The oil and gas industry in Canada is in the midst of a great disruption.

Rapid advancement in extraction technologies has altered the global supply/demand balance, resulting in long-term oversupply of both oil and gas and — inevitably — lower prices.

Explosive growth in U.S. production has shifted international energy supply patterns, leaving Canadian production in the hunt for new markets.

Greenhouse gas emissions regulation is increasing in Canada and globally as the world moves towards a lower carbon energy future. Pressures on energy producers to improve environmental performance and operate in a socially responsible manner are intensifying — particularly when it comes to working in Indigenous communities.

Through all this turmoil a new competitive model is emerging led by technologically advanced energy sources that are the lowest cost, emit the last greenhouse gas, and are produced in a socially conscious manner.

Over the last five years the Daily Oil Bulletin’s parent company, JWN Energy, and partners have been interacting with industry, academia, governments and other stakeholders via dozens of workshops, speaker events, surveys and in-depth interviews to gain an understanding of the disruption the industry is facing and to identify the opportunities and challenges.

A number of key issues emerged from these consultation efforts, including the need for:

• Improving Canada’s technology and innovation pipeline to move new products or processes through to commercialization
• More collaboration up and down the supply chain to lower costs and improve productivity
• Greater sharing of knowledge within the industry to answer challenges like greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental concerns
• A strategy to build on Canada’s oil and gas technical expertise to diversify into other energy production
• Greater exporting of Canadian technologies and expertise to help answer global challenges
• A sharing of success stories within industry and with the public to show industry is making progress on issues of concern

The Daily Oil Bulletin’s Energy Excellence Awards were conceived to measure and celebrate the progress industry is making on meeting these challenges and to share the industry’s successes with a broader audience. We received more than 90 nominations — all are working to make Canada’s oil and gas industry the low-cost, low-carbon, socially conscious, technology-driven energy supplier of the future.

A report, Building A Collaborative Culture, builds upon these efforts by illustrating the innovations that industry is undertaking to solve its economic, social and environmental challenges.

The hope is that these success stories will inspire further collaboration and innovation to take advantage of the great energy disruption now under way.

Download the report here.