Faster Higher Stronger
Written By: Rod Garland
“Citius,
Altius, Fortius”
The Olympic
motto in English is “Faster, Higher, Stronger”.
The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo have just wrapped
up after 2 weeks of fantastic athletic competition, great personal and team achievements
and a management success by any measure, in light of the challenges from the
Covid-19 pandemic, which delayed this quadrennial spectacular for an entire
year.
From a Canadian perspective, Canadian women
out-performed Canadian men by a considerable margin; the final medal being won
in the women’s cycling sprint final by Kelsey Mitchell from Sherwood Park, Alberta. Kelsey had planned to work
in the Oil & Gas industry but due to an unforeseen illness, found herself
on a different track that led her into cycling and a trip to Tokyo.
Congratulations Kelsey.
Once again the Japanese people showed
fantastic resilience, especially and literally in “the wake” of the earthquake,
tsunami and failure of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and consequential radiation
leak that hit the Japanese islands in March of 2011.
The Japanese parliament’s incident
investigation in 2019 placed the blame for the Fukushima disaster squarely on
inadequate emergency planning, negligence and lack of preparedness by the
energy company, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). Don’t ask me how it took
over 8 years to complete this investigation.
National disasters are not uncommon to Japan,
as evidenced by the events of the World War II and the total obliteration of
the cities of Nagasaki & Hiroshima by 2 US atomic bombs; “Little Boy” and
“Fat Man”. The Japanese people however, always seem to bounce back and with
determination and endeavor, rise to economic and social levels which are quite astonishing
and unprecedented.
Economically, Japan now ranks
3rd behind the USA and China in nominal GDP at USD$ 5.15 trillion and 4th
behind the USA, China, and India in GDP (PPP) at USD$ 5.75 trillion. GDP in
Canada CDN$ is 1.65 trillion. Also of interest is that Japan holds USD$ 1.24
trillion of US debt with China at USD$ 1.10 trillion.
According to statistics from the
2016 United Nation Office on Drugs & Crime (UNODC), Japan's rate of
homicide was the lowest in the world at 0.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared
to 1.76 per 100,000 in 2020 in Canada.
Japan is also known for some
pretty significant companies on the World stage including, Toyota, Honda,
Mitsubishi, Sony, Nissan, Hitachi, Panasonic, Aeon and Canon. There’s no doubt
the Japanese are doing many things right.
So we have a role model to
follow to get back on track now that things are opening up across the country
and maybe the seismic Industry should hold its own version of the
Olympics to kick start business and get back on track.
How about some healthy competition; to shoot
as many seismic programs as possible starting when the last migratory bird is
seen heading south to warmer climes and finishing when the first caribou calf
is born sometime in late spring.
We should have no problem cleaning up the
Gold, Silver & Bronze medals as there are only 4 data-acquisition companies
remaining to participate in this competition. Maybe the motto to use could be “Macilentus,
Iratus, Tutius“ , or in English, “Leaner, Meaner, Safer”.
Safety is now a critical component of any Oil
& Gas operation, including seismic, so there should be some excitement at
the Energy Safety Canada news that the Petroleum Safety Conference will again take
place at the magnificent Banff Springs hotel from November 23rd to
the 25th of this year. Register at Summary
- Petroleum Safety Conference 2021 (cvent.com).
It will be a hybrid event with both
in-person and on-line delegates. It is the premier event of its type in North
America with excellent presentations on Human and Organizational Performance (HOP); Leadership;
Mental
health; Technical sessions from Industry &
Provincial Governments and a full slate of exhibits.
The CAGC will be holding the Annual Alberta
Government / Industry Seismic Conference on October 13th at the
Cambridge Hotel in Red Deer. It will include seismic updates from various
Government agencies on a range of seismic topics. Check www.cagc.ca for
registration details and the agenda.
Finally, I should
direct you to some interesting work that has now been completed, detailing the
evolution of seismic lines over time in Alberta. The CAGC contributed to this
project called “The Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program: a historical
overview of geophysical exploration in Alberta” that can be viewed at the
following link.
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