The Internet outage that happened last week definitely caused a big scare in a number of ways. You are likely to have been affected by some of the fallout— airlines, banks, and more were down across the country. What’s perhaps the scariest is that it doesn’t seem to have been malicious. It was a mistake. Let’s allow it to remind us all to cross our t’s, dot our i’s, and eat all our ice cream. OK…that last one doesn’t necessarily relate to mistakes, but I’m sure it’ll improve your life, assuming you pick a halfway decent flavor that is 😉.
Sarah Compton
Editor, Enspired
Back it Up and Update
Summit Art Creations/Shutterstock.com
Given the incredible “whoopsie” caused by a recent update, the timing seems good to shine a fresh light on cyber and tech security!
In oil and gas, it can be easy to feel removed from the real-time and daily impact our product has on our customers’ lives, but a disruption in our work directly impacts people’s wallets, so it behooves us to keep things moving smoothly.
A growing threat: Increasingly, the energy sector has been getting hit with ransomware attacks.
Breaking it down: Ransomware attacks remove the victim’s access to their data, then demand a ransom in return for giving that access back.
Urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent, emergency: Yes, you were supposed to be singing Foreigner there (or remembering that Verizon commercial from way back when).
Unfortunately, though, recovery times for ransom attacks are improving in other sectors but slowing in oil and gas. More than half of victims took more than a month to recover, up from 19 percent in 2022.
Why? That statistic likely reflects the increased complexity of the attacks, but prevention is still relatively simple.
Preventative measures:
Updating your software and keeping your credentials secure covers nearly 75 percent of ransomware attacks.
Switching up passwords on the regular is key. It’s hard to prevent data leaks, and if changing your password gives you headaches because you can’t easily access your data, imagine how much harder it makes access for others!
Not updating your passwords regularly is like not locking your door because it’s annoying to get your keys out. Suck it up and do it! Maybe you can calculate the money you’re saving your company in ransomware as part of your next raise 😜
The bottom line: As geoscientists, we can be trepidatious about updating our computers and software, often for valid reasons. But updates include more than just annoying re-vamps (or elimination) of our favorite features: they have key security elements that can protect us and our companies.
A message from Thru Tubing Solutions
It’s not every day you get to interview the inventor of a brand new tool that is revolutionizing the industry! AAPG’s Dr. Susan Nash chats with Thru Tubing’s Senior Engineering Advisor, Justin Allison, who created a new frac plug design that is many more times survivable in real-world downhole conditions than others, as well as making it possible to have much safer drillouts.
Direct air capture (DAC) is a promising way to clean up excess carbon emissions. It’s a refreshingly straightforward name for the tech: it pulls CO2 directly out of the air.
There are several methods of conducting DAC. Which one you choose and its specific costs and aftereffects determine whether or not it’s economic. One company is exploring a new, limestone-centered method of DAC.
DAC, starring limestone: This method utilizes something us geoscientists generally enjoy: limestone! If you don’t love limestone already, here’s why you should:
You can drop acid on it, and it fizzes.
You might find oil or a cool fossil or two.
The fact that it forms in warm waters also usually takes me, mentally, to a beach for half a second.
One word: ooids. Fun to see and say.
It’s just a great rock all around, and now it offers even more: a sustainable method for DAC.
Formation station: As geoscientists, we already know limestone needs CO2 to form. Just toss a little water and calcium oxide in there, give it several millennia or so, and boom! That “ls” (usually colored light blue on many geologic maps) is formed.
Speeding up the process: Silicon Valley-based company Heirloom Carbon has sped up the process of forming limestone and is utilizing it to pull CO2 from the air. Here’s how their tech works:
A calcium oxide seed is used to pull CO2 out of the air and form limestone on a timescale of days rather than millennia.
The limestone is powdered and heated, off-gassing CO2 that can then be stored underground or in concrete.
The remaining material can be re-used to suck more CO2 out again, which greatly increases the efficiency of the process. The calcium oxide starter that initiates the process can be recycled to start a second cycle (and third, fourth, etc).
Where does it start? While the process sounds very cool, I wasn’t able to find info on the original source(s) of calcium oxide, but since it’s recycled in the process, sourcing is somewhat mitigated.
Still, I bet geoscience expertise is needed to find this source, as well as to find good reservoirs to put the captured CO2.
Current projects: Heirloom will debut a new facility near Shreveport, LA in 2026 that could remove up to 17,000 tons of CO2 during its first year. A second, larger facility will be built in the same spot in 2027, backed by the DOE, and could remove up to 300,000 additional tons in years to follow.
Dive deeper: You can read more about Heirloom’s technology here.
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