Troy Ruths
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Much of Troy Ruths’ focus at PetroAI involves well spacing and targeting in tight reservoirs, with artificial intelligence primed to have a big impact on recovery factors and exploitation strategies. “Making well groups economic requires understanding the nuances of how they share resources between propped and shear fractures,” he says. “Developing this into a rigorous physics-AI system that can be used as a crystal ball allows anyone with data or geo characterization to find their optimal exploitation strategy, given the data and economics.”
What qualities do you think are necessary to be a good leader in the oil and gas industry?
I’m a big fan of technical prowess in leaders for oil and gas. Understanding the complexity of the reservoir and how we need to exploit it puts that leader in a position to see market forces, partner and value other companies in the industry, and be practical about what can change in the future.
How have you exercised leadership to help shape your company?
As an AI company, we get walked into the executive leadership team and build corporate strategy together, then in the same week have a staff reservoir engineer yell at us because they feel threatened by an AI making type curves. That’s hard on the team. Consistency is much easier to handle mentally. I just try to keep the mission the focus of what we do. Bringing AI to this industry is an important step-transformation for the world. AI is an emerging market and so not everyone is meant to be a customer the first time they interact with it. A lot will diminish the value or take it out on us. But that’s OK; that just means it’s not for them yet.
Describe a memorable professional experience—something that may not be typical for industry members or that is especially meaningful for you.
I had a lot of memorable travel experiences when I worked for Chevron. I was an independent contractor, meaning I wasn’t a “blue badge.” So, I had to arrange a lot of my own travel independent of Chevron resources or help. That was easy for, say, Canada, but when I started going to more exotic locals it was a learning experience. For instance, in going to the expat camp in Lagos, [Nigeria], I was flagged and pulled aside from the rest of the group and told my shot card was incomplete. It totally wasn’t, but the gun on the guard said otherwise. I was watching the group start piling in the van to head to the camp and I had no way of getting there without that group. So, I slipped a $100 bill in my passport and handed it back to the soldier to check the shot card again. Funny thing, looked complete this time and he let me go. Later, at the cantina, when I was sharing this story, the group laughed at me. Turned out I grossly overpaid.
Which transformations do you think the industry must undertake for it to thrive in the future?
AI is going to reduce the workforce and de-risk the capital required to exploit reservoirs and make more challenging reservoirs able to be exploited. Think rapid assimilation of best practices as soon as the empirical evidence hits the public or data share databases.
What are your career goals?
I’d really like to develop a technical NOJV business that partners on assets and investment programs that benefit from AI operating at scale and leveraging unique predictability of well performance from the subsurface. I firmly believe the next chapter of innovation in oil and gas requires operationalizing AI, and through my career I’ve seen AI mature into this promise. I started my career at Chevron running data science support for NOJV assets, and I’d love to complete this journey now that AI is here to make its impact on the world by cutting waste, reducing risk and increasing capital efficiency. I’d like to get started in shale, both domestic and international, then grow out to natural gas reservoirs and conventional EOR, and finally tackle rapid exploration and prospecting using seismic as an input.
Take a look at the rest of the Forty Under 40 2024 winners.
