services on the ground, they're looking for the best and the
Speaker 2
brightest
Speaker 1
and they're evaluating these um, service writers using certain criteria and they, Jason is still laughing. I gave him a crown. ... I'm not funny. So this is very flattering to me that I got in a joke that actually lived.
Speaker 2
He's multitasking.
Speaker 1
So it's the same if you're hiring an employee, right? So Jason, if you were hiring like an intern or an employee at crude life would be like, what's your resume? ... Let me,
Speaker 2
let me just say,
Speaker 1
let me just say
Speaker 2
that a buyer is probably a very low level description of what it is that I do. So I could say I'm a procurement manager, I'm a supply chain manager, I purchase things, I source things, there's a lot of different ways to describe what I do, but a lot of people relate to buyer
Speaker 1
interesting.
Speaker 2
Like I buy things services by, you know what I mean? I don't want to say, it's demeaning because has a role in this world, right? 100% procurement supply chain?
Speaker 1
Like the word procurement is so esoteric, esoteric, drinking too much
Speaker 3
esoteric,
Speaker 1
esoteric,
Speaker 3
esoteric energy,
Speaker 1
energy. Um, so I get why you would choose that over procurement certainly, but it's not a, it's not a word that I hear often on the ground. Um, but anyway, yeah, So you know, as a buyer, you are looking for the best vendors because you don't want to hire this crane operator who kills a guy on the job and you're like, like I didn't realize he would do do that. And by the way, does he have the insurance to cover the damage that he just said ... what? E M R E M R I don't know. So like if you're, if you're
Speaker 3
my question, by the way, what is an EMR? I've never heard that.
Speaker 1
So there, Oh my God, it's alphabet soup in the safety
Speaker 2
world. Our
Speaker 1
total recordable incident, You can't even be
Speaker 3
called the greatest in the world anymore. You call the goat,
Speaker 1
you're
Speaker 3
the greatest of all time. Your goat, ... we're going back to Egyptian times. We're going back to emojis on the wall as hieroglyphics and the goat, which is known as an acronym. I understand it is an acronym. I understand that, but that's how lazy we're getting when I was a kid, tropical snow was called trump's no,
Speaker 1
we
Speaker 3
took away some syllables man nice and easy. Trop snow. So anyway, that's, that's where, that's
Speaker 1
where we at. Yes. And the safety world is no different. We abbreviate everything. The goal is to make things as confusing as possible. So even though we quote unquote care about safety, we're just like spinning, spinning the thing
Speaker 2
we get so far into our own little deep dark silos, ... George
Speaker 3
Carlin, the great George Carlin, the prophet George Carlin, also known as a comedian. He does a great bit on language. He starts with the word shellshocked back in World War One. It was a it was a disorder that when somebody in combat gets too stressed, their brain kind of shuts down its own shell shocked, right? Well then he goes through the different combat fatigue operational over all these different things and he goes through the syllables and the acronyms to where it gets to
pTSD, It started out of shell shock and it went through eight evolutions and he goes through and he talks about how a little bit more difficult to say shellshock, nice and easy. And then he goes, what does he call it? Battle, battlefield fatigue and almost like sounds like something you do at the end of the day after it, you know, and he goes through this and he goes, you know, if they would have called it shell shock, those veterans probably would have got help in the day, but PTSD
makes it sound sterile, makes it sound Yeah. And so that's really, safety is kind of their, their strategy. In fact they don't want people to over freak, They don't want people to freak out
Speaker 1
because nobody likes the safety guy, you stiffen up when you're on site.
Speaker 3
But
Speaker 1
like think about
Speaker 3
the world we live in, where we live in a competitive world of freak out now. Just look at, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to get political but just take a look at like masks in the sanitation, look at how far people have gone to where they do like bubble seating outdoors and all these different that is a competition of freaking out in my opinion. So I believe that that's, that's a lot of the safety industry is to kinda squelch those calm fears.
Speaker 1
Doing is creating a world where contractor a whose kick ass looks exactly the same one paper as contractor B who just cut a guy's arm off last week because I promise you, you could kill a guy on site and I could paper it over if I wanted to in a way that would, would make it go away.
Speaker 3
But I would never,
Speaker 1
I would fucking, I don't know if you swear on the
Speaker 3
show, I
Speaker 1
I would never paper that over. But there are people there, there are people in the compliance world who would, ... I got Jason to let loose. What's up guys. Um, So yeah, but that makes it think about what that does to the buyer to the sean or like the former Shaun of the world. That's
Speaker 2
only one aspect of analysis for awarding a job to a company, right, is looking at your safety scores, your safety programs, but there's six other factors that I consider to. It's like, what is your pricing look like? What
Speaker 1
what is your
Speaker 2
price look like? What is your level of service? Do you have a great customer service? What is the reliability of your equipment? How old is it? Is it gonna break down? Are you gonna cause me to have standby charges? And then that creates a domino effect with other trades that are waiting in line on the job site to do that job. Um what is your lead time? How far is your shop from my location?
How much money am I going to have to pay for logistics? You know, I mean, So there's several factors and safety is a number one, obviously, always, um but it's not the only factor that I look at, you know, but so I'm really interested in like, am I getting crew A you're a team, Am I getting you're getting your C team? Because a B team and a C team is going to cost me more money.
Speaker 1
Absolutely, and but but the A team or excuse me, Which one is the a team, I forget
Speaker 3
mr T, ...
Speaker 1
I'm getting caught up in the acronym, the letters now, I'm confusing myself
Speaker 3
Webster and different strokes.
Speaker 1
A lot. A lot of people stop at the pricing question.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And
Speaker 1
producers, producers are always saying like, oh, like pricing isn't the only thing we consider
Speaker 2
best value, so there's best value, there's landed cost and there's total cost of ownership. Those are the three things that you have to consider. And I always talk to suppliers and I say there are factors that we take into consideration when we award a bid. Um and I can't speak for all supply chain people
Speaker 1
culture
Speaker 2
because it depends on who you are and who is making the award decision. Because people always ask me sean what are people looking for when they make an award decision? And I go, I don't know, it depends on who's making the
Speaker 1
decision,
Speaker 2
it's an engineer thinking about different things. If it's the drilling superintendent, he's thinking about different things. Some guys only care about cost, I care about all of yeah
Speaker 1
and shouldn't be collaborative. It should be collaborative and safety is is certainly one element of it. But contractors who are listening right now are gonna think, yeah my I. S. N. And P. E. C. Therefore square cards might say one thing and that seems to be all that, you know, this producer I'm working with cares about and so I the the I. S. N. P. C. Puzzle is something that I I hack for contractors. Um But of course the ultimate goal is to change that culture at the top and those
producers who are calling the shots and saying okay contractors you gotta play by this game. I want to change the actual game and say okay producers, let's look at what's actually bringing you value and what insights you actually need. Um to to choose the best vendors because right now you you've set up, you set up a game but the game is kind of rigged and the contractors all now because
Speaker 2
they try to do a one size fits all. You know, and it's like you can't do that because you have different companies who provide different services that have different levels of risk.
Speaker 1
So
Speaker 2
you can't just say we have one standard M. S. A. And one insurance requirement bucket and you have to fit into all of that. And you have, you know, some small businesses like you talk about that are like wow these insurance requirements are gonna be so expensive for me and I maybe haul equipment, you know, so you're
not dealing with pressure pumping, you're dealing with pressure vessels, high risk operations but yet you're held to the same standard as some of these other companies.
Speaker 1
Exactly. So that's sean I'm happy you brought that up because that's a big part of what I do. Like some of what I do is the boring like the road admin work just to take that off contractors plate. And then another part of what I do is educate them on the stuff that they actually need to please the operators and be safe and follow OSHA federal guidelines and so forth.
But another piece of it is that negotiation Because there are times where two person company who does like rentals or something is being asked to get a $10 million dollar umbrella policy. They didn't even know it was in there because they didn't read it and they didn't send it to me to check it
Speaker 2
out because they don't have insurance. Exactly.
Speaker 1
Exactly. And now they have to run back to their broker who by the way is very good and has like a gmail address. You
Speaker 2
can go back to the producer and ask for a waiver. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yes yes. So they don't know that but I know that and I say okay, alright billy billy billy ... literally it's not even a fiction Jason ... funny like they're trusting their their risk, their insurance is somebody who doesn't even have a proper company. It's so bizarre. Their
Speaker 2
broker, right?
Speaker 1
Yes. As a broker. Which by the way I have a partnership with a broker who is astounding and and offers a ton of like legitimate partnership. Let's problem solve. So please reach out to me if you want more information about that
Speaker 2
is at hotmail dot
Speaker 1
com.
Speaker 3
It's not
Speaker 1
gmail and Hotmail so much better.
Speaker 2
It's been around for a while.
Speaker 3
I like getting one from A. O. L. Those are my favorite. I love
Speaker 2
my brother and my mom
Speaker 3
because I know people the A. O. L. And they all said the same in the same little category man. I love it. I love
Speaker 1
it. Yes.
Speaker 3
One of the things I do want to bring up was I've had probably four or five. I'll even say six. Why not? We're rounding up it's late. Um Talk about the safety buzzwords, that's what they said. They go, we do all the safety buzzwords like that. They're they're tired of it having to brag that were this certified and decertified because everybody is now, so
Speaker 1
It's like college degrees, everybody has one.
Speaker 3
What's the next step?
Speaker 1
The next step is actually being good at what you do. Okay,
Speaker 3
what's the real next step?
Speaker 2
Okay, hold on. Let's take
Speaker 1
it back a step. If
Speaker 2
you're if you're if
Speaker 1
you're providing certain
Speaker 2
services, like let's say welding, you have to have certain credentials.
Speaker 1
Baseline
Speaker 2
baseline for certifications like you mentioned. But yes, there are others probably that are fluff.
Speaker 3
Right? But there are, I imagine are there new ones? I don't know if this E. S. G. Is like a new certification that gives you the platinum. I think it is
Speaker 1
too. Bureaucratic nightmare.
Speaker 3
I agree. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1
be here for it and I'm gonna help people through it. But God, I'm not looking forward to it.
Speaker 3
Is there anything like that that is here now, I don't know, imagine colorado's got I imagine North Dakota's got some with emissions texas is going through that right now with with emissions. So.
Speaker 2
No. So if you if you read a company's M. S. A. Which is a Master Service agreement it talks about environmental health and safety requirements and some of those environmental requirements discuss the proper disposal of trash and driving on roads with respect to the community and things. So it's something that's already been embedded legally, right, sign this contract. You agree to abide by all of these rules to be able to work for us as a company
Speaker 1
and so it is. But the open ended so they can change and adapt and kind of like,
Speaker 2
I don't want to say Smalley, is that a word? ... Um companies have been compliant right in environmental and community standards and things like that forever. But now it's being standardized and highlighted on a billboard like what are you doing?
Speaker 3
So I'm thinking about your former co worker at Whiting Said Ashley McNamee who's now with Wilson and Alvarez. Alvarez and Wilson, I apologize. She's doing E. S. G. Certification for
Speaker 1
Oh this is the I think I mentioned her.
Speaker 3
Yes that
Speaker 1
was one of my favorite episodes and it gave me a new perspective. We
Speaker 3
call it an episode. I call it an interview. Oh that just melted my heart. Okay so what she talked about was that and I agree with her because we talked about this before the interview. Oil and gas companies have been E. S. G. For years, long before the environmental movement came, all they gotta do is tell the story,
Speaker 1
all
Speaker 3
they have to do. But there's a big but here baby got back sir sir. Mix a lot but right. What we've got going on here is we talked with blue Halsey from continental resources about this because I wanted somebody of his prominence to be able to tell the story. There's a lot of PTSd getting back to that post traumatic stress disorder for the industry.
And I compared to a restaurant when I worked in the restaurant industry, we were told if if a patron goes to your restaurant 10 times with a perfect meal, they might tell one person when they're done. If they go there one time and have one bad meal, they'll tell three people and those three people will tell three people and those and it keeps going.
I think that's a little bit of what the oil and gas industry is going through right now. Is that when you're a king of the economy, like they've been there, they're they're one of the king's okay, they get picked on all the time and everybody's going frivolous lawsuits, Let's go after the money. Easy. Low hanging fruit, go pick on them. I think that's their biggest obstacles.
Actually having the courage to step out and say no, we're damn good. Yeah, we're gonna talk about this. I don't know how to get them to open up, but they are slowly so it is getting better. But I do think that is the biggest thing is that they've been just kind of held accountable on such miniscule things
Speaker 2
that don't
Speaker 3
even matter in the big picture. Maybe they do, but it's just not even a huge thing.
Speaker 1
Some of them do. Some of them don't,
Speaker 3
but it gets blown up. Like it's the biggest thing
Speaker 1
because I mean, everybody likes the underdog, right? And as soon as you come out on top, all eyes are on you and all the criticism is there and that that market should work right? We need to criticize companies and and hold them accountable for responsible decision making ability. But that standard of what is responsible and what is not, cannot be this bureaucratic tangled nightmare that it has become. And I really what was her name from
Speaker 2
writing?
Speaker 1
Yes, I loved how she put that. The language, like telling your story. You're already doing these things and that's what I tell my people in compliance. I'm like,
Speaker 2
you're already doing things. You
Speaker 1
know, you're a safe company, let's prove it. And if we have to add some documentation. ... That's funny,
Speaker 3
there's
Speaker 1
something about an underdog that inspires the unexceptional. ... Well,
Speaker 3
the unexceptional always likes the underdog. And as somebody who's always loved the underdog, get related to me for some sick reason, but
Speaker 1
the underdog makes a good story, right? And candidly, that's what I'm trying to do with the service providers, like, okay, you're a three person company. But I, you know, your kick ass, you're better than that person who's getting all the business. So let's tell your story, let's piece your, your, your safety stats and let's it's not fudging the paperwork, it's communicating the truth.
We never, I will never lie about what a company does in order to make them look good to a producer. If you ask me a question that I'm supposed to say yes to, but they don't, they can't say yes to it. Honestly, I'll say
Speaker 2
let's
Speaker 1
get them there if we need to, because if I say yes, you're gonna get audited, somebody's gonna find out, and that's not a good look.
Speaker 3
So, the reason I showed that to you, that was show prep, by the way, that was me sending sterling some show prep about what we're talking about, because right now everybody is either feeling or they're viewed as un except for, you know, the what was that word, unexceptional, unexceptional, because they're telling everybody whether you're an essential worker or not. So if you're not, except Essential worker, you're thinking, well, what am I then,
Speaker 1
well,
Speaker 3
what I'm trying to tell the oil and gas industry right now is there is a ton of people that consider themselves underdogs right now. So if you come out as the
Speaker 1
underdog,
Speaker 3
you're gonna connect with everybody. So it's a very short window, I believe for the oil and gas industry to strike on this and that's why I texted it to them because I do think we're in that time right now where the oil and gas industry, if they do tell their story about how they're doing and helping people that's going to connect more than ever.
Speaker 1
It's funny telling the story, Do you know Mayor Patrick out of
Speaker 3
midland?
Speaker 1
Mayor Patrick? You need to interview him
Speaker 3
on the crew. Oh
Speaker 1
my gosh, he's phenomenal. You know how a lot of people, as they get high up in politics or in companies, it's like, they're, what they're communicating is the summary of the summary of the summary. And it's this weird, like, fluffy pr like, yeah, yeah, we're doing great here over at like, you know, sales incorporated or whatever it is we're doing. And you know that it's not the truth. It's not what's really going on. They're not communicating the challenges.
Speaker 3
They're just trying
Speaker 1
to cheerlead Mayor Patrick out of midland. Oh my gosh. He presented, um, I'm part of the, ... so right now, I think it's Patrick something actually. I'm gonna be embarrassed. Look it up, look it up. I saw him. The Permian Basin pipeline's Association of which I'm a part had him present at one of meetings. I could not believe it. I'm like, this is the guy I've been waiting for in the
Speaker 2
industry was talking about,
Speaker 1
I don't even remember the topic. He felt like he was telling the truth, he was telling the truth, he was like, here are challenges. We have our work cut out for us. This is not a cakewalk. That's what it is.
Speaker 3
We're actually gonna be interviewing Patrick Payton down in midland because he's doing a march to Washington. Yeah. He's trying to lead a kind of a group to go to Washington on oil and gas behalf with other mayors and etcetera. So yeah, that's, that's why we were talking to him and we're gonna be down in the Permian when june
Speaker 2
The Week of the 9th, 9th 10th is the Shell Energy Conference.
Speaker 3
Whatever that week of the 9th is. We're gonna be down there and he's going to be at the conference. ...
Speaker 1
I think I might be, my aunt has a birthday party that weekend. ... Yeah, we'll see. Well, I'll put it on my calendar. We'll see. But you're gonna have to connect with him. And one thing he said in that meeting, he's like, oil and gas is not good at singing our own song And I immediately my ears perked up because I'm a music major and I'm a singer and, And coincidentally, I have a song called 5000 candles.
It's not out yet. I shot a music video for it last year featuring some of my clients actually, 5000 candles. Oh, you're, you're gonna make the parks and rec joke, aren't you? 5000 candles in the wind. Yeah, I'm aware, but it refers to the flares, which of course we don't like flaring, but it sure is beautiful when you're flying in
Speaker 2
to that, that
Speaker 1
Williston Basin airport at night. And I remember that when I first came up here, I was so stunned and so confused by those beautiful flares at night. Um, so the song, you know, refers to the beauty, the natural beauty of the Williston Basin as well as the beautiful faces of the people who make that entire economy tick. Um, like I said, the song isn't out.
But I immediately emailed Mayor Patrick and I said, oh my gosh, you have to like, like what should I have the song in the queue? How do I really sit? And if anybody, you know, listening as a, as a good strategy for pr there do email me and let me know, but I completely agree with you, Jason and Sean that oil and gas needs to get better at singing its own song.
Speaker 2
Well, I said this earlier too. Blue Halsey from Continental. I said, you know, oil and gas companies do a very poor job of talking about the good things that they do. You know, we're kind of behind the scenes and that's the way we like it because we care about the communities that we're so fortunate to work in and we need to get better at professionally promoting our industry right?
The opposition is doing it. I don't like us fighting the other energy folks. You know, energy, all energy has a place in this world, if it makes sense. Yeah, it's all the above and
Speaker 1
we don't have
Speaker 2
to fight each other. We can all coexist and get along and have conversations and talk about how we can all help each other and be better, right? And not fight each other. And you know, I asked him what is continental doing that we may not know about or that we're not hearing about and he talked about a lot of really cool things that they're doing
Speaker 1
such a good
Speaker 2
question. Yeah. And I totally agree. Like oil and gas companies do not take the credit for the good things that they do. What
Speaker 3
Would you like to see oil and gas companies do to help sing their song? Because I'll be honest, we've been spouting that message for 10 years now that you guys have a story that needs to be told and the leadership seems to go out and say we need to tell that story, but then nobody does. And as I'm serious has been going on for at least five years, I've been hearing this message that we need to tell our story more and this and that, you know, whenever the rise of the climate activism right
around the colorado time 2015, you know, is when when I started noticing a lot of it anyway, um, what what do you think they could do because I, I hear them saying it, but I don't see him doing it, I see them spending the same money with the same people doing the same
Speaker 1
thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3
And so that's why we're doing what we're doing. We're doing things really different to where we actually get invited to parades, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, barbecues. And our name is the crude life. We're not hiding what we do at all. We're not trying to be some sort of, you know, passive aggressive thing. No, we're, we're really honest in their face and and it works because it's authentic and honest. That's what I think the industry needs to do.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that. And I would add that. It needs to do that in more arenas. So you mentioned, well, we've been talking about music and pop culture this entire time. Why is oil and gas not in pop culture? Like why are we letting them control the narrative?
Speaker 3
I'll give you another example. We were gonna win the college football bowl games came we sterling and I are doing the morning show. We were going to just do a segment on uh name the oil and gas companies that sponsored this bowl and what year we're gonna do trivia.
Speaker 1
We've
Speaker 3
never done trivia, but we're going to do it
Speaker 2
right.
Speaker 3
None and none. There might have been an Exxon in the late 80s, I think I remember that, but I can't even remember that. Honestly. There wasn't one, Not one oil company sponsored a college bowl game. That is the most safe sponsorship you can do to engage yourself with 50,000 people on a regular basis that are not oil
and gas industry people, but that, that's an example for that is one example that you can do to engage with people outside the industry in a town that doesn't have oil and gas.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that it's one thing to sponsor and slap your name onto another event or you know, uh, you know, hitching your wagon to something that's already running. Um, and I would add though, that people are a little bit, especially these young, um, young people who love the underdog. They're skeptical of corporations in
Speaker 3
general, traumatic sized underdogs. No, no,
Speaker 1
no, no. I'm it's whatever to me. I just know how a story works. Stories always start with. I
Speaker 2
think this is a valuable perspective.
Speaker 1
Thank you sean. Yeah, so I think it's about more than sponsoring things. I think it's about getting into the nitty gritty, you know, there there are some people working on and this isn't about conservative or liberal, but for example, there are some people who say there's not enough conservative representation in movies.
So we're gonna start our own media company, we're gonna do this thing. I'm not saying oil and gas needs to start a movie company, but why is it not engaged in film, Like why is it why is it letting itself get completely steamrolled anytime that like that,
Speaker 2
that Children's book that
Speaker 1
you just held up. Why? Why is there is there no counter narrative to that? Why are there no musicians? ...
Speaker 3
Wait,
Speaker 1
it's funny that
Speaker 2
you say that because
Speaker 3
there
Speaker 2
are some oil and gas
Speaker 1
companies that
Speaker 2
do make commercials. Okay, so in colorado P. D. C. Is a big producer and I see commercials from them all the time and I'm thinking, oh this is fantastic, right? Like they're putting it out in the community that they are actually producing oil and gas. But their commercials are so blanketed I guess and almost covering up what it is that they do. And so they say things like we're energizing people's lives, it's so bad.
Speaker 3
Like how like
Speaker 2
how like what are you doing? And let's talk about it specifically so that people know and understand and care.
Speaker 1
Did you know that all the food that you eat is grown with fertilizer that's made from natural gas, Like what, Who knows that? Did you know the varnish on your table, every medical device and pill that you take. It's all willingness and I don't hear anybody talking about that in the pop cultural arena, but it's, I think it's more than commercials. I
Speaker 2
think it just related to gasoline to be honest. I don't think they think about,
Speaker 1
they literally just think transport
Speaker 2
what petroleum products do for our lives.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so I
Speaker 3
I don't even think they think that anymore. You know, I think they just think smokestacks pills,
Speaker 2
there's a
Speaker 3
pipeline, you know,
Speaker 2
got cyber attack this week, by
Speaker 3
the way, I'm going to make a prediction that is not the last, I think that's going to be a serious issue in the next year. I totally
Speaker 1
believe that the
Speaker 3
more I've been thinking about that, the more I did not like that, go on, sorry.
Speaker 2
And you know what a freak out that is for those people up there in line to get gas. It's kind of like the toilet paper, you know,
Speaker 3
Covid we now live in a world where you can draw a fist of spray paint on a pipeline in colorado and shut down the grid for a day. Okay. You can also have a cyber attack that does nothing. But just the fact that there was a cyber attack and shut the grid down to those are two very disturbing examples of cyber spray paint.
Speaker 2
Well, let me tell you So I watch hln headline news in the morning because I think it's more fun than you know,
Speaker 3
headline
Speaker 2
news and it's a CNN based uh tv show
Speaker 3
who does not give me all the news I need but
Speaker 2
does not, which I kind of like the fact that it's
Speaker 3
not, you
Speaker 2
know, depressing
Speaker 3
CNN does a very good job of presenting a very neutral
Speaker 2
sometimes.
Speaker 1
However,
Speaker 2
however, sometimes
Speaker 3
in comparison
Speaker 2
however, this morning they were talking about this pipeline getting shut down and the fact that the people in the north east or north or wherever this pipeline goes, they weren't gonna get their gas and their fuel and people are lining up at gas stations and filling up gas tanks and talking about how devastating this is going to be if people can't get to work or they can't drive their kids to school.
And so I hope this is always the hope, right, that people appreciate the industry because at this point without it, they have to realize how important it is in their lives, but they don't and I don't get it,
Speaker 1
I don't get it either. I think this is where the oil and gas industry has to stop.
Speaker 2
I
Speaker 1
always end up being the villain, you know, price like whatever it is like. But
Speaker 3
so I think
Speaker 1
we have to stop guessing at what is going to change people's hearts and minds and, and you know, frankly open their minds to the truth and in many of these areas not to say oil and gas is flawless because we're 100% not my whole job exists because we're not flawless, but um, but I think this is where consumer psychology really has to come into play.
And instead of just throwing dollars at sponsorships or throwing dollars at commercials or, you know, running this campaign or that campaign slapping our logo on this, we have to understand what words are triggering the public, um, to be against us, we have to learn, you know, what actually is the path forward to um, get people's ear in a meaningful way because we know it's not, we know it's not what we're currently doing.
So I would love to see some consumer psychologist studies that are actually like researching, not just like a small focus group but researching in a scientific way. What the best way to get our message out is because we've been just throwing
Speaker 2
analytics.
Speaker 1
None of it is sticking. We're just throwing stuff at the wall and um we can keep doing that all day. But honestly like there there's gotta be a better way and time is short, like the the public is not for us right now. And if we don't act swiftly to dial into what's actually gonna be a sustainable solution, I don't know how we're gonna make it through
Speaker 2
this. We still haven't talked specifically about what you do companies.
Speaker 1
I go so um,
Speaker 2
complaints
Speaker 1
complaints. So I mentioned I. S. NNPC, we can wrap this up pretty soon. I know we're coming up on a social here in a few minutes. We need to get to, but I. S. NNPC, those might be acronyms that your listeners are familiar
Speaker 2
with. That's
Speaker 1
a starting point. So I often meet a contractor who is at their wits end with compliance because their I. S. N. Account is showing up. You know, you don't have this or that and your score is
Speaker 2
bad with your
Speaker 1
nephew an upgrade your red grade. ... So a lot of that's maybe the the doorway to signal to them that they need some help on compliance. And then, you know, we can go into these
Speaker 2
broader discussions that we've been
Speaker 1
talking about and the people side of it. But really um I do I do help people
Speaker 2
hack
Speaker 1
that scorecard as it is, you know, um,
Speaker 2
if specifically
Speaker 1
specifically
Speaker 2
getting, making sure they get the proper insurance contractually obligated to
Speaker 1
their training documents. There are acknowledgment forms. There are questionnaire items about your company culture and your company procedures for this thing for that thing. And some producers care about certain things. Some of them don't. So my company, we have an index of every single operator in the play and um
Speaker 2
it's
Speaker 1
constantly changing. It's dynamic, you
Speaker 2
know, producer
Speaker 1
X compares cares a lot about the training documents, producer, why audits all of their contractors every three years. So we gotta get ready for that. Producers E um, you know, they have massive insurance requirements so that's something to look out for. So I help contractors navigate that specific environment as it comes
Speaker 2
up.
Speaker 1
Maybe an I. S. NNPC maybe, you know, more
Speaker 2
uh casually
Speaker 1
or D. I. Y. Than that. And then I I helped negotiate and um change things where they need to be changed. And um what was I thinking?
Speaker 2
I. S. N. Is I. S net
Speaker 1
world
Speaker 2
pc is pc Premier and these are all contractor components, software, software.
Speaker 1
I'm sorry, I didn't even know.
Speaker 2
So it's, you know, producers set or midstream companies. Let's not forget about those guys
Speaker 1
very important ... like Georgia pacific
Speaker 2
paper, right?
Speaker 1
They have any company
Speaker 2
that has an I. S. Net world requirements to fulfill to get them ready for higher or at least a passing grade. So they have um all of these different requirements, like you said, every company is different. Every single company has different requirements. So you know, unfortunately you are a very small business and you're like, how do I figure out how to do all this paperwork so that I can go to work
Speaker 1
in front of me or plan ahead for the next year for this person. I want to work for three years or one year down the line.
Speaker 2
They give you an opportunity to be on boarded because onboarding a company, I'm gonna talk from the, from a supply chain or procurement person perspective. So I would get phone calls from companies saying how do I get an M. S. A. With your company And I would say, well you don't, unless you've been awarded work or you're a candidate for doing work or we're gonna hire you or something because onboarding a company takes a lot of time and time is money and so we don't just onboard.
No, because now you have attorneys involved and especially if you have to negotiate the terms of the master service agreement and get that certificate of insurance that's creating work for the insurance company is creating work for attorneys creating work for a lot of different people. And so you just don't onboard companies to onboard them for no reason. And so yeah,
Speaker 1
as much as we'd like to be in the queue, so
Speaker 2
it's nice to have you on the sidelines ready to go.
Speaker 1
I think I'm in the middle, but
Speaker 2
you know, you're on the sideline saying when you're ready for some help, I'm here and we'll get you there quick.
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. Because it's the last thing because
Speaker 2
they stress so hard about
Speaker 1
like, how
Speaker 2
am I going to get compliant when they're already working a
Speaker 1
week? How can we
Speaker 2
fast track literally the
Speaker 1
turnover. Like I will get calls at like 10 p.m. On a Tuesday like, oh my God, we have a job for so and so, and I just realized we're not connected to them in a world, what do I need to do? And I'm like, well, I'm sorry that person actually, we got to do this. This,
Speaker 2
This company was 80 pages of
Speaker 1
procedures. It's nuts. And you cannot do that overnight. And so what we really pride ourselves in compliance is um, helping them plan down the road. So they know that they want work with Hester Kanako or, you know, kind of organ. And we're like, well, if that's what you want, then let's get your house in order sooner rather than later so that you don't have 50 guys like trying to get on site down in texas unable to go on site because you didn't have
Speaker 2
X, Y Z certification. How can people get ahold of you?
Speaker 1
Hello at cook compliance dot c O.
Speaker 3
And what's your email address? ... Should I should mention? We're shutting down the conference ...
Speaker 2
right here.
Speaker 1
I'm gonna add
Speaker 3
my janitor. What are you talking
Speaker 1
about? Don't call Ntsc the janitor. So
Speaker 3
how can people get
Speaker 1
compliance dot C O or 6083 to 04345. My name is Alma Cook and I'm happy to talk to anyone.
Speaker 3
I absolutely love Hello Instead of info or what I do.
Speaker 2
00 G directory dot com.
Speaker 1
I
Speaker 3
love that. Okay, great.
Speaker 2
It's way more inviting
Speaker 3
totally
Speaker 2
because you know, when I see an info at, you know what, I immediately think that email is not going to be seen by anyone. It's going into a black hole. That's
Speaker 3
exactly right. And that's, and more importantly though, it's something different and people are looking for something different because everybody's trying to just coast off of the same old, same old and now that everybody's caught up in the same, same, you know, acronyms, if you will, people are looking for things different. So kudos to you and good luck and feel free to lean on us anytime.
Speaker 1
Thanks Jason. Big fan. I hope to see you guys again. Sometime
Speaker 2
loved having you on. Thank you
The Crude Life Podcast: Alma Cook on How Industry Can Be Inclusive and Exclusive