OilComm keynote speaker Tuesday morning was Apache Vice President of Global IT Michael Kuykendall, who opened his speech by admitting that his family had finally gotten rid of its landline telephone. Making decisions on the way Apache’s 5,300 employees and 63 rigs communicate requires a very similar approach. For Kuykendall, this means outlining a technology strategy that makes logical, financial and operational sense – an outline that the oil and gas industry refers to as the “holy grail.”
   “We are currently going through an oil boom in the United States that is similar to what we saw during the turn of the century,” said Kuykendall. “The United States is near independent on its oil needs. That’s a huge statement and one that is more driven by new technology, and less by new drilling sites.”
   Kuykendall directs a competitive strategy for Apache that focuses on patenting network technology, claiming that competitors hold nowhere near the amount of ownership on cost-cutting gear. “The network is our most important asset,” he said. “We’re employing M2M resources to improve the way pieces of our network talk to each other. Our next step is consolidating our data centers. This is an effort that we are currently focused on in making our communications more efficient.”
   The next step in Kuykendall’s plan aims directly at employees, which he refers to as “intellectual capital.” This next generation of workers, mostly in their twenties, are putting a unique kind of pressure on oil companies. “The oil industry is very active in hiring right now,” said Kuykendall, adding that Houston’s unemployment rate was less than 4 percent thanks to the booming domestic oil sector. “We are gravitating toward the youth and the new ideas that they bring to the table. We expect them to deliver those ideas, too, and we work as hard as we can to keep them on board. They don’t want to hear us say things like ‘when I was your age.’ They are aware of new technology and critical in forming strategies that ensure greater collaboration within the company and the industry itself.”
   Providing bandwidth and access to communications to these essential employees is not only a business matter, but a personal one, as well. Kuykendall admitted that the quality-of-life employee issues associated with high-speed broadband snuck up on him. “I went out to one of our island facilities and was greeted by a hostile group of employees that had been working there three months at a time,” he said. “They knew I was the IT guy and they had a bone to pick with me. Then they told me the problem – they couldn’t play Xbox video games in their quarters. They were on this beautiful island, yet this was a real source of their happiness. I don’t take those matters lightly. We worked to solve that issue and show that we care about their needs because it is the little things like the Xbox that dictate work output and even retention.”
   Kuykendall said that finding the right type of bandwidth and service to cover all of the employee needs, along with operational needs of Apache’s business calls for an equation that balances cost, latency, availability and performance. “I’m not so much concerned about having more bandwidth than I need or stocking up as much as I can,” he said. “I’m interesting in getting the bandwidth that makes the most sense for each and every situation, whether that’s microwave, VSAT, fiber or Ka-band. The bottom line is that we want more control over our remote operations and the first step to controlling the way we work is using the right tool for the right job.”